Heads Up

This is just a small heads up to let everyone know that I will probably be a bit out of touch for the immediate future. My grandmother is in the hospital currently. She fell from a sitting position at the side of her bed this afternoon, and smacked her head fairly hard on the floor (and may have clipped it on the edge of the nightstand on the way down, we're not sure). According to a CAT scan taken at the hospital, she has what I believe they termed an "intercerebral lesion"... basically it means she's bleeding in her brain. From what the doctor told us, it is a minor lesion and in most cases it will stop on its own if the patient's blood pressure is properly regulated. However, at her age anything like this is, obviously, quite serious and from what I understand she is not a candidate for any type of invasive surgery to correct it due to both her age and the terms of her living will. We also were surprised to find out from the doctors there that she has a urinary tract infection that we were not aware of. We're probably going to be at the hospital a lot in the immediate future to check on her and get updates on the situation... obviously, since hospitals have specific visiting hours, I should be on in the evening, but I don't know that I'll really be all that active online even so... I find spending time in hospitals very draining and I'm probably just going to want to check my email and then get offline and talk with Dusk on the phone most nights.

I feel really weird about all this... on the one hand I'm absolutely horrified about what happened and I'm really worried about my grandmother. But a part of me is also a bit relieved... first, that for at least a little while we are not the ones immediately in charge of her care and second, that this situation seems to be illustrating more clearly to my father that we probably can't handle taking care of her at home on our own anymore. My parents have been very shy of putting her in a nursing home since the last time she was in one for physical therapy she wasn't eating at all and they were not making her eat, but this situation seems to be changing my father's mind on the subject, and he may be more open to searching for better elder-care facilities in the area now.

I think part of what's making this whole thing weird for me is that I've had a very long time to come to terms with my grandmother's mortality. When I was a child, I'd come home from school each day and the only one around would be my grandmother... and I knew because of her age that there was every chance that one day I would come home and she would have passed away, and I'd be the first one to find her. Over the years, the details have changed, but that awareness of her mortality has always stayed with me and if she should pass away I honestly don't know that I will mourn her passing in any normal sense of the word. Part of that is probably also due to the fact that because of the Alzheimers she's really no longer the same person she was when I was growing up, so in one sense I guess I feel like I've already lost her... *shrugs*

Yeah, so... I guess that's it. If you need me for anything, send me an email or leave a comment here in my LJ. Or if you get really lucky and see me on AIM, feel free to pounce me as usual. *hugs and love to everyone, and especially my Family... you know who you are*

Update

Things have changed drastically since yesterday. First, my grandmother does NOT have a urinary tract infection... apparently her bloodwork came back negative on that. Second, although she does have the bleeding in the brain still, she is going to be coming home tomorrow. We're going to have to monitor her blood pressure ourselves, but other than that there were no special instructions from the hospital. She's not a candidate for neurosurgery due to her age, weight, and the terms of her living will which specify no artificial means of life support (which would be necessary during a brain operation, apparently), so it's something that will either have to heal on its own or not heal at all. The doctor we spoke to today said we just need to watch for symptoms like paralysis of any of her limbs or complaints about headaches, and to keep an eye on her blood pressure too with a simple machine we can purchase at like CVS or someplace.

Honestly, I'm kind of freaked... I think that they're sending her home way too soon given the fact that her BRAIN is BLEEDING. Call me crazy, but if I were a doctor I think I'd want someone in that condition under proper medical supervision. On the bright side (possibly), the hospital is talking about seeing about getting us some home nursing for her... we'll see if it goes any better than it did last time, I guess, but I'm not expecting much to come from it.

In other news, I will be getting my laptop soon, a fact which I am fervently grateful for... my father gave me a check today to cover the cost of it, which I'm just waiting to clear in my bank account so I can order my computer on the apple website. From there it's only two or three days till it will be delivered. I'm really looking forward to it... I keep finding out about more aspects of OS X which I want to try out. I'm even looking forward to the built-in text-to-speech features... it sounds absolutely perfect for when I'm working late at night or have a headache and I want to rest my eyes for a bit but still look up information, even granting the fact that there will be occasional mispronunciations to deal with.

And I've definately passed into the realm of babbling here, so that's enough for this entry. ;-)