Confessions of a Grandma

Mike was discharged from the hospital yesterday and was very glad to get home.  He is getting a long, good night's sleep.  He was impressed with the care taken, but no matter how pleasant they try to make it, a hospital stay is still a stay in the hospital.  Sleep is always interrupted for some necessary monitoring, not to mention the needs of other patients. He is walking about and sat outside on the deck last night for a time.  I think his feet still hold him back more than the heart surgery. The heat has broken, but it is not the bright sunny day we were promised...at least not yet. I met my son for supper on Monday night and had a very pleasant time and a really good salad supper.  We treated ourselves to creme brûlée for dessert and it was delicious. On Sunday, Mike called me in the morning and told me not to visit that day.  He was still in the ICU--only because they did not have a regular bed available until that evening--and Saturday night h...

Last Thursday, Mike left for an appointment with the kidney specialist at 10 a.m.  He had his blood work done the day before.  It was supposed to be a fairly routine visit, I thought.  At noon, I got a phone call from him.  He was sitting in the emergency room at the hospital where the specialist had sent him. This is not the kind of phone call I enjoy getting. Two hours later, he called to say that they were going to keep in the hospital overnight.  The doctor took his blood pressure--very high--and a pulse--racing like crazy.  (Although Mike says he had no symptoms, no idea that his heart was beating nearly out of his chest.) Four hours after that, he called once again to let me know he was finally in a room.  Six hours sitting in the emergency room staring at the walls, no food, nothing to drink--I'm sure that helped the blood pressure situation.  Plenty of nurses, though, all looking for veins to hook up IV's and whatnot.  Let's hop...

When my son was born, at the end of the '60s, it was common that the hospital stay would be five days for a routine, no complications birth.  By the time my daughter was born, in the early '70s, that was becoming not the practice, but I had insurance and my doctor told me he'd keep me in hospital for five days.  Really, it wasn't bad.  I got to lay around in bed all day and watch television.  My meals were all brought to me on a tray.  Babies were brought in on a feeding schedule or for showing off to adoring relatives who stopped by in the evenings.  Otherwise they were all kept in a nursery, and the crying emanating from there surely was not my baby.  It was a five day reprieve from reality and after going through childbirth, I deserved it. Also it gave me time for the drugs to wear off. I'm thinking about this for two reasons.  First, my sister called to announce the birth of her third grand child--a boy, son of her youngest son....