Sunday, August 21, 2011

A Little Bad News Goes a Long Way

My day started with a text from my Dad. That's never good. As a general rule, he only texts me when it's bad news. If he calls it means somebody died. Seriously. The last time my dad called me was when my uncle died. Before that it was when my grandfather passed. Thankfully, today it was just texts.

Apparently my Grandma fell this morning around 3am on her way back from the bathroom. My mom called her this morning to see if she was feeling up to going to church and didn't get an answer, so she and Dad went to check on her. They found her in the dining room on the floor.

They took her to the hospital in Meridian (about an hour away) with fears of a broken hip. Turned out to be a humerus fracture (??) just below the hip spiral. Tomorrow they will get consults from Grandma's cardiologist (she has a heart murmur and congestive heart failure) and an orthopedic surgon. From there the docs will decide what to do about surgery. Mom is anticipating that they will want to put a rod in her leg. Did I mention that Grandma is pushing 86 (if she's not there already, I'm trying to remember if last December was 85 or 86...).

So much of my day has been spent recieiving and relaying text messages. Since my Uncle Lacy died several years ago I've kinda been in charge of keeping his kids in the loop on family emergencies. My cousin Lynn mentioned at one point today that she was afraid a fracture would mean that Grandma won't get to go back home and live by herself anymore. Frankly, Mom's been worried about her ever since she nearly died from the heart failure a year ago. We rallied the troops then thinking she may not make it out of the hospital, but for the 294th time, she proved us all wrong. She's a severe insulin-dependent diabetic and we've been saying forever that we didn't know how long she'd be around, or how long she'd be able to live by herself. She has basically laughed at us for a couple of decades now.

This time, I dunno. I'm not as worried as I was with her prolonged hospital stay last year, but I do fear going home may not be an option. We'll see.

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