Trip Like I Do

Grandma

Well, I am still in LA and my Grandma is still in the hospital. She’s been in the hospital for 3 weeks now. I don’t think that things look good. She’s been on anti-biotics for 3 weeks, powerful anti biotics and she still has an infection somewhere that does not appear to be getting better at all.

Her X-rays haven’t improved either and she’s on a ventilator. She was taken off the ventilator for a few days, but she wasn’t getting enough oxygen, so she was intubated again.

My sister flew in from South Carolina with 2 of her kids tonight and my Grandma’s nephew might fly up from Colorado.

I don’t know how much longer my Grandma might last. It really breaks my heart seeing her in the hospital the way she is now. She is so sedated and weak that she can’t even open her eyes anymore. I held her hand today and asked her if she could squeeze it and she didn’t respond at all.

I am on a really, really, really slow dial up connection right now, so I can’t write much. I did get a journal to write some of my thoughts down and I am sure that I will go over a lot of the things I’ve been thinking about, but it won’t be until I get back to Hawaii. Of course, I don’t even know when that might be.

I thought that if she got better, I might have been able to come back this weekend, but she hasn’t.

Anyway, I am excited to see my sister and my nephew and niece, even though I realized that the last time I saw them was about 6 years ago at my paternal Grandpa’s funeral.

1 Comment January 27, 2007

HNL to LAX

So, this will probably be the last update for a little while.

My Mom and I fly out tonight in about 4 hours actually – which of course means we have to leave the house in 2 hours. Nope, not packed yet, but I have most of my stuff in a pile waiting to be put into the giant duffel.

I am still pretty exhausted although I am perking up a little now that I had some sushi.

I gotta say though – big fucking props to Northwest airlines for 1) having an available flight and 2) having fares at regular price – even for this last minute trip. I was worried that the tickets would be like $1000 each for a last minute flight, but the two tickets combine came out to about $550. Thank goodness.

We haven’t heard anything else since this afternoon, so I hope that is a good sign.

January 12, 2007

Updates

I don’t think I am going to be posting much over the next week or two.

We got a call this morning that my Grandma went into respiratory and I guess cardiac arrest early this morning. I say I guess cardiac arrest because they coded her this morning after the respiratory arrest. She is currently in ICU and they are going to do some kind of procedure on her to see if they can figure out what is going on.

Apparently her chest x-rays are getting worse every day and there is some kind of air bubble by one of her lungs that is getting progressively larger. She is also intubated right now.

Yes, I am freaking out a bit. I just don’t know what to do. We keep asking if we should come up now, but we keep getting told to hold off, wait another day and see. I just have this feeling that we are going to be getting “the call” later today and it will be too late for us to go there to say our goodbyes to her.

I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do.

My Mom and I are going to wait another couple of hours, but we are most likely going to be flying out tonight. I am so freaking tired though. I couldn’t sleep again last night and only got a couple of hours of sleep.

1 Comment January 12, 2007

Insomnia

I have been feeling pretty crappy lately. I think it’s partly because my insomnia has come back with a vengeance this week. I will be really tired, but just won’t be able to fall asleep. Of course when I do fall asleep, I can sleep normally, but it’s getting to that point when I can sleep that just kills me.

I was feeling pretty worried about my Grandma. My aunt took my Grandma to the ER that night she called and my Grandma was admitted right away with pneumonia. She’s still in the hospital but might be discharged either today or tomorrow. She was apparently very, very weak on Monday and my cousin said that the gurgling was very apparent. She’s been on antibiotics and has gotten better though. I was pretty worried for awhile there.

I thought for awhile she might come home early, but considering that she’s been hospitalized, I think she’ll be coming back as regularly scheduled.

My insomnia has taken my energy away from doing further work on the room – well that and my obsession with getting rd of her old checks – which took considerably longer than I thought it would. I had 3 kitchen sized bags full of shredder confetti by the time I got done. Um, Yikes!

I didn’t take any pictures of the room before I started, so I thought I would show some post clean up pictures now.

Here are the stairs leading to my room.

Here’s the view from the first doorway. Basically before I cleaned up, there was just one path from this room to the next. It was lined up with the filing cabinet.

Here’s another view of the first room of the closet. The back shelf was blocked off by two metal shelves full of stuff and what kind of pissed me off was that the majority of these cardboard boxes on the shelves themselves were empty.

Here’s a view of the second room. Again there basically was one small path in the middle of the room to get to anything in there. There also was a twin bed in there that took up a lot of space.

Here’s the view of the built in desk on the wall adjoining the first closet room. Rayne just had to be in every picture in there. Before I started, there was a coffee table under the desk filled with more crap and the shelves has some books on them.

This is all of the crap I took out for the bulk trash pickup. Well, not really all of it. I did take a few more things out there after I took this picture. That’s a lot of crap. Plus, imagine that this plus this represents maybe a third of all of the crap that I’ve taken out of those rooms over the last 6 months or so. Now imagine all of this stuff covered in a fine layer of dust and some items having a thing layer of mold/mildew on them. Ewww. That’s pretty much why I had such a hard time working down there in the first place. It was just overwhelming to me and it didn’t help that I just never felt that I could really breathe down there – even with my mask on.

But now that most of the crap is gone, I can slowly visualize how I want the place to look like when I am done. I still need to take the dresser out and pull the carpet out obviously. I am pretty much going to keep the first room the way it is right now. I mean we do need the storage space, but depending on how much room I will have left, I am hoping to make part of the room my mini art studio.

Even though I know a dark color will make the room seem smaller, I am thinking of painting it a medium to dark turquoise and maybe stenciling some images along the top border. To save space I am thinking about getting one of those convertible futon chairs. But I think what has me most excited is that I will finally have a place to put my pictures up.

Just for shits and giggles here are a couple of cat pictures.

Rayne has decided that she needs me to pet her while she eats. Of course when I do that she will then lie down and start “making biscuits” – mostly in her food. I wasn’t able to get a good shot of it, but here is a picture of her with her paw in her food.