I'll make a long story short because, essentially, nothing happened. It took a long time not to happen, though. Dad is still hiccuping, day and night, after more than a week. Even this would be OK except that after a while he struggles and struggles to breathe and it's very scary to all concerned. He called his doctor this morning but the practice is only open until noon today and they couldn't give him an appointment and recommended he go to the ER. So we did.
Friday morning is a quiet time in the ER so we got a lot of attention, maybe too much. He had bloodwork done, a CT/CAT scan was most frustrating, because Dad was reasonably sure it wouldn't show anything, but we had to wait an hour and a half for it and about that long again for the results which proved to be (wait for it) negative.
OK, I promised a long story short. They found that he had a bad bladder infection, and started him on antibiotics. They gave him Valium for the hiccups, but this didn't help either. The doctor swore up and down that however scary the breathing problems might seem, Dad is always getting oxygen and he won't die from them. So we wasted 6-odd hours of our lives on a gloriously beautiful day that we couldn't see at all and got a treatment for what we weren't looking for help for, and none at all for what we were looking for help for. However, it was important to knock out the bladder infection, so I'm glad we made a good start on that. And it was good to hear that we don't have to be scared of the scary-sounding whooping breathing sounds.
Having missed lunch, I used it as an excuse to go out for Thai food for supper. So there's that, too.
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