An exciting weekend at the hospital

Never a dull moment around Casa Poolman. Mrs. P and I have been spending most of the past two days at a local hospital. Our daughter, Writer Princess, had been feeling bad for the past week, and had seen her primary care doc twice. She was feeling much worse on Thursday evening. So we (Son-in-law included, of course) trekked to the emergency room. It turns out she had an infection and needed to be admitted for two days of IV antibiotic therapy. By the time the docs figured that out, we had spent the entire night in the ER waiting room. If you have not had the pleasure of such an experience, this is one you can take off your bucket list.

 It appears that healthy-living is not high on the priority list for most of the majority of ER patients. Most had figures similar to my cat, Sid, a Manx. When we first got Sid, I remember reading that you could draw a Manx cat by just using a series of circles.  The same could be said of the people we spent Thursday night with.

 I think it is true what they say, that hospitals are the worst place to go when you are sick. A woman came in and sat near me. Every couple of minutes she tried to cough up a lung, and then hung her head between her legs and moaned, “Oh Lawdy, oh Lawdy.”  If I saw her on the street, I would take her to the hospital. But we were already there. What to do? Actually, what I did was to move across the room to avoid her droplets.

The big party in WP’s room.

 I didn’t realize hospitals were so popular. I know that insurance companies want the hospitals to move the patients through and get them out the door as quickly as possible. So I was very surprised that WP had to wait several hours in the ER before being transferred to a room…because there was not am empty bed in the house. Really? What am I missing? This does not look like it’s the hot spot in town.

 So it’s Saturday afternoon and WP is a little past the half-way point of her 48 hours of IV therapy. We are working shifts with Son-In-Law to keep someone at the hospital all the time. We’re still looking around for the party that is keeping this place filled. Haven’t found it yet.

A well groomed cat

Our large (16 pounds) silver Manx cat, Sid, hasn’t been taking very good care of himself lately. He has slacked off on his grooming, and the result is the long fur on his back became just an impossible tangle of matted fur.  This isn’t the first time we have had to intervene with Sid’s grooming issues.

Mrs. Poolman finally found a groomer who could handle Sid’s problem and left it to me to get him there and pick him up.

Sid the Tailless with his new look.

Sid is not a big fan of being messed with, being placed into a carrier. He is a master of the spread-eagle “I’m not going!” move. Our technique is to turn the carrier up on its end; hold his front and back legs together; and allow Sid’s significant weight help lower him into the carrier. The funny thing is, once you get him confined to his carrier and into the car, he becomes resigned to his fate and is fairly well behaved.

Sid’s “sister” Penny

I dropped him off at the groomer across town yesterday morning and picked him up after work. The groomer said he behaved himself.
The funny thing happened after we got home. His “sister”, Penny, acted like he was a stranger. She hissed and growled at him. I don’t know whether she didn’t recognize him (He didn’t look that much different.) or was commenting on the new haircut, but it took most of the evening before Penny stopped acting strange.

The dogs, on the other hand, didn’t notice the new “do” and didn’t care.  No surprise there.