Then life exploded.

Then the afternoon of February 20th, life exploded. The back story is that I'd been taking my grandmother to the ER rather regularly for dehydration and severe gastric pain. Our local hospital isn't much for ordering tests to find out what's wrong, because after all, she's 97 and who cares? By mid February though, her doctor and others have figured out that her gall bladder has given out, swollen, possibly infected, stones in it. So the arrangement is that on February 22rd, Monday, Granny will have surgery. This is the day of the week when  gall bladders are removed, after all, this isn't an emergency. I keep wondering by whose standards? She hurt so much!

Well, by the afternoon (2/20), Fay's chest pain won't go away and he consents to go up to the ER. So he spends the week end in the hospital having excess fluid wrung out of him with diuretics. By Monday, he's chipper and feisty and ready to go home. He's seen a different doctor every 12 hours, three of whom agree it's congestive heart failure and one who thinks it's his throat. I'm not much impressed with the hospitalist model for patient care.

It was a most amazing weekend. Without my youngest coming to help and my oldest calling me, telling me jokes I'm not sure I'd've survived January and February. 

By the beginning of March, Fay is all right, medication and diet tweaks have taken care of his chest pains. Granny's another story. We're (my children and I) are still trying to figure out what else is wrong since the the gall bladder removal didn't completely fix the gastric distress. It took to the end of March to get a functional regimen in place. Turns out Granny is having short term memory problems and hasn't been taking her medication anyway. She was madder than a porcupine when the doctor ordered her assisted living staff to dispense her pills. But, now that she's getting them, she's doing far better. 

In the mean time it's planting season and that's another post.