More in My Life as a Caregiver - Fun at the ER

So Saturday was spent at the ER.

At least it wasn’t too crowded.

My mother has had a nasal infection that turned into cellulitis, and that — plus a nasty infected cat scratch — had her on two different antibiotics. She wound up suffering from confusion, possibly because of the antibiotics, but my siblings and I were concerned that either the infection was worse than it seemed, or something else was wrong.

I could have taken her to the UT urgent care clinic, but we decided she should visit an Emergency Room in case she needed more tests. I took her to the Tennova West ER even though it was a bit of a schlep just because it’s usually more pleasant (read: less unpleasant) and usually less crowded. As you can see above, it wasn’t too bad.

The way things turned out, the urgent care clinic probably would have been fine. She had the usual battery of blood tests, a urine test (looking for a UTI, which often produce no symptoms other than confusion in older people), a head CT (looking for stroke) and the usual doctor exam/interview. I think the urgent care clinic could have done all of those, even the head CT. But there was some concern she was having mini-strokes, and a hospital seemed better for those.