In early spring of 2007, Grandma didn't feel right. She felt weak, and after a few days of increasing tiredness, she knew something was wrong. My mom brought her to the emergency room at Bradley Hospital, the hospital she worked at, to get things checked out. By the time they arrived, Grandma was in pretty bad shape and getting worse. She could hardly stand, talk, or stay awake. Within hours she was on a vent to help her breath.
Grandma was placed in the Intensive Care Unit and slowly gained her strength over the coming days. She claimed, though, she wasn't feeling normal.
"I don't know Cathy," she worried to my mom. "Its got to be my hernia or something."
Grandma didn't eat much in those coming days either, but the doctors and nurses were sure everything was going well after they got her x-rayed and checked out her hernia. Grandma's doctor wanted her to stay in the ICU one more day, having the inclination, he said, that she really should stay a bit longer. His inclination proved accurate when Grandma began throwing up--her entire system backed up--proving that something was wrong.
That day Grandma went into hernia surgery to remove a blockage in her intestines. The doctors warned that Grandma was weak, and may not be able to handle such a surgery at her age. The doctor went in quick, he said, did what he had to do, removed the blockage, and closed her up as soon as possible. The operation went fast and was a success.
Grandma wasn't out of the water yet, a few days later I wondered if her streak of successful surgeries would run out when I found out she needed a pacemaker, or rather, her heart did. Could someone ever get used to going into surgery? Grandma may not have had all the luck in the world when it came to winning at the casino, but she sure seemed to have her fair share of luck at the hospital---and good doctors. Days after her pacemaker was put in, she was ready to go to The Summit in Plantsville, a nursing home facility in town, not tow miles from Autumn Drive, to recoup for a couple of weeks.
The day Grandma went to The Summit in Plantsville, Pop Pop called my Aunt Steffie complaining of chest pain. She brought him to Bradley. There they x-rayed his chest and decided immediately that he needed surgery. That night he was transferred to Saint Raphael's--the next day, after less than twenty-four hours, he went into triple bypass heart surgery. His heart, the doctors said, was weak, and on the verge of giving out. Two of his four arteries were clogged, another one was partially blocked. He was lucky something didn't happen already, they said. The surgery was an absolute emergency.
When I heard the news I shuttered. Grandma had gone through big operations like this before, including a triple bypass, but Pop Pop had been healthy for the most part--or at least lucky enough to avoid major surgeries. That was good for him, because like me, he hated doctor's offices and anything to do with cutting your body open. I thought about where he was at that moment, how nervous he might be, who or what he might be thinking about. I wondered if the nervousness he must have been feeling that night could have caused a heart attack or some other issue--I know my heart would be pounding from the moment I heard I needed to go under the knife, as loud as Grandma tenderizing meat with her wooden hammer.
Later, my mom told me, that surgery wasn't the only option. Medication and therapy could have averted the major heart operation, but there was always the risk of dropping dead anywhere.
"He didn't like the idea that he could drop at any time," my mom explained. "I think that's why he wanted the surgery, as nerve-racking as it was."
It made sense that the only thing worse than going through the surgery was not doing it and always thinking that any moment could be his last. Not knowing where he might be in the next week, few days, or couple of hours. That death might be just around the next corner, in the room down the hall, waiting just outside the front door. The doctors even said, that if Pop Pop went through with the operation, he would have a better quality of life, be able to do more, breathe easier, not have to worry about getting suddenly tired or losing his breath.
The surgery itself was a success, the complications afterward were a bigger problem. Pop Pop couldn't breath on his own. Tubes ran their way down his throat, causing apparent irritation and dried, white-cracked saliva around his mouth where they entered. A smaller gray tube entered his nose from another hanging bag beside the bed, supplying nutrients that kept him fed with only the essential vitamins, minerals, and supplements to keep his body going.
Grandma, after two weeks at The Summit, came to live with us for another two weeks, a segue between the immediate care at the nursing home, and going back home to live by herself. The visiting nurse came and Grandma regained her strength.
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