Why I've Been a No-Show on My Own Bluegrass Blog


Sorry to have disappeared for a week, guys, but it's been a week that, for all the wrong reasons, I will probably never forget - and, hopefully, never have to relive.  

It all started last Thursday when I was driving my grandson home from his last orientation day at the new high school he is attending. My father, who is 95, was on the phone saying that he was deathly ill and needed to see a doctor right away.  That turned into a mad rush to get my grandson home so that I could double-back to his assisted living facility to carry him to a doctor.  We first tried an emergency facility across the street from his apartment, but were told that we needed to get him to a hospital right away because of his advanced age.

So it was back in the car, a rush to the nearest hospital ER, and a nine-hour wait in the lobby (during which they did come to get him for chest x-rays at one point).  Almost exactly twelve hours after we arrived at the ER, he was finally admitted to the hospital (near 1:00 a.m.) and placed on antibiotics and given breathing treatments.  As soon as I first saw him on Thursday afternoon, it was obvious to me that he was having great difficulty breathing through the terrible cough and fever that he was running, but half a day had been wasted by the time treatments began.

We made it through the night without any apparent change, and by nine on Friday morning he had been diagnosed with pneumonia in both lungs.  His slow recovery was finally beginning - but I started feeling terrible myself by late Saturday and on Sunday afternoon my cough had gotten so painful that I had to seek help in an emergency room myself.  Needless to say, I was not going to go downstairs and sit for 12 hours waiting to be seen, so I drove to a different hospital where I was actually seen within 30 minutes of my arrival.

And the diagnosis was a shock...Type A flu...flu that I obviously caught from my father.  So I haven't been to his hospital room since Sunday afternoon, instead sending my wife up there to check on my dad until my brother could come in from Austin to help us all out.  We requested a flu test on my father on Monday morning - and although the doctors scoffed at the possibility, we insisted and guess what?  He had the flu.  

Well, it's amazing what can happen when you treat the proper problem, and Dad went home late afternoon on Tuesday.  My brother is still with him, but from the sound of it, he is doing very well at this point.  As for me, I'm beginning what must be my fourth or fifth day with the flu and I'm finally beginning to feel a bit better.  

So that's why I've been a no-show on the blog for almost a week now.  But I'll be back soon with bluegrass videos and the like, so don't give up on the new blog.  Thanks for your patience.

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