Excitement is Bad

Yesterday morning about 10:00, I had just called Mr. M to see about refilling his pill box and gotten a busy signal. The phone rang--it was his home health physical therapist. She said she had been trying to reach him for an hour--kept ringing busy. She was near his house and stopped by--got no answer when she knocked on the door and it was locked.

I grabbed my purse and drove over there--unlocked the door--and found Mr. M on the floor by his bed. The therapist began to take care of him--asking if he was hurt, etc. --while I called the ambulance. The EMT's were both female--they couldn't decide how to get him up--the therapist finally told them that she would get one arm and one of them could get the other and the other could hold his feet and try to get him seated on the bed. They finally got him off the floor and wanted to put him on a back board. The therapist said she was no EMT, but if he had a back injury, they would have already messed things up by the way they got him off the floor and it seemed inane to her to put him on a backboard after all that. They must have finally agreed because they took him without it.

I threw the clothes he had thrown up on into the wash, gathered some clean clothes for him, made a couple phone calls, and went to the ER.

He slept most of the afternoon--with brief periods of wakefullness, but not really alert. The doctor came by and said that he had pneumonia and that they were going to admit him. It was about 5:30 in the evening when they got him settled into a room. His grandson came and I left.

I stopped by his house to feed the cats and drip the faucets (as it was supposed to get very cold--we got down to 1 degree last night). Both cats were inside, so I shut the cat door to keep the cold out and the cats in. I got home around 7:00.