I was at home minding my own business. As I recall it was the monthly chore of vacuuming navel lint that I was involved in when the phone rang. It was the doctor’s office where my mom, known to everyone as “Grandma Jo”, saw her doctor.
Grandma Jo had a bad headache and drove herself to the doctor. They didn’t think they could help her with this bad headache and didn’t want her to drive so they called me to take her to the hospital.
In our area we have some big hospitals in Fort Wayne. One of these has little local hospitals sprinkled around that feed the big mega-hospital cases that can’t be handled in the local hospitals. The point being that the local hospital was pretty close at hand and that is where I was to take Grandma Jo.
So I drove to the doctor’s office. They took me to her room and we set about to leave. But we (we meaning Grandma Jo) had to say goodbye to everyone. By everyone I mean everyone. She was saying thank you and “honey” this and “sweetie” that to all the women nurses.
I wondered if diabetes was contagious because she was really shoveling out the sugar.
She was thanking everyone. Had the janitor gotten in the way he may have gotten a hug.
Maybe you are thinking that’s all fine. And it is. But from the point of view of her son who never got such treatment it was a bit of a shock. It was like that modern saying… “Who are you and what have you done with my mom.”
So we eventually got her strapped in the car and headed to the emergency room. A few minutes later we were at the hospital emergency room.
And if you haven’t been to the emergency room for a while this is how it goes. They determine the seriousness of your illness and prioritize your treatment accordingly. If you have chest pains and shortness of breath then you get immediate care. But if you have a lung exposed or are bleeding everywhere and are comatose then you “ace out” the heart attach person.
A bad headache means you wait until everyone else in the place gets cared for before they have time for you.
And the other thing that happens in the emergency room is that the immediately put an IV in you. Grandma Jo, didn’t want an IV. Said she didn’t need an IV. The sweet old lady began to fade as they put in an IV. They say they need that “just in case” and to give you medication if needed.
Grandma Jo was not pleased.
We sat. We waited. Grandma Jo morphed from the sweet old lady to something much different.
“When are they going to come do something.”
Obviously I didn’t know - and I also wondered what is it that you do for a headache other than prescribe ibuprofen or something similar.
She began to squirm and started to complain.
“Come take these wires out of me David and let’s go home.”
Those words are in quotes so that you can read what she said. But Grandma Jo didn’t pronounce or enunciate words like most folks. Instead she had vowels and consonants in her mouth and she rolled them around in there. She got them more or less in the right order and then they would come rolling out. So it sounded like… David cum here and take these waares out o’me and let’s go hum.
I told her that I wasn’t going to take her wires out. That I didn’t know how.
I could picture blood squirting out of her veins everywhere, onto the walls and floor. So, no, I wasn’t going to take those “waars” out.
The nurse came in and mom said she wanted to go home.
But the nurse was not impressed and said she needed to wait and see the doctor.
Grandma Jo frowned. A deep frown. Darth Vader death star frown. Fry your brain in your skull as she looked at you, frown.
“I need to go to the bathroom, take these waares out so I can go.”
Dilemma.
Does she really need to go to the bathroom or is this a ploy to get the IV out and then she will make a mad dash for the parking lot?
How would you bet?
And what if you bet wrong?
So the next visit from the nurse and Grandma Jo announced that she had to go to the bathroom and that “these waares need to come out.
The nurse placed her bet and said, “I’ll be back to take you to the restroom, but the IV stays in when we do that.”
Darth Vader death stare, again, which the nurse either didn’t recognize or ignored.
Eventually Grandma Jo was released and we got her home.
Grandma Jo made an impression over the years in the medical community in this little hospital system.
I watched her doctor tell her as she was very sick that she was likely terminal. He was in tears. This is a man in his forties and he was finding the words difficult and choking on his words. He finally delivered the message. Grandma Jo, looked at him and said in a “matter of fact”, way. “Sure I know that”.
As I watched her and her doctor I decided to make him my doc if I could and that happened. One day on one of my visits in his office a medical student was tagging along behind him. When they came into exam room he told me, I’ve told Bill here all about your mom.
“What a character!”, he said.
©David L Arment