Grandmother Report

My mother stopped by this evening, just as the kids were about to come out of the bath a little early for being to the bathroom what the Army Corps of Engineers, with a slight nudge from Katrina, was to New Orleans.

Turns out my grandmother is in the hospital.  She’s been neglecting a hernia for years.  As in, she’s 91 and it existed while she was still working at the shoe factory, and is her reason for wearing a girdle.  This is news to most of us.  Can’t blame her for avoiding surgery though, and we already knew she was stubborn.

A couple weeks ago, she exacerbated it badly by standing on her toes and stretching to reach into the bottom rear of the washer.

She finally ended up at the hospital yesterday (I didn’t catch all the detail as to how that wound up happening, but apparently it became unbearable and pretty ugly), where they promptly operated, apparently a no big deal kind of thing.  They put her in the ICU afterward only because she’s 91, but the original, absurd plan was to send her home today.  That’s ridiculous.  Gratuitously long hospital stays are silly, but jeez.

That went by the wayside as they didn’t follow their own plans and haven’t gotten her off the catheter and walking again, apart from one quick trip across the room, so she’s still there.  Good.

I was relieved when my mother said what it was, after the introductory announcement that she was in the hospital.  That’ll probably make her feel better in general, as in retrospect it’s been apparently affecting her health in tangential ways.

The girls were delighted with the visit, and Sadie sat still and rapt for the entire reading of Cat in the Hat because it was Grandma reading it to her.  If she’d timed it a little earlier, she could have eaten with us.  I didn’t realize she hadn’t eaten supper yet until she was preparing to leave.  That would have been funny, because it was a rare, veggie-free meal.  I cooked some pork last night (in the crockpot with water, vinegar, a handful of chopped onion, red pepper flakes and celery flakes), threw it in the fridge, and tonight made a sweet barbecue sauce.  I heated the pork by shredding it up and mixing it into the sauce, calculated to coat it without being runny.  We had it on hot dog rolls with cheese, and had cheddar and sour cream potato chips with it.  It was probably my best pork dish and best barbecue sauce yet.  By comparison, last night we had chunks of chicken in a gravy I invented that included a can of cream of mushroom soup, served over rice, with peas on the side (which could simply have been mixed in).  Three chicken breasts and we had no leftovers.  Both kids ate all their chicken and had seconds.  Sadie had thirds.  I need to write about these two things over at MGC, but I can’t do better than an approximate description of what I did.

Anyway, the reason that would be funny is because my mother is always so concerned about my brother’s kids not eating, not often enough being served, vegetables, in her opinion.  It would be fitting for her to witness the one night every ten days we probably average not having them.

Poor Valerie cried when she left.  She refused to say bye, as if that would prevent it, then was crushed, but recovered when she was able to stand at the window and watch grandma walk to her car and say bye some more.

We’ll probably take the kids with us Tuesday to the ultrasound, rather than risking one of them jumping on my grandmother while she’s healing.  They don’t tend to do that to her the same as they do to the rest of us, but just in case.  They were good last time we took them, and the people in perinatology missed them when they weren’t there the next time.

I expect my grandmother should be fine, but figured I’d report it for people who might want to know.  The answers for such people are “the usual one” and “513,” before you even ask.

1. Happy to hear she is OK and very happy that they kept her in the hospital at 91!

   Posted by  on  07/20  at  07:55 AM  from 
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