The great trip...

I mentioned before on this blog (but don't look for the post, it was in the "pre-deleted days") about my Grandmother and her health issues. In case you don't remember, or weren't a reader back then, here is the Cole's Notes version. A couple years ago she started getting sick, turned out she had EXTREMELY high blood pressure (largely uncontrolled) which lead to her kidneys not functioning. So we had a long time of ups and downs, and more then one, "come say good-bye to grandma intensive care stays) and now she is on dialysis three times and week and seems to be doing quite well.

So now she is on dialysis three times a week, and because of some issue with the times of her treatment and such, she isn't able to take the transportation the hospital offers. So our family has set up a schedule, my grandfather takes her to all her appointments, and my mom and her two sisters each have a day of the week that they pick her up. My mom's day is Thursday.

So yesterday it was Thursday, time for my mom to pick her up. Only mom had a sewing class, so she asked my dad to do it. But Dad had some work obligations, so he asked Jamie to do it (Jamie and my dad work together), so when Jamie called to ask "where do I go to pick up Grandma?" I laughed, and told him to just come home and stay with Donovan and I would go get Grandma (I've picked her up before so I knew where to go).

I get to the hospital, and they were late starting her on dialysis, so she still had some time left before she was done. We sat and chatted, and she caught me up with the family gossip, and I let her know what Donovan had been up to lately, and she snuck in a "he needs a playmate" remark, and then laughed and said, "but that's easy for me to say, you do what's right for your family". I watched her machine pretty closely and noticed her blood pressure was 115/75 which sounds really good, but for her, that's low. I think her body became so accustomed to high blood pressure, when it gets in the "normal" rage, she reacts as if it were low. But she seemed fine, so I didn't mention anything.

I left the room to wait in the waiting area while they un-hooked her, and met her at the elevators to take her down to the car. When she was walking with the nurse towards me, I thought it looked like she wasn't walking as well as she was the last time I picked her up from dialysis. I asked her if she was feeling ok, and if she wanted a wheelchair or anything, but she insisted she was fine, and her cane was all she needed.

So we get down off the elevator, and are walking in the main area of the hospital and as we were transitioning from the tile floor to the mat outside the doorway, I felt her tripping....

My stomach dropped. I grabbed her, but it was too late, she was already past the point of stopping. I did the only thing I could, and while trying to stop her from falling, I fell under her, so she mostly landed on me, rather then directly on the floor.

I felt sick. A lovely lady rushed to help us, and called her husband to help too. I screeched "don't grab her arms, she just had dialysis!" and we manged to get her back on her feet.

Still with my stomach flip flopping and my heart beating in my throat, and my mind racing about possible hip fractures, a trip to the ER and having to call the rest of the family explaining how a simple "pick Grandma up from the hospital", led to a visit to the ER and x-rays. I asked if she was ok, and she smiled "oh yes, I'm fine" followed by "sometimes those feet just don't do what I want them to do". I SLOWLY walked her over to a couch, checked again to make sure she was ok, which she insisted she was, and left her to run and pull the car up as close to the front doors as possible.

I thought about taking her to the ER anyway, even though she insisted she was fine, just to be safe. In the end, I decided if she was able to walk to the bench, she was probably ok. Also, I knew by the way my knee was throbbing, it was me that took the brunt of the fall.

We got back to her home without any more incidents. And she is fine now. But man on man, was that scary!

Everyone was very thankful that I was there and able to help and that I handled the situation, but I still feel like I let her down.

Wonder if I'll be asked to pick her up again anytime soon?