AUSTIN, Texas, Mar. 30, 2005 — Started the day feeling great. Did a bit around the house, had a brief workout. Weather was nice. Met two friends for lunch at a place called Gelato's. Stuffed my face with a big panini sandwich, potatoes, a soda and a gelato. Turns out that stuffing my face was a good thing.

I went to Dad's after that. Get in the garbage can, check on him.

He is very, very constipated and it's worrying him. His back doesn't feel so bad but he's driven himself to the store, gotten laxatives and Fleet

enemas and they haven't helped. (Later he will say that he was having trouble urinating but he didn't tell me that then.) The new GP doesn't go in on Wednesday PM so I can only suggest the emergency room. I'm thinking he will get better and I'm really not too worried but he starts gathering stuff up and I realize we are going to the emergency room.

Hospitals will spoil your mood. We wait about half an hour to get to triage. I read some magazines and old papers. Dad sits and does nothing. A baby cries incessantly. We finally get called into an emergency room room. There is a gurney, a hard plastic chair, storage. A curtain can be drawn over most of the room leaving me and my reading material and the hard plastic chair outside while he changes, gets exams, etc. A doctor comes in and talks to us. They order an xray of his belly. He goes to the bathroom once but it's all the way down the hall and he's in this skimpy gown by now so after that he uses the urinal. So his kidneys are working. Overtime in fact. Only his urine looks like cranberry juice. Now, he's had blood in the urine for a while now. The urologist has ordered a bunch of tests and he thought it would clear up.

They take him away and get the xray. And we wait some more. A surgeon comes in. She would operate if he has a bowel obstruction. She doesn't think he does. They decide to admit him. Another doctor comes around to examine him. He thinks there might be an obstruction so we should get a cat scan. Eventually he will start drinking his three bottles of Barium Sulfate for that. All of this takes five hours! It is 8:30 when they put him in a room. He still hasn't had the cat scan. I'm a wreck from sitting on the hard chair. I didn't to leave him all this time and lose track of what was happening.

He says I should go home. We get him situated in the room and I do. It will be 10:30 before he has the cat scan.

I take his van to his house, get my car, get the mail and a book to take to him tomorrow and go home.

I feel tired, frustrated, disoriented. And I'm not the one who started out feeling bad. FFP feeds me and I try to read and watch TV but soon I collapse and go to sleep.