Update on Grandma

This post is likely going to be a painful one, likely for y'all and for myself as well, but...here goes.  My grandmother, to put it bluntly, is dying.  The hospital was able to get her in today, and she would have seen the doctor that did Mama's hip surgery last year, but things did not go as planned.  Late last night Grandma's blood pressure bottomed out and she got rushed to the hospital.  Mama and my maniac driver of a Second Uncle went to be with her, and they subsequently learned that Grandma has a UTI on top of everything else.  Her blood oxygen is good, but her heart is very weak and her blood pressure keeps falling.  The doctor said that she needs a pacemaker, but she's too weak to handle the surgery.  He also says...and this is the part that's really bugging me...but he says that pain medicine would make her heart rate dip even lower so they can't give her any.  That means Grandma's in pain.  And since the UTI messes with her mind that also means she's confused.

So...Mama and Second Uncle made a very hard decision.  Grandma is going back to the nursing home, and hospice is being called in.  Never in my life did I ever dream that any of us in this family would be going on hospice, but that's what's happening.  Mama says the folks at the nursing home are going to do what they can to manage Grandma's pain, but I have no idea how effective that will be.  I have no faith in that nursing home, considering that their short-staffed bungling allowed this to happen in the first place.

I guess I need to focus on the positives of all this mess, as not many thirty-year-old women have even a single grandparent, but at the same time the longer you have someone the harder it is to let them go.  I hope it'll be quick and peaceful.

Now I'm going to sit back, mope, hope that no children come into the library, and wish that I could trade places with Delilah for a week or a month.  Yes, Delilah, who has a hollow head and no heart or brain to feel or think with.  Millicent from MillicentandFriends guessed correctly that the artsy pic in the last post was Delilah Noir...whom I desperately wanted my grandmother to see.  I know she'd have liked Delilah; she liked almost all of my dolls (except for poor Johnny), and she'd have loved Delilah.

Delilah has gathered the Peanut Gallery and is keeping an eye out for storms, by the way.  On top of everything else that could happen today, we're expecting violent weather.  Here's what we're facing.

Not the worst I've seen, but not great either.

I'll keep y'all posted on what goes down with Grandma.  Right now I'm just hoping they all make it back from Sikeston in one piece.

Always,
RagingMoon1987