caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- just when you think you're out... This is probably really Eurocentric and politically incorrect, but it's pretty funny. So, Grandma's in the hospital. I haven't said much about Grandma lately, but it's not surprising, really, that's she's that sick again. She's being doing terribly lately, mostly because she's become so addled that she doesn't know what day it is, and so isn't taking her medicine correctly. She insists she is, of course, but there's no way. Talked to Dad last night and apparently it isn't actually life-threatening, although they do think she had a mild heart attack at some point in the past few weeks. Maybe I'm a terrible person, but when Dad called last night my first thought was that it would be just like her to go and die two weeks before Minnie's wedding and ruin the whole thing. I know that sounds evil, but keep in mind that Grandma did the exact same thing before both Kitty's and my wedding, and Minnie's graduation. I don't think she does in consciously, but that subconsiously she knows that the family attention is not focused on her, and so she feels sorry for herself and goes into her "I should just die and get out of everyone's way" modes, and so she stops taking her meds. So of course she gets really sick, and there the family is back focused on her again. I'm not as heartless as I sound, really. It's just that we've been through this so many times now. Grandma is mean to everyone in the family, doesn't appreciate anything anyone does for her, has no quality of life, and keeps telling everyone she wants to die. There's only so much of that you can take. And worse, she's starting to become a danger not only to herself, but to other people. She nearly burned the house down one night last week. She was up at three in the morning and decided to cook. She put some oil in a pan and turned on the burner, then WENT OUTSIDE for some incomprehesible reason. A few minutes later, Auntie woke up when the smoke alarm went off. She opened her bedroom door and found the house filled with oily black smoke. Made her way into the kitchen and managed to put out the fire, which was already shooting high enough out of the pan to melt the bottom of the microwave. Five more minutes and it would have caught the cabinets, and the house would have gone up like a Roman Candle. There's so much trash and paper in that house that it's a major firetrap. About this time Grandma wanders back into the kitchen and wants to know what's going on. She claims to have no memory of starting the oil, and yells at Auntie and refuses to talk about it. Later, when my dad talked to her, she told him she'd turned the oven on and gone outside. He asked her what she was doing outside at three in the morning, and she said, "It wasn't three in the morning, it was seven o'clock. I was cooking dinner." She also refuses to stop driving, and none of her children have the guts to make her stop. The woman is 80 years old and can't go to the bathroom by herself, but she's driving a big ol' Cutlass around. It's a wonder she hasn't gotten into an accident. It really is. Okay, end of rant. This is one of those things I keep telling myself I can't do anything about; people make their own choices and Auntie has chosen to turn a blind eye to all of this and pretend like she can take care of Grandma just fine on her own. No one can talk to her about it. She gets angry and defensive; when Dad said to her that he really thinks Grandma needs someone to be with her 24/7 (which she obviously does), Auntie's response was "I'll quit my job." But as we've seen, Auntie being home doesn't stop Grandma from doing insane things like deciding to cook dinner at 3 am. Auntie has to sleep sometime. Can't worry about it anymore. I have too many other things going on. Like designing programs for Minnie's wedding, which I foolishly offered to do when she was getting all panicky about it. Because I have so much free time. Gah. And I still have to find shoes to go with the damn bridesmaid dress, and they have to be silver. Not gray, or off-white, SILVER. At least I got out of planning the bachelorette party.
11:00 a.m. - 2001-12-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||