I talked to my mom on the phone the other day. She told me that my dad had been experiencing vertigo. With the COVID pandemic raging on and no clear indication of when my parents will be able to get the vaccine, I've been especially worried about my dad's health. Coincidentally, one of my parent's friends was also getting vertigo. Her doctor gave her some medicine and a set of exercises to help. The active ingredient in the medicine was an antihistamine. So my dad started taking Benadryl and doing the exercises. He said he felt better.
My mom had health complaints of her own, waking up with headaches every morning. She said it wasn't super unusual for her, but it had become more severe and more frequent. Finally, things started to click when she smelled natural gas.
My dad sprayed soapy water on the pipes attached to the furnace, and sure enough: bubbles. There was a leak. The carbon monoxide detector was out of commission as, several years ago, the battery was running low and the detector was screaming to have it replaces. My parents did the sensible thing: removed the battery and never replaced it. (Mitch and I have a similar thing going, only it's with one of our smoke alarms.) My dad popped in a new battery, and the display displayed 199 in glowing red. Anything above 20 and below 900 is bad news.
My dad thinks the vertigo and the headaches are the result of my parents accidentally poisoning themselves. Somebody's going to go over and take a look at the furnace pronto. My dad has stopped doing the exercises.
In retrospect, my mom reflected that they should have known something was up when all the house plants died.
Stay alert, folks.
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