Those Electrolytes
- Rebecca Jim
- May 30
- 3 min read
A while back there was a man standing in the middle of the narrow part of Highway 10 between Welch and Miami was the first sign it wasn’t going to be a normal morning. An old navy-blue pickup truck had taken out a utility pole and with the pole gone, the live wires were pulled across the road in a dangerous way. Both the car behind me and mine turned around to find an alternate route, when a man approached my passenger side window. He said his phone was dead and wondered if I could call his mother, so of course, I dialed the number he recited.
There was no answer, so he asked if I could give him a ride into Welch. Since I was headed back there, myself I agreed. He got in, buckled up and rubbed his hands together. I kept my window down a bit because he had a peculiar odor, like a chemical of sorts. After asking repeatedly for his name and receiving no name, I asked where are we going in Welch. “To his mother’s,” was the answer, but no address, and again, no response for a name.
We crossed the railroad tracks into Welch proper and he indicated we continue going west. On the last street before Highway 2, he instructed me to turn and we continued north on that street to the mother’s, but he could somehow see she wasn’t there, so he wanted to go further down the street and suddenly said, “stop the car.”
He got out of the car and thanked me for the ride. Then he proceeded to walk in the street, back the way we had just come. I could see the mother’s house we had passed. He continued walking there.
I never learned his name. But I went back to the scene of the accident and talked with the officer near the downed lines to explain that I believed I had taken the driver to town and where I had left him, and his inability to convey information or recall his own name.
A morning like this left me wondering if he had found his family and if indeed, he had been the survivor of that serious accident, if he had received care he must have needed. So, after work that day, I crossed those railroad tracks in Welch, retracing my route, driving slowly past the ‘Mother’s” house, not seeing it any different than that morning. I drove toward the other property, when the only other car on the street stopped when I lowered my window. I asked if they knew the man who might have been the driver of the accident out on the highway. And if they knew if he was ok. That driver spoke up quickly and admitted that was his BROTHER. I then explained how he had so wanted to find his mother, and the woman in the car said softly, “I am the mother.”
I was able to tell her how important it had been for him to find her. They said they took him directly to the hospital and he was admitted. It was determined that his potassium levels had bottomed out and caused him to be impaired, causing him to be incoherent and confused.
Potassium is one of the minerals we rely on to carry the electrical charges to make our cells, nerves and muscles function, known as electrolytes. They can show us how magically we are put together. How we operate or shut down on fractions of elements in our bodies.
I had had that same experience in reverse several decades ago. I was the one driving an old pickup truck and had been involved in a single car accident, but it was my son who was with me in the hospital when my diagnosis of potassium depletion explained the cause of that accident.
I was the mother seeing the mother who helped her son, as my son had helped me.
Respectfully Submitted ~ Rebecca Jim