About a month ago my grandmother fell in her house. It was pretty serious. No one is really sure what or how it happened since she lives alone, but I suspect that she got up in the middle of the night, fell, and went back to sleep on the floor because she likes pain killers. When she awoke sometime later she had the wits to press the button on the special necklace she wears and ask for help. An ambulance took her to the hospital.
She was very bruised and sore, but nothing broke. They kept her in the hospital for a week running all sorts of tests, but they couldn't find anything. She is not bouncing back at all. She is in rough shape. She can not get out of a chair without significant help, then she does the old lady shuffle slide for a walk. She used to have this great cocky jaunty kind of saunter, and the shuffle slide really rips at my heart.
Her memory is going pretty fast too. Sometimes in the middle of a conversation she will suddenly stop and demand "Who is this?" When I say it is me she acts all surprised. If I call her earlier than my usual time, she forgets. On Monday she forgot that we saw her Sunday. She thought I was lying. I also noticed that grandma tends to cycle her routine questions more and more. If I tell her something new she doesn't understand it. It always makes me cry when we hang up.
Now she has an aide for 10 hours a day, but the biggest danger to her is the middle if the night. She has been falling in the middle of the night for years. If my phone rings in the morning I hold my breath.
The poor aide takes so much abuse from my grandma. Grandma pushes her away when she offers assistance on an uneven sidewalk and grandma fights over all the dumb little things. They fight over the temperature of the apartment, grandma prefers it in the high 90's. One day the aide called me in tears because grandma wouldn't eat. The aide tried to give her a nutrition drink and grandma acted like she was offering poison. Grandma is mean. Grandma doesn't like depending on a stranger for help. She doesn't want to have this little shadow following her, waiting for her to fall. She has been alone too long.
They make a pretty interesting pair, grandma and the aide. Two bickering old ladies, just slowly shuffling down the street.
God it sounds like me and Edna.
Posted by: danelle | October 27, 2005 at 11:04 PM