ER

It's been a long day.

My mom and I both had rough days at work. I was an hour late picking her up for various reasons, and we stopped for food because the closest thing I'd had to a meal in the last ten and a half hours was a handful of potato chips and two small cookies. We stopped for groceries and were about five minutes from home, when Dad called. I could barely understand him because his speech was so slurred, but what it amounted to is, "I hurt. My left arm is numb. Take me to the hospital."

So I floored it.

Long story short, he's had a problem with a pinched nerve between C-5, -6, and -7. This is causing his arm to go numb and a lot of pain besides.

This is the same man who got 12 stitches on his foot, gave up on crutches after two days, and started walking around in sandals. This is the man who pulls 3 inch splinters out of his own hand, shot himself in the arm with a nail gun and kept going, and brushed off foot surgery after about a week. The only thing that ever takes him down consistantly is his back, and he never says it hurts, just that he needs and tylenol, or the heating pad, or whatever. And here he was practically begging me to take him to the hospital.

So I'm in the waiting room. I'll probably be online for a while, since no one else is waiting for the computer, and I have nothing better to do. I did manage to grab a book on our way out the door, but it's not really doing a great job of distracting me at the moment. My ipod is about dead, and my cell phone isn't far behind, so the computers are my only link to the outside world at the moment.

We are 99% certain it is nothing life threatening, we just have to wait for everyone else to decide that and figure out what to do about it.

It looks like it's going to be a long night. And here I am without my knitting.