usmcsis's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sunday night hospital update so, it's been another long day. thanks for the notes and emails, i appreciate all of your thoughts and prayers. ((hugs suz & fal)) so, i spent most of the day getting the house prepared for the influx of family members, most of them strangers to me, to start arriving. because our house is always were every congregates and it's closest to the hospital. daddy went back to the hospital around six or so and mama went shortly after him. i stayed home to finish shoving my crap in the attic. i figured i can do more "for" grandma by preparing to take care of everyone else than by sitting in the waiting room at the hospital. daddy called about quarter to eight or so and told me i needed to get down there, things were bad. he didn't elaborate any further, he was very upset and i guess he was trying not to cry, his voice sounded very thick. i hurried and changed clothes and headed over there, luckily i live about five minutes away. once i got there they explained what happened and we went on to call all of the rest of the family. mama and daddy were in her room "visiting". they hit their time limit and left at seven thirty to go back to the waiting room so that my cousin could go in. as they were walking out the nurse who was in her room checking all of her tubes and stuff called a code blue. they worked on her for over an hour and finally got her stabalized. sort of. both lungs collapsed and they had to put chest tubes in on both sides. she had heart failure and they had to do chest compressions. even after her heart started to beat on it's own again she remained critical for a while. technically, her doctor says that she still is critically ill and he wants my dad and my aunt to seriously discuss their thoughts on what lengths they want the staff to go to for recesitation. she is not breathing on her own at all. her oxygen level is still too low, her fingers and toes are blue from lack of oxygen. she could be suffering brain damage at this very moment but the doctor says that it is too difficult to tell, it's different for different people. i did get to go back and see her before i left and i think i will probably not go in again if she does not get well. i don't want to remember her that way. she wouldn't want me to either. she tends to be vain in a really white trash sort of way. like, she doesn't fix her hair but she's constantly drawing attention to it and saying that she needs to have something done to it and she doesn't wear makeup except on special occasions but she's always telling me she bought a new lipstick or eye shawdow or whatever. i think that's the first time i've smiled in the last couple of hours. i don't want it to seem like i have given up on her because i haven't. i want her to get well. but i don't want her to be incompacitated. i don't want her to have to be in a nursing home, to have brain damage, or other physical or mental disabilities once this is all said and done. i want her to get well and be able to have her life back. perhaps not one hundred percent back, but close. i don't want to have to watch her slowly fade away in a nursing home like i did with my great grandmother. i have already made peace with the fact that she may die. and if she does then she will no longer be in pain and i will never again have to see the fear in her eyes that i saw last night when she could not breath. i want her to be well, but, if she can't be well, i don't want her to be hooked up to a bunch of tubes and machines with an assload of bells and whistles and montiors and such. i want her to be at peace. she deserves that. i truly hope my dad and my aunt think long and hard about this. but, it is their decision, not mine. my mother has already told me that she wants a DNR if anything happens to her. she wrote it down for me tonight and told me to keep it. i agree with her and i told her tonight that if something should happen to me first, i want a DNR myself. i need to get a will written up. i've been meaning to do it for months now and i've kept putting it off but i really do need to get it done. maybe i'll make it my new year's project. anyway, that's it for tonight. it's almost twenty after twelve. daddy isn't home from the hospital yet. i wanted to stay up and talk to him when he got home but my eyes are killing me from crying earlier and i'm just flat out tired from working my ass off today. so, i'm going to bed. i'm taking tomorrow off from work too so i'll talk to him in the morning. thanks again for all of your notes and thoughts and prayers. i really do appreciate it all. toodles 11:55 pm - 14 Nov 2004 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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