The call came at 10:30.

The office manager where the wife works. Just wanting to let me know they're taking the wife "to the Emergency Room".

Oooookay.

Dizziness. To the point of nearly passing out. And really pale, except for her left arm, which was red.

Of course, they rolled her out of the office, down the hall, down the elevator, and out to the waiting SUV in the street using her office chair.

As the wife explained later, rolling around in a swivel chair is probably not the best thing to do when you're starting to feel nauseous.

Kinda guarantees the outcome, you know?

So, twenty minutes later I also was at the emergency room, courtesy of eldest son's girlfriend. The staff's best guess is a viral infection, but they run a CT scan just to be sure ('cause "stroke" was always on their minds).

When he comes by, the Doc is very quick to point out "It wasn't a stroke." They're sticking with the viral theory, and dehydration (and given her gastrointestinal problems last week, I'll buy that)...

She's on two new meds now. One of which lists a possible side effect of "dizziness".

Ummmm, isn't that kinda odd for a drug designed to treat dizziness? I mean, how do you know if you're having a side effect?

Or maybe, the drug just ain't working.

Buuuut... ...

Doc also said they found a small bit of scarring in her brain. Like she'd had a mini-stroke a long time ago, and it's since healed.

You mean my wife has got a dead spot in her brain?

Ohhh, I resisted the urge to make a joke or two about that. (Well, that is, for a couple hours I resisted.)

My other thought was a flashback to a House episode, where the point was made that the latest fad of running full body scans "just in case" merely produces a lot of worry and tests over minor abnormalities that we all carry around and would otherwise never know about.

Took a minute or two, but the wife soon figured it out.

Preeclampsia. With good ol' son number one. I was there with her then, too. Highest blood pressure reading I remember them calling out that day was 230/180.

Yeah. Two hundred thirty over 180.

Kinda high.

Pretty good chance that's when she had her mini-stroke.

So now I find myself thinking back to those days of early parenthood. And wondering... which of the changes I saw in my wife (and there were plenty) were due to the new responsibilities of motherhood, which were due to the surgery, which to the hormone changes, which to the typical sleep deprivation and...

Which were due to a minor stroke?

I can tell I will be whiling away many an hour on our empty highways with this one.