Such a long day…
July 19, 2006
As of 3 minutes ago, I’ve been awake for more than 38 hours without any sleep.
My grandmother was admitted into the hospital AGAIN yesterday evening. She fell and hit her head hard and was bleeding. A CT scan showed she had internal bleeding and blood clots and a surgery was carried out at 10pm on the same day to remove the clots and drain out the blood before the brain exploded. It was the only thing to do or death would have taken her.
I only found out that she was admitted after I came home from tutoring. A lot of thoughts crossed my mind when my father told me what had happened. I couldn’t get to the hospital in time so I couldn’t see her before she went in for surgery. I was scared and so many what-ifs haunted me the whole night. I couldn’t sleep.
The surgery took 2 hours and doctors said she would come out of it a few hours later when the sedatives wore off. So, my mom and I went back to the hospital at around 4.30am. She was still sleeping. We couldn’t do anything but just watch her. We decided to go get some food knowing well enough that it would a long day. We were told to come back between 9 to 10am so that we could get more information from the surgeon.
However, when we got back to the hospital, we found out that we missed the doctor’s round. He came in early and left by 8.30am. The nurse told us that he would be back for another round in the afternoon between 3 – 4. We decided that we should go home and rest because there wasn’t anything we could do.
By 2.30 we returned to the hospital to wait. My grandmother was still unconscious. We waited for 2 hours when the surgeon made his rounds again. He said that her condition had improve compared to the previous night BUT made a point to highlight to us that things will not go back to what it was before as the brain is such a complicated organ. She may show some improvements now but nothing can be sure. She could be gone by the end of the week or she will survive and be bedridden for the rest of her life. She could be in a state of coma for a long time. There are a lot of posibilities he said.
It has certainly not been a good past year for this family. It has been crisis after crisis after crisis. I can only hope for things to get better but it is quite difficult to be strong at a time when thinigs seem to get worse and worse.
There is nothing anyone can do other than pray and hope. It is in God’s hands now.
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