Personalized Coffee Cup

Tim the Tool Man Taylor of Home Improvement visited the Emergency Room so often that he had his own personalized coffee cup.

I'm beginning to think my mother should have one, too.

The good news is, my mother is fine. The bad news is, given my mother's health issues, the medical professionals tend to recommend trips to the ER when she is having a problem. Although this time the on-call doctor referred us to a nearby immediate care facility in hopes that my mother would be seen quicker. We ended up at the ER anyway.

My mother is taking blood thinning medication and carefully monitored as to dosage. She had dental work done last week which went well; however, she woke on Friday bleeding from the site. The dentist's suggested remedy hadn't worked by Saturday morning, and the immediate care facility couldn't provide the treatment believed necessary -- so off we went to the ER.

My mother hates the ER. It generally means we are there for hours. The good part is, her situation usually is not so acute that the entire cast of Gray's Anatomy must descend on her. The bad part is, the visits can last anywhere from three to eight hours!

In this instance, the blood work revealed that my mother was severely anemic. The bleeding gums were not the single cause of the anemia and in fact helped reveal a condition that we weren't aware of. The ER doctor wanted my mother admitted into the hospital to receive a transfusion that he explained would be an overnight procedure.

So my mother spent the weekend at the hospital, and I spent the majority of Saturday and Sunday in a terribly uncomfortable chair in her room. The quality of the hospital staff more than made up for the furniture. After two units of blood my mother's count was declared much improved and she was sent home Sunday afternoon.

Not exactly how we intended to spend the weekend. But you know the old cliche' about making plans.

Anyway, we hope we won't be visiting the ER again any time soon. In which case we won't need our personalized coffee cups.