I know this is not the usual post you see on this website, but it’s not been a usual couple of days. To explain, I have to do something I rarely do: Get personal.

My mom woke up early in the morning on Wednesday with abdominal pain, and it was bad enough that she had me cancel a planned visit from her grandson. She went back to bed and struggled to get back to sleep, and thus began a few hours of back-and-forth about going to the hospital. Like a lot of people over 75, my mother dreads the idea of going to the hospital, so I knew her pain was bad when she relented.

At the hospital, they ran a gamut of tests and found the cause, which I won’t get into the details of, but the news was concerning as it required a trip up to the ICU. Some time around 9 pm, she was taken up and settled in a room, and once that was done, me and my sister Alex went home. Early the next morning, some off-hand words from her doctor came back to haunt, “This might get worse before it gets better.”

It did.

Again, I don’t want to get into the details, but it involved another all-day wait-and-see at the hospital. As I’m writing this, I just got home and she seems stable for the moment, which is to say that her condition isn’t getting worse, but it’s not yet getting better either. That’s tomorrow’s (today’s) wait-and-see game.

Why am I telling you? Since Guelph Politico is a one-man operation, I can’t be at my mother’s bedside and do all the things I need to do including the production of a podcast, covering meetings, typing articles, and writing three or four newsletters a week. Until we have a better handle on my mom’s medical condition that’s where my focus has got to be. In other words, this feed may be quiet for a while.

I think that’s almost all I want to say right now, but I will add a couple of notes…

First, I’d like to publicly thank the Guelph Wellington Paramedics Services crew that took my mom to the hospital. They worked quickly and assuredly while being courteous and efficient. I’d like to say it was a pleasure to have them stop by, but they were there on business as it were.

Also, I want to thank the lovely and dedicated staff of Guelph General Hospital. It was kind of ironic that while I was trying to convince my mom that her pain required a hospital visit, the news was talking about the CUPE report documenting the tremendous pressures on Ontario’s hospital workers, and I did see first-hand what that strain looks like in the General’s ER. But all the staff there were very impressive just the same as they persevered with more and more people coming through their front door. All I saw today was my mom getting excellent care.

That’s all I really want to say on any of this right now, I just didn’t want to go radio silent without giving cause. This whole enterprise is predicated on the delivery of information at set times on a regular basis so I don’t like there being surprises, but what is that old saying, “Man plans and God laughs”…

Anyway, thanks for reading and I’ll talk to you again soon.

AAD