I am on my next antibiotic for my “complicated UTI” and have 10 days of three daily pills that are supposed to be taken an hour before or 2-3 hours after eating. Gee . . . It’s SO complicated. That was not sarcastic; it was sort of a sighing, frustrated remark. I suppose this sounds gross, but I almost wish they would tell me to come in and lie down and have a little tranqy medicine and be flushed out and air-dried. Hey, I tried to tell you it was gross. Eh, it ain’t that bad.
Anyway, that is how my day is starting. I was awakened by some cramping in my bladder. When I was first diagnosed with this UTI, it was because I had taken a home test to be a baseline for my daughter-in-law. I was surprised to see the telltale purple. The doctor asked me what symptoms I had been having and I said I didn’t think any, really. Later, I would come to realize I had been too eager to accept “growing older pains and aches” stoically. Now, that the former uncomfortable sensations are officially infection symptoms, they seem worse. It is human nature.
Well, I had intended to comment on my day starting and then go on to other things, but just turned around and did more urinary talk. Obviously, I am a little too tuned in to it. So I am trying again:
I don’t know what I am going to do today. That probably means there was no need for the elaborate work-up to this paragraph. My writing is like my talking: I seldom let lack of content stop me. Now my great Aunt Sara was different; Mother always said Aunt Sara kept quiet until she had something worth saying. She was smart, Aunt Sara. Quirky, though, and the subject of many stories – such as the one in which she rode to town in an old turn of the century Buick with her head out the window because her hat would not fit inside.
Her first husband was Sherman, a smart gentleman who travelled all over the United States, selling Encyclopedia Britannica to schools. He was older than Sara had been in some war and developed a bad heart and the family in Indiana never really knew much about his death, but Aunt Sara went to work for the Veteran’s Administration in Washington D.C.. We have a picture of her with her office staff, but that’s all we know.
We also don’t know where L.D. came from; he was her second husband and we don’t think his name was L.D., put that’s what Aunt Sara called him so we went along with it. Oh course, I was less than one when I meant her; she arrived in a delivery truck, sitting on an upturned crate while L.D. drove and my father later said it was packed like a cube. Mother said that was when Grandma might have had a heart spell. Not really, but it was shocking. As L.D. reportedly told my father, “She thought I had money and I thought she had money.” Obviously, although quite intelligent, Aunt Sara could have used a little more intelligence information.
Aunt Sara was maybe four years older than Grandma – and I know somewhere I’ve written this before but I’m doing it again – and was Grandma’s father’s youngest sister. My great-grandparents basically had two families: three boys and then a long interval and three girls. And, as long as I’m being informational, Aunt Sara originally had an “h” at the end of her name, but somewhere along the line, she dropped it – maybe it got heart trouble. We don’t know.
She dyed her hair red but she was a good worker, according to Mother. She and L.D. came to visit up until I was about five and then I don’t know what happened, although she apparently started travelling around the world . . . alone. She sent me a copy of A Christmas Carol she had purchased in London.
Then, by the end of her life, she had settled in New Orleans and finally, the family went and got her and she came back and then died. Oddly enough, I just realized I have no idea where she is buried. Now there’s a project for a little research.
I don’t know if these past spontaneous paragraphs about Aunt Sara were spit out by my mind in spasm or not, but I did read that in older people UTI’s can cause mental confusion. Just as long as I don’t put my glasses in the microwave . . .