Addicted to Ink

Thursday, September 29, 2005

relatives by choice

Tonight, Mike & I went to go visit Grandma at the hospital.

Uncle Dean meets us in the lobby & we go up the elevator to the second floor. She's been in the stepdown unit since Monday night, and for the second day in a row was convinced that she was going home, whether the doctor wanted her to or not. Each day, convincing the nurses to lose the IV, getting dressed, calmly waiting for the doctor to discharge her. Now that's faith!

The three of us walk into the room - Grandma didn't know we were coming. Her face lights up like a July noontime sun, and she says, loudly, lovingly, "MICHAEL!!!"

With a sheepish grin on his face, my 6'2 husband walks over to my 79-year-old, 5'1 Grandmother and gives her a hug. She refuses to let go for like, five minutes. And for the next oh, maybe seven minutes , Michael is the only one in the room.

My Aunt Wilma is cracking up.

"Well, hello to you, too, Amber," she says, barely able to breathe from laughing too hard. "How are you doing, granddaughter?"

I shrug, smiling. "I'm used to it - I don't mind!"

And I don't. Michael didn't know his paternal grandmother well, and his maternal grandmother died many years ago. It's good for a guy to have a grandma who adores him.

Finally, about two hours after he said he was going to be there (I'm not saying he didn't have good reasons) the doctor comes into her room and breaks her heart.

"Not today," he tells her. "We've got your liver under control, but I don't like what your heart is doing. We're going to have a cardiologist look at you in the morning."

S0 the guys go into the hallway, AW and the nurses and I get her into her backless hospital nightgown again, and she braces herself for a new IV.

We stay for another hour, in which I am sometimes my mom, sometimes my cousin Andra, and sometimes myself, but Mike is always Mike.

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