Tired and Down

I spent most of last night at that fun filled place, the Mission ER. It's just joyous over there, let me tell you, what with the vomiting toddlers and wailing babies and terrified old people and, yeah, I'm deeply impressed by the people who work there, because I estimate that I could take it for about 12 minutes before I freaked out, quit and needed years of therapy to recover.

Anyway, the QOB fell again; this time downstairs in my house where, with remarkable luck, we all were, meaning me, my daughter A (without whose extensive first aid training we'd be in way worse shape) and young M, who actually heard her fall and was right there. She didn't break anything - unlike my mother, her sister, the QOB doesn't seem to have any osteoporosis and I think it was years of a good hippie health food/Mediterranean diet as opposed to Mom & Dad's staunch American diet of three large servings of meat a day. Unfortunately, though, her blood pressure keeps crashing low whenever she stands up and that means that they kept her at the hospital overnight, where she still is and where I'm going as soon as I can, which is to say, in an hour or so when I can get out of work where I'm sitting with a giant industrial sized cup of coffee trying to wake up.

She was fine all weekend after her fall on Friday, if a little quieter than usual, but then last night she said she was feeling very weak and tired. So I brought her dinner downstairs and then, about half an hour later, she got up, tried to walk to the bathroom and fell. There ensued about forty bad minutes with A and I lifting her and getting her into the bathroom and then trying to get her out and then her sort of fainting and then us calling 911 who sent a fire engine and then an ambulance and about six very nice people who got her onto a stretcher and into the ambulance and off for her second ambulance ride in four days and what my new neighbors think of me now, god only knows, because there's part of my mother in me after all and I'm kind of thinking, ewwww, people who have a fire engine and ambulance at their houses within three weeks of moving in are kind of, like, "Jerry Springer called; he wants his star guests back." I recognize this is ridiculous but there you have it: I was properly raised and it scarred me for life. Then A & I followed the ambulance which drove sedately to the ER (I really wish I wasn't so familiar with the hospitals in Asheville and all the various routes to and from them and, god, I'm tired of hospitals, I mean really tired in a bone deep way) where my brother B met us and then we sat there, taking turns to go back to the QOB's ER cubicle, until about 1:30 in the morning when the doctor told me that they wanted to keep her overnight, since she still couldn't walk and wouldn't be safe at home. I nearly kissed him, actually, because I was dreading trying to bring her home and then trying to figure out bathroom access and worrying all night and so on. And then I fled to catch a few hours of sleep.

As of this morning, they're running tests and I put in a frantic phone call to my rehabbing angel A who is coming to, with young M and his friends, move everything that was in the spare room upstairs downstairs to what was the QOB's apartment and move everything that was in her apartment upstairs to what was going to be my little office/studio/craft room. Heavy sigh. I was really looking forward to having that room for my own, kind of like Virginia Woolf and, yeah, whatever. But this way if she falls again she'll fall on carpet or wood instead of on the concrete of downstairs and she'll never have to face stairs again period so there you have it.

I'm exhausted and feeling a bit dispirited by all this, I must say. I know I sound callous and awful and yes, I am worried about the QOB, but I don't think there's anything much genuinely wrong with her, or, worse really, whatever it is that's wrong with her goes by the name Old Age and there's nothing to be done. I love her and want her to be happy but, you know, I've spent a lot of time in hospitals these past four months and I'm tired.