Van Horn to the ER

Sunday

From Van Horn, we took the 90 to Marfa, then took the scenic route South through the beautiful Big Bend State Park along the Rio Grand and camped in the Cottonwood campground in the Big Bend NP. In the campground we saw havalina and what I guessed to be a red shafted flicker.

Monday

We woke up before 5 am and hit the road by 5:30 am. We planned to drive all day to the Falcon Reservoir. Within an hour of our arriving at the reservoir at 5 pm (a 12 hour drive), Laura began to feel a more severe relapse of the vertigo she had a couple of months ago. It was severe enough to make her very nauseous. With her recent issues we didn’t want to take any chances, so we broke camp and routed to the nearest ER, in the Starr County Memorial Hospital, 21 miles away in Rio Grande City.

The ER was busy with all forms of terrible issues, so we counted our blessing that we were triaged to the bottom of the priority list to talk to the doctor. They pumped Laura full of all forms of anti-nausea and other drugs, but it did little to help. When we did finally got to chat with the ER doctor at 3:30 am Tuesday morning, he explained how the seventh cranial nerve responsible for Laura’s Bell’s palsy, and fifth cranial which is also compromised in Laura’s case, pass right over the inner ear, and that the virus that is attacking her nerves sometimes attacks the inner ear causing vertigo. Since Laura wasn’t in any shape to be dismissed they admitted her to the hospital at around 9 am Tuesday morning. DR managed to get some sleep in the van in the ER parking lot after we finally chatted with th ER Dr.

Tuesday

After pumping her full of liter after liter of IV fluids laced with various drugs, Laura is somewhat better this evening and is currently getting some much needed sleep. We are again waiting to talk to the Dr. which won’t happen until early tomorrow (Wednesday) morning.