Our feline likes to wake me up at 4:00am. I clean his box, feed him and let him outside. Sometimes I go back to bed, sometimes I stay awake. This morning I stayed up and made my cup of chai. At 5:30 I heard Chris go into the bathroom, which is not an unusual time for him. What was odd was that I kept hearing him push the door, push the door, push the door. After about five minutes, I walked into the hallway and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I am trying to shut the door,” he said, although when I looked into his eyes he appeared unresponsive, un-alert. I tried to shut the door, and noticed that the lock was turned. “The lock is on,” I said, “that is why the door won’t close.” He didn’t seem to pay attention.
Instead of going back to bed, he headed into the kitchen to make his chai. That was a shock for me, as he never gets up before seven in the morning. There have been days he has slept until after nine. As his tea was cooking in the microwave, he grabbed his quiche out of the fridge to get that ready to eat. When his tea was done, I put it in the living room, next to his chair. He took a couple bites of the quiche and spent five minutes cleaning the sink. And he started to make another cup of chai! I said, “You already have your first cup of tea.”
He ate a little more quiche, then began working on the door of the garbage bin, trying to get it to “be quiet.” He kept opening and closing it, just like he did with the bathroom door. “It has always made noise, you can’t stop it,” I said.
Finally he finished his quiche and spent another five minutes cleaning the sink. That chore usually takes less than a minute. Everything this early morning was strangely repetitive. At first I wondered if this was just a reaction to his smaller amount of sleep. Next, I considered he may have had a silent stroke in the middle of the night. My last conjecture is sepsis. He has recurring urinary tract infections and they have caused sepsis, which create hallucinations.
Right now he appears back to normal, but he was a bit wacky yesterday morning too. He started walking up the stairs, looking for me at 8:00am. He thought it was 10:00am. Today it felt like he was in another world. Awake, but unconscious. That is what caused my fear.
Monday, May 27 (Memorial Day): This morning Chris slept until 9:00am. He seems completely back to normal. Cheerful. A mystery.
Tuesday, May 28: Yesterday Cullan felt strongly that we should go to HCMC and get some exams. We spent 6 hours at the ER. Chris had a CT scan, an X-ray, plus blood and urinary tract testing. Nothing was detected. No stroke, no infections. We are both still exhausted after that stressful experience. Events at the downtown Level 1 hospital are always wild. I do appreciate sharing space with people from very different cultural backgrounds. And the caregivers are phenomenal: every assistant, doctor and nurse was a woman.
