The Day the World Came Crashing Down, and Was Forestalled

So I was getting my work done in the office, just humming along, when I got a text from my brother, who has been Mom's primary care advocate for at least the past decade. She was pretty unresponsive and incoherent this morning, just moaning in her bed, and hasn't eaten in a few days as she couldn't keep down what little food she had tried. Off they went to the ER at Morristown Medical. My sis-in-law said this might be "the final decline." Nobody knew what was wrong. Lots of tests were run, most seemed fine, but her BP kept dropping and I kept panicking. A 94-year-old woman in the ER is never a good thing. I couldn't concentrate, left work early, and told colleagues I'd be taking tomorrow off to visit her for what could quite possibly be the last time. A little while ago my brother's latest text had some potentially very good news. A cause was found; a kidney stone which had majorly infected the bladder. Everything was drained and a stent was inserted to keep the stone at bay until the doc can do an outpatient lithotripsy (that's what I had a decade ago when my kidney stones developed into a similar infection, which someone in their 50s can tolerate a bit better than someone in their 90s). Now that the cause of her alarming symptoms was found and treated, she's still in the ICU, the numbers are starting to trend in a good direction, and she was coherent enough for me to tell her I loved her and hear a response. We almost lost her this time last year as well, so I'm very grateful we appear to have dodged another bullet here.