Go with the Flow

Last night my mother overdosed.

In retrospect it was kind of funny.

See, she's supposed to take one pill in the morning, and eight of a totally different variety of pill in the evening. This means that when she accidentally switched them she took 8 times her prescribed dose of a diuretic. I called her to chat right when she figured out what she had done, she reported she was doing terribly and had to call the doctor. I raced my little car to her house and started throwing her belongings into the station wagon to take her to the hospital. Her doctor told her to call 911, so I threw everything out of the car and we waited for the ambulance. That is, I waited and she had to pee every five minutes.

First, the fire engine arrived. With lights. And sirens. Not so useful. She excused herself to pee and let someone else deal with the fire fighters. Then, a van and a truck with emergency lights showed up. They just hung out and drove through the yard a couple times. She had to pee again. Finally, the ambulance arrived. She told them what happened and what the doctor requested. She was going to be OK as long as medical staff monitored her blood pressure and made sure it didn't go dangerously low, putting her at risk of renal failure. She peed one last time and told the EMTs to hurry so she could use the hospital's restroom. They strapped her down to a gurney (for liability) and I got to ride in the front seat of the ambulance. I found out that most ambulances are diesel because they have to idle so long, and the EMTs like to play frisbee during said idle time (sometimes they idle for FOUR hours. crazy!). They took her blood pressure every few minutes and it held at about 90/50. Not so super.

Before we even reached the hospital she was asking to use the restroom, by the time we got there she was getting desperate. They couldn't unstrap her until the nurse started treating her (or something) and the nurses said she couldn't get up until they triaged her. It was actually heart-wrenching to watch her have to put up with this bullshit while I could do nothing.

A nurse finally came to her rescue and was regarded as a hero by mom, dad, and me. We got her settled in for her stay, but before we left I made sure to ask her if she thought it ironic that my original plans were to study the urinary system that night.