I guess I didn’t make it clear that my mom’s doing fine. The doc prescribed antibiotics during our 3-minute visit and off we went. My mom’s feeling better and I survived my volunteer stint at the marathon.

The number of walkers appeared to be up while the number of runners seemed down. I guess the Chicago marathon was on the same day. Chicago is a lot faster marathon, so I bet more runners who could pick and choose decided to go there this year and log a faster time.

I went shopping with my sister and all I can remember is that I also took a nap. More sleep would probably be good.

And I’m not even running the thing. Every year (for about five or six years) I’ve volunteered to do radio communications, and I’ve been at Milepost 12. Well, this year I’m doing the same thing and I was just about to go to bed early when my mom showed me her swollen arm that was reacting to the pneumovax shot she got when she got a ‘flu shot. I called the advice nurse and she told me that:

1. anyone over 60 years old with a temperature over 101 should go to the emergency room (and she had a fever of 100.7 earlier in the day), and
2. any reaction greater than 2″ in diameter means a trip to the emergency room (and the swelling was about 3″ in diameter).

Well, volunteering in an ER for three years told me that a trip to the Emergency Room meant, “Hurry up and wait.” I told my mom to grab a book and the timeline was:

 

10:27 arrive at the ER and check in

10:50 go through triage

00:00 get a room back in the ER proper

00:20 get a visit from admitting (paperwork for payment)

01:00-01:03 talk to the doctor

01:45 finally get to bed

06:00 get up for the marathon volunteer thing

Wish me luck (and all I’m doing is standing in one spot for 5 1/2 hours.)