Something Light

RIP Grandma.

October 14, 2007 -- I'll never understand why you left us at an age where you still had so, so much to offer us.

I still miss you terribly. I always will.

I have irrational feelings, but I feel perfectly valid in feeling the way that I do.  Is that a mom thing?

It annoys me more than anything when my kid's grandparents (in laws) refer to themselves as grandma and papa. We say Grandma and Grandpa... Papa literally translates into dad. It means father. Unless you fathered my kid, you are not papa. 

I've told them multiple times that I don't like him referring to himself as papa and I told his wife that as well, but neither of them want to respect my wishes... As the person that threw up every day of my pregnancy, tore through intense back labor, breastfed for an entire year, and raised this little kid, I feel that I have every right to say "Grandma" and "Grandpa" NO PAPA.

My kid's father doesn't refer to either of his grandpas as papa, so why are they trying to make papa happen? It may mean grandfather in other cultures, but not the one that we are in right now.

It bugs me more now that I've asked them not to use that term and explained why and they completely ignore it. Blah. I have to move to a different town.

About 2 hours after I posted that last entry, my mom MSNs me my blog URL... WTF?!?! haha  Turns out, she googled something about septic shock and puss in lungs and my blog was the first google result.

Two hours!  Wow, Google must be in love with Vox and I must have blogged just before the robots came along, lol

Crazy how the Internet works.

Okay, so this blog is secret enough for me to be able to post openly. None of my family members know of it, nor do any of my coworkers that I know of... I hope. It would be nice to have a little piece of privacy. A little piece of the net to share with others, without having to worry about censorship.

Anyway... Before September began, my grandmother was admitted to the hospital the day after my mom and I were trying to convince her to go in to the hospital. I wish that I had charged over to her house and grabbed her out to take her to the hospital that day, instead of waiting.

She had severe tachycardia (completely irregular heartbeats), a very high heart rate, low blood pressure, and a slight fever... An EKG showed that she had suffered from a heart attack, which was most likely brought on by the incredible amount of stress on her body from pneumonia.

When she got to the hospital, her left kidney was already going into failure, she had puss on her lungs, kidneys, and her liver -- a sure sign of septic shock. Why the doctors didn't know this is beyond me... The three organs that speak more words than the tongue when paired together.

She was in such bad shape that she was incredibly delusional, which was very hard to see considering that we didn't know if her 78-year-old mind was finally succumbing to her age or if it was, in fact, the incredible tole that her body was taking on itself.

While this is all happening, my sister and I were placed in charge of our grandpa... We definitely had no idea how bad his condition was. We knew that he suffered from dementia for a few years, but once we started getting phone calls literally 5 minutes apart asking where his wife was... We just couldn't take much more of it.

We'd go to his house with a home cooked meal every night and tidy up the place, throw a load of laundry in and try to get him to take a shower, though this always failed. It took him 2 weeks to finally get into a shower and to finally shave.

One day, my mother received 60 phone calls before 11:00 in the morning... She had to block his number temporarily while she caught up on her sleep, since grandpa called at all hours of the night, wondering where his wife was... One night, my mom actually got a call from the police. The officer was inside my grandparent's house letting her know that he had called in a missing persons report.

He'd call us at 6:00am, thinking it was evening. He'd call at 1:00am in a complete panic. 2:30am. Call after call. A distraught man at least once an hour giving you grief for not telling him where his wife was sooner, then a hint of loneliness in his voice... An even bigger hint of depression.

After two weeks, we finally decided to put him in a home. This is a decision I'm not proud of. In fact, I'm very ashamed of it; however, there was no other choice for us all. We were all lacking in sleep, he was lacking in sleep, he was depressed, he was alone, he wasn't taking care of himself, even when we tried to help. He just wasn't living any kind of life.  He actually agreed to it when we talked to him openly about it... Memory or not, that conversation happened and it helped us with the decision.

***

After a week of being in the intensive care unit, my grandma was moved to a room on the intensive care floor. I brought her a picture of my daughter and I tried to visit her as much as I could, but we've had cable guys coming, packages coming, laundry to do, and not enough money for gas to make the 45 minute car ride.

One night, her hemoglobin dropped significantly and her white blood cells increased rapidly - another sign of septic shock.

She had numerous blood transfusions and is now incredibly weak. She's had little to no improvement since last weekend. She signed a DNR form before she was admitted to the ICU and I can understand why now.

I've never dealt with death before and I'm not prepared in the least to say goodbye to my favorite grandparent. I'm not married yet... She's supposed to be at my wedding... My boyfriends grandparents are all in perfect health. They're so much younger than my grandparents. It's just not fair.

I go to lunch with my grandma at least once a month, usually twice. We were just getting into the habit of going for lunch more often... I was planning out Christmas and she was there. I was planning out thanksgiving and she was there.

Even if she's a survivor of this, she'll require extensive physiotherapy and probably won't be able to get up and walk on her own for months, if at all.

It's just not fair.

I have all four of my grandparents right now and the ones that I'm closest with are the ones that are falling away. My grandpa checked out years ago mentally, and my grandma is... We're not sure if she'll see life outside of the hospital again.

It's just not fair.

It doesn't help that my BF's parents (my daughter's grandparents) pretty much don't give a crap about it all. They'll ask me how she's doing, but before I'm done my first sentence, they'll have already started ignoring me to play cute with my daughter. Who the fuck does that? Who is that god damn inconsiderate about something like this?

They've never been considerate, come to think of it. When I was pregnant, my BF's mom went out with her daughter and bought an entire wardrobe for my daughter and never once asked me to come along. When I went to go shopping... There was nothing for me to buy. They had already bought it.

Can you imagine being pregnant with those preggo hormones and those nesting feelings and not being able to experience the utter joy of shopping for your baby?

It takes a new breed of person to not ask to think the mother to be to go shopping with you. It wasn't just one shopping spree -- it was something new at least twice a week.

Her daughter (she's 19) poked my post partum belly, too. Nice. Who pokes someones stomach and comments on how gushy it is 4 days post partum.

What song do you wish would never show up on a karaoke list?

I Will Always Love You by Whitney Huston. She's a great singer, but people that participate in karaoke... Not always great.

Finally, something just for me. Sometimes, I feel so trapped in my own life. Sad thing is, my life is just so perfect.

A few days ago, I was cleaning out my closet and came across a few notebooks. Each one had writing from cover to cover - short stories and beginnings of novels that I had written many years ago. I found myself oddly captivated by my own writing.

Sometimes, I admit, I write morbid things. I guess I haven't refined my writing yet...

I've opened this Vox so that I could firstly, have something just for myself. A place where I can re-type my old stories and novels and maybe even finish a novel. Surely, it won't end up on paper, since I can't afford the fee of publication, but as long as it's out there for critique, I'll be happy and feel accomplished.

Thank you for checking this out.