Something in the water

It all started on a recent Thursday evening. I was startled to find something when going to the bathroom that you don’t want to find. It was blood where blood shouldn’t be. Not wanting to alarm my son, I just decided to go and see medical help in the morning.

When I told my son Doug we were going to the doctors, I said that I wasn’t going to eat anything in case they wanted to do some testing. He agreed. My physician doesn’t work on Fridays, but a nurse practitioner was there who did a few tests. Since they didn’t have the facilities to do enough tests, she sent me to the emergency room at the hospital.

More tests were done, and they got me hooked up to put some moisture in my system. The doctor said I was severely dehydrated. When he came back and told me that I had a bladder infection and needed to take some antibiotics. I was really relieved it wasn’t anything more serious. This happened to my grandmother back in the 1930s. Her symptoms were similar to mine. However, they discovered she had inoperable stomach cancer.

Not having eaten earlier that morning, at about 11 a.m. I was famished and wanted some breakfast. Off to Walmart to get my prescription filled. When Doug and I got to the parking lot as a man was coming out driving one of those carts we old people use going around inside the store. Another man followed him and of course we assumed they were together. Big mistake!

As I walked over the older man in the cart began putting things into his car. I said I would be glad to take the cart back into the store. The other man, whom we thought was with him, came totally unglued. He began screaming that he needed the cart for his wife. He then ran off into the store, his arms flipping around as he mouthed obscenities.

Both Doug and I tried to explain that we thought he was with the man with the groceries to no avail. That idiot just went back into the store where we found him sitting beside his wife. I simply went and turned in my prescription and Doug took the cart to this man, now sitting down man with his not so thin wife. No wonder she needed one of those driving carts.

For heavens sake, why should a 91 year-old lady have precedent over her? Doug went to get birdseed and I decided that I’d go to McDonald’s, in this store, to get breakfast. When I told the attendant I wanted a breakfast, she informed me that after 11 a.m. breakfast wasn’t served. McDonald’s advertises on television that they now serve breakfast all day long and I get the one in the entire world that doesn’t.

This day was beginning to have a theme. A short time later Doug has his birdseed and I my medicine. We decided to get breakfast at the other McDonald’s in town. Now it gets more interesting, this theme of ours. A boxy white car pulls out from one of those side streets directly in front of our car. Thank goodness Doug’s an excellent driver.

Doug had to jam on the brakes while suddenly changing into the left lane to keep from hitting this white car. Then he did something he never does. He honked his horn as he drove around and in front of the driver in the white car. The idiot it the white car kept honking his horn as the “genteel” lady beside him gave us “the number one sign.”

Imagine what a helicopter ride to the hospital in Reno would be like had the driver of our car been someone inattentive, on drugs, just not looking ahead, or using a cell phone texting someone? So now we finally had our breakfast, our shopping done and we’re heading home. All I want to do is get a nap; I hadn’t slept too well the night before. Ahead of us is one of those eighteen-wheelers with a triple load and in the left lane an old granny driving about only 50 miles an hour. Those two stayed side by side all the way to one block before we got to where we turn of for home. After our car’s in the garage, the puppies fed something, Doug looked and me and said – “do you think, maybe, it’s something in the water?”

Edna Van Leuven is a Churchill County writer and columnist. She may be reached at news@lahontanvalleynews.com