Friday, May 13, 2005
"It's about time for my period,"
Mom said when I noticed, this morning, that her urine was so cloudy it looked as though someone had sifted flour into it and commented, "I think I'll get that Levaquin prescription filled today and try to catch what is obviously a UTI before you bleed from the urinary tract."
This isn't the first time we've experienced the, "It's about time for my period," phasing. Each time I notice blood in her urine she mentions this, or says, "I imagine it's my period. I haven't had one in awhile, you know."
I always say, "Well, Mom, it can't be your period because you stopped having those before we left Guam."
She always looks at me with genuine shock and says, "But, I just had one last month."
Today, I said, "Well, Mom, nobody in this house should be having their period anymore, including me and The Little Girl. So, if one of us is having our period we'd better look for a star in the east."
Anyway, for my own edification I've been wondering, over the last few days (as I believe I mentioned over at Tests & Meds), if she's been developing a UTI again. Yesterday and two days previous not only has her urine been a bit bubbly, which is usually a precursor to cloudiness for her and I thought it looked slightly cloudy yesterday, but it's had a distinctly medicinal odor, so much so that I mentioned it to her yesterday. This morning the smell had changed to strongly fishy. I noticed something else this morning, which I've occasionally noticed before and I believe happens regularly when she begins to expel pus and/or blood from a UTI: The urine stain on her sheets, which usually doesn't have anything more than a watered edge that disappears with evaporation, had a brownish edge where it had begun to dry.
Now I know why her energy level has been rickety. Yesterday as I was shopping at Costco, a friend of mine into whom I bumped asked how my mother was. I mimed "going down" by waving my arms along my sides and moving them as though they were swimming downward while I bent my knees and dipped my body toward the floor. This was after she'd awakened full of perk at 0900 and I'd asked her to go back to sleep because I hadn't had any work-up time before her awakening and I needed it.
I also noticed by accident when we were bathing her yesterday that she felt as though she had a slight fever. I chalked that up to the warm water.
She's been napping since about 1445 this afternoon. She's still sleeping deeply. We'll start the antibiotics when she awakens. I'll be administering them to her at lunch at a dose of 500 mg/once a day for 7 days: two 250 mg tablets.
Needless to say, we didn't go in for her blood draw today. I rethought my logic about taking her in if her urine was cloudy. The best strategy is to start the antibiotics. At any rate, getting her to the lab today would have been akin to pulling on a donkey determined to remain seated. She should be feeling significantly better by Monday, although the UTI may still show in her urine.
So, our stovetop is working better than ever. ll I need to do now is locate some oven elements and a thermostat, change those out and we'll be good to go.
Later.
This isn't the first time we've experienced the, "It's about time for my period," phasing. Each time I notice blood in her urine she mentions this, or says, "I imagine it's my period. I haven't had one in awhile, you know."
I always say, "Well, Mom, it can't be your period because you stopped having those before we left Guam."
She always looks at me with genuine shock and says, "But, I just had one last month."
Today, I said, "Well, Mom, nobody in this house should be having their period anymore, including me and The Little Girl. So, if one of us is having our period we'd better look for a star in the east."
Anyway, for my own edification I've been wondering, over the last few days (as I believe I mentioned over at Tests & Meds), if she's been developing a UTI again. Yesterday and two days previous not only has her urine been a bit bubbly, which is usually a precursor to cloudiness for her and I thought it looked slightly cloudy yesterday, but it's had a distinctly medicinal odor, so much so that I mentioned it to her yesterday. This morning the smell had changed to strongly fishy. I noticed something else this morning, which I've occasionally noticed before and I believe happens regularly when she begins to expel pus and/or blood from a UTI: The urine stain on her sheets, which usually doesn't have anything more than a watered edge that disappears with evaporation, had a brownish edge where it had begun to dry.
Now I know why her energy level has been rickety. Yesterday as I was shopping at Costco, a friend of mine into whom I bumped asked how my mother was. I mimed "going down" by waving my arms along my sides and moving them as though they were swimming downward while I bent my knees and dipped my body toward the floor. This was after she'd awakened full of perk at 0900 and I'd asked her to go back to sleep because I hadn't had any work-up time before her awakening and I needed it.
I also noticed by accident when we were bathing her yesterday that she felt as though she had a slight fever. I chalked that up to the warm water.
She's been napping since about 1445 this afternoon. She's still sleeping deeply. We'll start the antibiotics when she awakens. I'll be administering them to her at lunch at a dose of 500 mg/once a day for 7 days: two 250 mg tablets.
Needless to say, we didn't go in for her blood draw today. I rethought my logic about taking her in if her urine was cloudy. The best strategy is to start the antibiotics. At any rate, getting her to the lab today would have been akin to pulling on a donkey determined to remain seated. She should be feeling significantly better by Monday, although the UTI may still show in her urine.
So, our stovetop is working better than ever. ll I need to do now is locate some oven elements and a thermostat, change those out and we'll be good to go.
Later.
