Miscellania

Things flitting through my mind.  My oldest son is ill.  He has been ill for some time.   He has had trouble eating, has alternated between savage diahrea and constipation for days, and lately his abdomen has swollen to almost double its size (which is a pretty good size to begin with.)   I talked him into going to our family practitioner who examined him for a few minutes, took some blood, and gave him some lasix and told him to come back in a month.

I described this and his symptoms to a friend who is a semi retired physician, and he suggested that I try to get my son to go to a clinic where he works and get the son reevaluated.  At the clinic, he and the other Dr. there were very concerned and wanted him to be admitted to the hospital instantly.  He hemmed and hawed and said he'd check back in a day or two.  (He really was concerned that he doesn't have insurance and, at almost fifty, he doesn't want his parents-who have some of their own health problems- to have to support his hospitalization).  My friend, the doctor whispered in my ear that he may not have more that two of three weeks if he doesn't get treatment now.

We finally conned him into the hospital today, visited for a while and drove home through a hellatious  rainstorm, then after we got home I cancelled his car insurance for him (his car had celebrated the situation by throwing a rod, or some other part all around inside the engine, and it is old enough that repair was laughable) and went to see about another "minor" problem.  We had acquired  a new swimming pool (actually old, but new to us) with our new home.  The pump failed a few weeks ago so today I finally took the pump to the local pool company, who tut=tutted and suspected that the only hope was replacement.

I failed to mention that  without its pump the pool has turned into a green mess, with leaves, algae, and small critters taking up residence.  When we got home, after all the rain, the water in the pool had raised by almost six inches, but, along with the water we had acquired almost every frog within miles.  They were lined up on the pool steps and all around the edges of the pool to the degree that it looked like we had a frog farm .  We used the leaf net and scooped up at least a bushel of the darn things, which we took to the fence an tossed them over (We have a protected wetland right behind our yard, so except for inconvenience and interrupted mating rituals they suffered no damage.  I suspect that they will leave the creek behind the house and be back in the pool by morning.

It has been one of those days.