The Silence is Deafening.

It's 6:30 p.m. on a Tuesday evening and I find myself not at the Science inservice I was scheduled to go to, but at the hospital with Jdhteach. He has not been feeling well for a little more than a week, and has experienced chills followed by a low grade fever. This usually occurs in the middle of the night and he'll shake so hard the bed shakes. The final straw (for me) came at about 3:30 on Sunday morning when after taking the Motrin, that usually fixed the problem, he continued to have the chills for an hour after. I caved in and called the doctor's answering service, which irritated Jdhteach to no end. After the phone conversation, it was prescribed that he should take some Tylenol. After taking the medicine, the shakes stopped. Of course now the doctor knew there was a problem and Jdhteach's fear was that they would put him in the hospital for a few days and release him with a $1,000 bill and no answer as to what was causing the ailment (this happened in October). There were other concerns as well: a) not wanting anything to be wrong, b) being away from the kids. The doctor called on Sunday and said that they would call on Monday to schedule an appointment that week for him to come into the clinic and have some tests done.

So, Monday found him at work punching the tar out of himself while the doctor on the other end of the phone asked him to perform certain tasks to help her eliminate possible causes. Listening to his version of the conversation it sounded like the biggest smart ass (Jdhteach) vs the doctor who asked very vague questions. I laughed my ass off listening to the conversation. Basically they were asking if he had trouble going to the bathroom, alluding to a bladder infection, urinary tract infection, or kidney infection. Jdhteach emphatically denied any of those symptoms - which he honestly didn't have. However, things rapidly deteriorated throughout the night.

By morning, he was having dull back pain and quite visible signs of some type of urinary tract infection. During class, my phone rang and it was Jdhteach wanting me to talk to him so he could continue to drive through the pain to get home. I called the doctor's office to see if he could get in earlier and they told him to come on in. At 1:30, my phone rang again with Jdhteach asking me if I could get down to the doctor's office in two hours to pick him up and take him to the hospital. So now I had to get my inservice dropped, coverage for the kids, and clothes for Jdhteach.

Needless to say, he's bummed. But he was told that usually when they start antibiotics through an IV (which was the reasoning for being in the hospital - he's got several antibiotics going right now) it take 24 hours to feel better. I'm just glad it's being taken care of. Now all I have to do is try to explain away why daddy is not at home tonight. Jack and Caroline do not need to know right now. Jack will begin to worry and Caroline will panic.

What amazes me is the quickness and seemingly innocent way it started. Other than the occasional chill and low grade fever, there were no other symptoms. He suffered some back pain, but he had just moved a ton of booklets to schools in his district. I remember when my grandmother passed away. She'd been wheelchair bound due to a stroke for a little bit, when she developed a bladder infection which is what eventually killed her. I always assumed that Granny had wanted to go. You know, that wasn't the way she wanted to live and Grandpa had been gone for a little bit and she wanted to see him again. But now, I honestly think that maybe to some extent she wasn't aware of it. After seeing how this went from seemingly nothing to HOLY SHIT, maybe Granny didn't know (maybe she did - who knows).