A Night in the ER

No, I didn't let my Swine Flu fears get the best of me. While we were at J's band practice last night, I got a call that my grandma was taken to the hospital, and that she was PISSED about it. They said that we probably didn't need to come, but after a quick pow-wow, J and I decided to head over. She's turning 86 on Monday, and while she's in pretty good health, we would hate to dismiss it as nothing, and have it turn out to be something serious and not get to see her again.

She was apparently having chest pains, and FINALLY called my dad. He called an ambulance, and even though she was PISSED about it, it was the right thing to do, because she was admitted for observation. In the ER, she finally fessed up that she had been having chest pain, arm pain, and back pain for about a week, and that it had been hard to breathe for about a week. Her trying to clean the house (my sister had JUST been up there to clean the house for her the day before) had apparently made it worse.

I love my grandma, but she's an ex nurse (she was the youngest nurse in WW2, and eventually became the head of surgery here at the local hospital), and she can be DIFFICULT when it comes to medical issues because she (a) has a tendency to self-diagnose, and (b) has a tendency to not follow doctors' orders if the orders aren't what she thinks she needs. She was NOT happy with my parents that they had taken her into the hospital, so she was being especially difficult.

She was nice to J and I--I think she was happy that we had come (which makes the late night totally worth it). We only got to see her for a few minutes around 11pm, but I'll probably hear how she's doing later on today, and we'll either head over today or tomorrow. The consensus at this point is that she'll probably be fine, which is a blessing. My amazing boss said it's okay for me to come in late today in light of the situation, so I'll probably head in around noon and wrap some things up.