I’m sorry it’s been so long since I have been on here, but right now I can’t go into why I’ve been gone for so long. Right now I need to vent and at the risk of overloading my SMMom’s group with what’s going on and just the need to get it out, I’m bringing it here. This place that has always been a safe haven for me. A place where I stopped being accountable to everyone else and just wrote what was going on.
SO here it is. My paternal grandmother, the woman I lived with and depended on from the time I was 10, was hospitalized last Monday morning at 4am after a fall. After some tests we were happy to discover that she had not broken any bones, however that happiness did not last. Her blood pressure was 43/38, her heart rate was incredibly low, she is confused (and had to be restrained at one point), and they suspected she had internal bleeding; the doctors were worried. Over the course of the last 5 days, we have learned that her cancer has spread rapidly from her scalp to her pelvis area and there isn’t much hope of successful treatment at this point.
Today she started thinking and telling everyone she was dead and I’m preparing to stay the night in the hospital. Alone. And honestly, I’m scared to death. I haven’t had anxiety attacks for the last four years and now they’re back with a vengeance. I’m having 3, maybe 4, a day now. I told Jon I was having a little trouble with them, but I don’t want him to worry…so I won’t be sharing with him the extent. Sometimes they’re so bad and I’m shaking so hard I can’t do anything…and it upsets me. I beat these things years ago without meds…and now they’re back and I don’t feel like we have enough help to take care of her.
Right now she’s 45 or so miles away and I’m driving down at least once a day, I miss my kids, and I’m falling behind in school. Oh…and gas is way expensive. There are only 4 of us (not including our spouses) left in the family.
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I wrote the top of this post last week…but honestly, so little has changed that I decided to just continue from there.
Mommaw is home now, so it will be easier {theoretically} for us to stay with and take care of her. The incredibly nice Hospice nurse came in yesterday to do her initial evaluation and shared with my Aunt that she did not believe my grandmother will live much more than two more weeks. Honestly, it wasn’t a shock. You can look at her and know she isn’t going to last much longer. She’s a shell of the powerful, headstrong, loving woman she was even two weeks ago.
In many ways, to me, she has reverted back to an almost childlike state. The innocent or spiteful expressions that she casts resemble a child so much…it’s almost heartbreaking. There are times when you get a glimmer…but she’s not really there any more. And really…that’s for the best. Mommaw would hate this. This dependency that has formed. The role reversal that has taken place. The not fighting….letting cancer win.
In her case, cancer will win. It will take away one of my girls’ favorite people, a much loved and adored great-grandmother…cancer will rob my cousin’s little girl Baby A of ever knowing this woman who so shaped the women we have become. It will take away a second mother to me, and a grandmother, a confidant, and friend. We will lose so much. And yet, she will gain eternity in Heaven with God and Poppie.
I’m sad. And yet, not. We’ve been fighting this battle for 3 years. I’ve watched the stress nearly kill my Aunt and the cancer succeed now in killing my grandmother. We’re tired. All of us. What will we do without her here? Who will boss us? And guilt us, the way only she knows how, into doing what’s right? I guess now it’s up to us to use what she’s taught us.
I’m getting ready to head over to L’s house for a while and sit with Mommaw for a few hours. She doesn’t say much anymore and I wonder if she knows what is really going on…somewhere deep inside I’m certain she does. Tomorrow we will take the girls to visit…perhaps for the last time.
Please pray for our family. Pray for my girls who will miss really knowing this woman who so shaped me.
Has your family experienced a loss that is devastating to your small people? How did you explain it to them? How much did you tell them?
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You have so much to deal with my god. Hang in there.
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