Welcome to Monday

Monday, Monday. Can't trust that day! On Monday morning you gave me no warnin' of what was to be...

Speaking of which, this Monday was more interesting than most. It involved a CAT scan, a shocker, and a transfer. Of course, this Monday actually began on Saturday.

Saturday was Mom's first day home from the hospital in a month. A recent recipient of an eight-day stint on a vent, an open-lung biopsy and miraculous recovery from a very rare lung disease, mom decided to spend the day in bed. ALL day, in bed. She neither ate, nor drank. She took no meds. By the time I got the emergency call at dinner that she needed help, she was nearly incoherent and should have called 911 instead of me. Thirty minutes later, after flying to her house via the freeway, I did the honors myself. There was no chance she could even walk to the car.

I spent the wee hours of Sunday freezing in a folding chair in the hospital ER as I waited for them to make a decision about her condition. That in itself is a whole other kettle of fish, and the experience stunk about as badly. The chest x-ray revealed a relapse of her lung condition, so she was sentenced to captivity on the third floor and I was free to go home to bed.

Thus continues Monday, except that eventually it becomes officially Monday. More tests. The CAT scan report reads in part "surgical implements remain within the chest cavity, possible sponge, surgical clip or clump of staples." Our general response: "You have GOT to be kidding!"

Mom never does anything expected. She has the most bizarre things happen to her. She had a stroke in her eye once. Nowhere else, just her eye. She has a lung disease so strange it took two hospitals two weeks to diagnose it. And now, out of the 28.4 million surgeries performed annually in the US, mom is one of the mere 1500 who get something left in her.

As Monday becomes Tuesday, the situation is a bit more clear. Apparently the "surgical implement" is a clip which is meant to be there to hold her lung tissue together. Still, in the continuing saga of this sickness, it would have been nice to know this prior to its appearance as an artifact on an x-ray.

Lest all this drama be unnecessarily wasted, I've begun wondering what artifacts may be revealed if I were to take a spiritual CAT scan. I think fear and general grumpiness would probably show up as blinding-white infiltrate. Perhaps I'd better call the Great Physician and get them excised immediately. Maybe He will install some kind of clip in me as well--I could really use the help holding it all together right now.