Grandma's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week
The second Saturday evening in April, Glen had a furry party in Garden Grove (more about furries in a later blog entry, I'm sure), so I dropped him off and went to Disneyland. This is the only place in the area besides restaurants and the party itself that is open until midnight. I saw the 50th anniversary fireworks show, which is far and away the best I have ever seen, and Fantasmic. I puttered around looking at shops, but all I bought was a Mickey Mouse paper punch to use in my Disneyland and Disney World scrapbooks. I picked Glen up at midnight and drove home, where I got to bed about 2:00 Sunday morning.
At about 6:00 that morning, the phone rang. My mother herself was on the line - she was experiencing chest pain, pain bad enough that it woke her from a sound sleep, and my dad was calling 911 while she called me. Of course I said I would come. I showered, packed hastily and breakfasted, and got to Lancaster around 9:00.
Daddy was still at home, waiting for me to come to take him to visit the hospital. He knows he doesn't have the reserves he had when he was younger, and he was also terrified that his implanted defribrillator would fire and put him in the hospital bed beside hers - as it did three years ago when Mother had her stroke. Cheyenne, his beautiful medium-hair German shepherd service dog, helps him with his balance, both physical and emotional, but she's not much in the decision-making department, so he was delighted to see me.
Mother was still in the emergency room when we arrived at the hospital, and except that she had been hooked to a cardiac monitor and stuck, we didn't learn much right away. Amazingly, the fire department paramedic had been able to start an IV in her tiny, miserable vein while on the way to the hospital over bumpy roads. She did get her cardiac enzymes checked to determine if she'd had a heart attack or just angina (which can be a precursor to a heart attack causing permanent damage if untreated), and we eventually learned the test came back negative.
During our afternoon visit, the nurse brought Mother a pill with which she was unfamiliar, and she refused to take it until she could be sure it would go with her other medications...which she had yet to receive for the day. Since we had heard her cardiologist being paged over the intercom system, we figured he must be in the hospital and requested that he be called in to look over her medications. I was still there when he came in and asked us what her diagnosis was. If I'd had more than four hours of sleep, I might have had the chutzpah to say that her cardiologist didn't seem to have given her a clear diagnosis. As it was, I was able to tell him that no, she did not have an enlarged heart or congestive heart failure. Mother was quite disappointed that he didn't have the particulars of her case in his memory, but I know her chart was in his office a couple of miles away. A day or two later he had had a chance to look at her chart and told us that she has a "fixed heart condition." I didn't realize that was an actual diagnosis. At any rate, he spent some time looking at her hospital chart, which included her list of medications, and made some adjustments.
Some time Monday night, Mother got moved to a regular hospital room, and it was a nice one - much better than her last one, which shoehorned four beds into a space that wasn't nearly big enough for them. Not only was it a bigger room, her bed was by itself in a spacious alcove opposite two other beds, so although it was ostensibly a three-bed room, she had pretty much a room to herself. Each night she took morphine for a blinding headache, so I wondered how she would deal with it at home when they released her Tuesday afternoon.
By then I was out of clean clothes, besides being totally exhausted, so after I got my parents settled at their house and Mother's new prescriptions for a twice-daily vasodilator (Isordil) and sublingual nitroglycerine, I bolted for home. I had just started unpacking my suitcase and was looking forward to going to bed soon when I got a call from my dad.
Mother had collapsed in the bathroom, his defribrillator had punched him, and the paramedics were at the house even at that moment. Could I come back? Definitely. After I hung up, I knelt on the floor and thought numerous filthy imprecations, although the situation was too desperate to say them aloud. When Lee asked if I had to go that same night, I didn't even have to think about it. I did, not for my mother's sake, but for my dad's. He is always anxious after his defribrillator fires, especially when he is worried about my mother as well.
So I finished pulling out the dirty clothes but replaced them with clean ones. I also packed warmer pajamas. I had forgotten how cold it gets in the trailer at night. Here's one for Jeff Foxworthy: You may be a redneck if your guest suite is a travel trailer. I also called my sister Charlotte and asked her if she could take a couple days off work and come. She had been planning to come down for Easter anyway, and she professed herself willing to drive down on Wednesday.
My dad was sitting in his recliner when I arrived, and he asked me to take his pulse. When I started, it was kind of erratic, but it quickly settled into a steadier rythm. By then he had calmed down considerably and was able to tell me more. My mother had gone unconscious and even stopped breathing. He thought she was dead. He thumped her on the chest before he realized he didn't know CPR and probably shouldn't do any more, but that was enough to start her breathing again. After he called 911, he returned to her side. Cheyenne was possibly trying to wake her up but seemed to be bothering her (Mother had no recollection of this); when Daddy bent over to pull Cheyenne away, his defribrillator fired.
It wasn't as big a jolt as it has been in the past, he said. First, it didn't knock him over, and second, the flash of light he saw was significantly smaller than previously. He did yell, though, and by then my mother was sufficiently conscious to hear him. Both of them agreed that he also said something like, "Damn, my defribrillator went off."
He left the door unlocked and then sat down in the living room. The sheriff's deputies were the first to arrive - four of them - and then came half a dozen paramedics. Mother said it seemed like there were about eight people crowded into the bathroom with her when she came to. They wrapped her in a sheet and took her off to the hospital, sirens going all the way. On her previous trip, they had only sounded the sirens occasionally, she supposed at intersections.
To be continued...
At about 6:00 that morning, the phone rang. My mother herself was on the line - she was experiencing chest pain, pain bad enough that it woke her from a sound sleep, and my dad was calling 911 while she called me. Of course I said I would come. I showered, packed hastily and breakfasted, and got to Lancaster around 9:00.
Daddy was still at home, waiting for me to come to take him to visit the hospital. He knows he doesn't have the reserves he had when he was younger, and he was also terrified that his implanted defribrillator would fire and put him in the hospital bed beside hers - as it did three years ago when Mother had her stroke. Cheyenne, his beautiful medium-hair German shepherd service dog, helps him with his balance, both physical and emotional, but she's not much in the decision-making department, so he was delighted to see me.
Mother was still in the emergency room when we arrived at the hospital, and except that she had been hooked to a cardiac monitor and stuck, we didn't learn much right away. Amazingly, the fire department paramedic had been able to start an IV in her tiny, miserable vein while on the way to the hospital over bumpy roads. She did get her cardiac enzymes checked to determine if she'd had a heart attack or just angina (which can be a precursor to a heart attack causing permanent damage if untreated), and we eventually learned the test came back negative.
During our afternoon visit, the nurse brought Mother a pill with which she was unfamiliar, and she refused to take it until she could be sure it would go with her other medications...which she had yet to receive for the day. Since we had heard her cardiologist being paged over the intercom system, we figured he must be in the hospital and requested that he be called in to look over her medications. I was still there when he came in and asked us what her diagnosis was. If I'd had more than four hours of sleep, I might have had the chutzpah to say that her cardiologist didn't seem to have given her a clear diagnosis. As it was, I was able to tell him that no, she did not have an enlarged heart or congestive heart failure. Mother was quite disappointed that he didn't have the particulars of her case in his memory, but I know her chart was in his office a couple of miles away. A day or two later he had had a chance to look at her chart and told us that she has a "fixed heart condition." I didn't realize that was an actual diagnosis. At any rate, he spent some time looking at her hospital chart, which included her list of medications, and made some adjustments.
Some time Monday night, Mother got moved to a regular hospital room, and it was a nice one - much better than her last one, which shoehorned four beds into a space that wasn't nearly big enough for them. Not only was it a bigger room, her bed was by itself in a spacious alcove opposite two other beds, so although it was ostensibly a three-bed room, she had pretty much a room to herself. Each night she took morphine for a blinding headache, so I wondered how she would deal with it at home when they released her Tuesday afternoon.
By then I was out of clean clothes, besides being totally exhausted, so after I got my parents settled at their house and Mother's new prescriptions for a twice-daily vasodilator (Isordil) and sublingual nitroglycerine, I bolted for home. I had just started unpacking my suitcase and was looking forward to going to bed soon when I got a call from my dad.
Mother had collapsed in the bathroom, his defribrillator had punched him, and the paramedics were at the house even at that moment. Could I come back? Definitely. After I hung up, I knelt on the floor and thought numerous filthy imprecations, although the situation was too desperate to say them aloud. When Lee asked if I had to go that same night, I didn't even have to think about it. I did, not for my mother's sake, but for my dad's. He is always anxious after his defribrillator fires, especially when he is worried about my mother as well.
So I finished pulling out the dirty clothes but replaced them with clean ones. I also packed warmer pajamas. I had forgotten how cold it gets in the trailer at night. Here's one for Jeff Foxworthy: You may be a redneck if your guest suite is a travel trailer. I also called my sister Charlotte and asked her if she could take a couple days off work and come. She had been planning to come down for Easter anyway, and she professed herself willing to drive down on Wednesday.
My dad was sitting in his recliner when I arrived, and he asked me to take his pulse. When I started, it was kind of erratic, but it quickly settled into a steadier rythm. By then he had calmed down considerably and was able to tell me more. My mother had gone unconscious and even stopped breathing. He thought she was dead. He thumped her on the chest before he realized he didn't know CPR and probably shouldn't do any more, but that was enough to start her breathing again. After he called 911, he returned to her side. Cheyenne was possibly trying to wake her up but seemed to be bothering her (Mother had no recollection of this); when Daddy bent over to pull Cheyenne away, his defribrillator fired.
It wasn't as big a jolt as it has been in the past, he said. First, it didn't knock him over, and second, the flash of light he saw was significantly smaller than previously. He did yell, though, and by then my mother was sufficiently conscious to hear him. Both of them agreed that he also said something like, "Damn, my defribrillator went off."
He left the door unlocked and then sat down in the living room. The sheriff's deputies were the first to arrive - four of them - and then came half a dozen paramedics. Mother said it seemed like there were about eight people crowded into the bathroom with her when she came to. They wrapped her in a sheet and took her off to the hospital, sirens going all the way. On her previous trip, they had only sounded the sirens occasionally, she supposed at intersections.
To be continued...
posted by Jeannette | 10:14 AM
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