Update on Earl's Mother

Thanksgiving 2007

I finally decided we had let Opal put off long enough going to the doctor. Good thing we took her. She has a very bad bladder or urinary infection. I had noticed her urine was very dark first few days she was sick. I had asked her if she had any burning or stinging, but she said no. I still started getting her to drink more water. Kept a mug of ice water by her all the time. Her urine had lightened up a LOT the last couple of days, but she continued to have the low grade fever and seemed to be getting weaker.

I came home at lunch today to try to get her to eat something. Decided to help her with her shower. She took a very short one and then needed help drying off. I could see right then, she was even weaker than I knew. So, I had Earl call her doctor. He wasn't available, but an intern was available, I told Earl we would go see anyone.

The intern, Doug, drew blood and ordered a chest x-ray. X-ray was clear. Her heart rate was 120. (She has been breathing very hard for last few days.) White count should have been 10,000. It was 30,000! Infection somewhere!! Urine test showed signs of blood and lot of infection. He said elderly can have these bladder infections and never have anything other than fever and feeling bad.

Antibiotic prescribed. We were sent down to outpatient lab for them to draw LOTS of blood from both arms to do a blood culture. Doug said bad infections like this in the elderly can get into the blood stream. They will grow a culture to make sure she doesn't have this infection spread all over.

She was told to drink a lot of fluids. Anything goes, except caffeine. Doug also mentioned dehydration. Opal never drinks much water. Mainly just tea with her meals and coffee in the morning. Nothing else was ever mentioned about her heart rate being high. If that doesn't get better as the antibiotic kicks in, I will check on that again. We have to take her back for check up on Monday.

Liana says dehydration can cause fever, dizziness, weakness. All of which Opal had. She fell three times between Fri afternoon and Sun. night. So, her symptoms could have been caused by either/both dehydration and bladder infection.

Doug said Opal would have continued to get worse, so hope we got her to doctor in time.