I can't tell for sure which way I'm goin' but I know I'm goin' one way or the other.

I think this pedestrian sign on the Hawthorne Bridge says it all: You can walk here, either way you want to go. Of course, you have to look out for other pedestrians and sometimes folks on bicycles, too, because you're sharing the wonderfully wide sidewalks on what is essentially my favorite bridge to walk across.

Here's how I think the sidewalk sign relates to my life since last Wednesday. I do feel much better, but I still have had to take a nap after supper every night, just so I could watch some TV before taking Duncan out for his last walk of the evening. On the weekend, I thought I'd get some blogs for this week ready to post, but I discovered that I was more worn out than I realized, so I rested most of Saturday.

On Sunday I ended up going with my younger son Leland to first an urgent care place, then hours later to the hospital ER a few blocks from where Mama and I live. He's had headaches, muscle aches, fever, chills, and a intermittent cough since last Monday. On Sunday his knees and ankles became swollen. At the urgent care mono and strep throat were eliminated as the problem. The urgent care turned out to be a bad decision, though, because they had no lab to test his blood more thoroughly and advised him to go to a lab today if he still had fever. Well, by 4:30 p.m. Sunday it was back at almost 102 degrees, so we decided to head for the ER. That doctor checked his blood and urine and found no bacteria. He ordered a West Nile Virus test because Leland did get some mosquito bites when the four of them were up in the woods at Zigzag Mountain and nearby it. Although that test is not perfect yet, the doctor told us, it was prudent to test for it because his symptoms fit somewhat the symptoms and time-line of West Nile--the results should be back later this week. He told Leland it appears that he has some sort of viral thing going on, that we may never know what it is, to take Advil regularly and gave him some Vicodin for the pain in his head and muscles, to get his blood checked again later on this week, and to come back to the ER if he got worse in anyway. He gave Leland a note to show his professors at school which had just started last week--he missed one day, forcing himself to go no matter how bad he felt. Now he's listening to the doctor and has promised to stay home tomorrow, too. No fever since before he went to bed last night, so maybe, just maybe he's turning the corner.

Then, as we continue to go round and round the pedestrian sign, Lamont, my older son, took Mama to her regularly scheduled doctor appointment this morning. She'd been a bit wobbly over the weekend and said that she couldn't have walked another step than the had to to get to the car--she had told Lamont she'd meet him at the sidewalk after putting Duncan in his kennel. Lamont got a wheelchair for her at the doctor's office and she seemed to perk up, but after they took some blood to check and she gave a urine sample and was still in the wheelchair, talking with her doctor, Lamont said her world came crashing down on her, she just about fainted twice. Her blood pressure and heart rate had dropped way down, so the doctor called over to the hospital and they sent someone to wheel her over to the ER. Lamont called and told me all of this, and I thought, "Yep. I'll just bet she's got a urinary tract infection." In the past, when she's had this sort of infection, she's been wobbly, confused, faint, low blood pressure, not necessarily having the regular symptoms of a UTI. Another thing that happens to her when she's punctured, as in for blood work, she can get faint, her blood pressure can drop--it's that vaso vagal reflex thing that plaques her now and then. So, when the ER doctor told us that she had a bladder infection and would be on an antibiotic for a week, and that her blood pressure and heart rate had been rock solid since right after she arrived in the ER, I wasn't surprised. By then I had made my way to the ER--Leland had the Buick at his place, so he insisted in driving it the few blocks to my work place--I dropped him off at home, thanking him profusely because that saved me a good deal of time. Also, I was able to bring her home myself which helped Lamont who always calls in an order to their purveyor on Monday afternoons, from the restaurant's office.

Now Mama's home, having had two doses of her antibiotic. She's trying to work on a crossword puzzle while we watch Wheel of Fortune and wait for Dancing With the Stars. I haven't had a nap because I had to get some groceries, bring them in from a splendidly close parking space (hooray!), put them away, walk Duncan, clean his kennel (Mama stubbornly put him into the sink and bathed him while I was at the drug store getting her prescription filled), warmed up and ate some leftovers, helped her fix some oatmeal which was all she wanted, and washed dishes before sitting down to type this long, long post. I know, I'll nap while Cloris Leachman dances--good grief!

Sorry for rambling, but isn't that what one does when one isn't sure which way one's going?