Diagnosis

So yesterday evening I got home late, put out fresh food for Fluffy, the cat, and then opened the refrigerator to look for fresh food for me.

Inside the refrigerator everything looked different.

I thought, What the hell?

Half the refrigerator look dark, in shadows, the other half looked bright.

I thought, What the heck, did I have a heart attack and did the part of my brain that does visual processing get mangled and now half my visual field is normal and the other half is dark?

Then I looked more closely at the inside of the refrigerator. I saw that there were two little 40-watt bulbs and the little 40-watt bulb on the right hand side was burned out.

I thought, Oh . . .

I wasn’t convinced, of course, that my brain was functioning properly, but I was relieved. I know how to change a light bulb.


*


At the hospital doctors discovered that my mother has pneumonia. Her right lung is badly infected. And they suspect but aren’t sure that she suffered a heart attack.

So now my Mom must stay in the hospital long enough to start her lung on the road to recovery from pneumonia. And they want to study her heart to make sure there is no lasting damage. Then they’re going to recommend she spend a week or two at a hospice where she can get physical therapy to regain her lost strength.

For a seventy-nine year old woman this is not good news. But my Mom’s symptoms were so extreme that she had been expecting news that was much worse. Compared to what my Mom had been afraid of—terrified of—this is actually a reasonably up-beat diagnosis.