I remember when Grandmom started getting sick again. She had been in and out of the hospital and rehabilitation homes periodically over the years, but had always managed to return to health and get released to go back home. This time, she had been in the hospital a little longer, and had already had to return from rehab back to the hospital once.
Grandad always stayed up at the hospital with Grandmom when she wasn't feeling well. He would go home to sleep sometimes at night, but other than that he was there with her, keeping her company and making sure she was well taken care of. My granddad had ALWAYS been the epitome of health...he still went walking daily, was so hyper and outgoing, and had never had any type of major health issues. On Wednesday, January 25 (2012), he started feeling like he had a stomach bug, and he didn't want to get grandmom sick, so he stayed home. He was still sick the next few days, so she had been alone other than when my mom and aunt were able to take turns going up to visit with her.
For grandmom, this was way different...she wasn't used to going more than a few hours without seeing granddad. So that Friday, the 27th, after my regular checkup and ultrasound to see how the twins were doing, Dustin and I stopped by to visit with her for a while. Grandmom was so excited to meet the twins, and she would tell every single nurse, nurses assistant, and doctor that she saw that I was having twins, and they were boys, and how happy she was.
I showed her my ultrasound pictures, and we talked for a while. She told me about her mom having her twin boys, and what her dad said when people asked him how to have twins. She was such a character, and could always make us laugh.
She told us then how much she had missed seeing granddad in the 3 days he had now been sick, but we just reassured her that he would be feeling better soon, and would be back up there with her. How wrong we were, and didn't even know it.
I remember that Sunday morning, the 29. I remember getting a phone call from my dad that my mom and aunt had taken granddad to the ER, because he was still sick on his stomach, and now his chest was hurting a little while breathing. I remember him telling me that granddad had had a heart attack...but, the heart attack had actually been that Wednesday, when he first started getting sick.
They called it a silent heart attack, because he didn't have the usual signs and symptoms that people show. At the time, he was stable, and doing pretty well. He was talking to the nurses and doctors about Carolina and how much of an avid Tarheels fan he was. They were planning to put a stent in the next day.
That night, we got another phone call from my dad. Grandad had crashed, and wasn't doing so well. They discovered he had a 100% blockage to one of the major arteries leading to his heart, and they were doing an emergency procedure to put in the stent.
After this, he was on a ventilator, and his heart was only functioning around 5%. Things weren't looking good, but he was hanging on. And we had hope that he was going to continue to heal, and his heart function increase, and he would be just fine. He had to be fine...he was grandmoms caretaker. This all had to be a dream.
I remember going to visit grandmom that Tuesday at her rehab home. She had been transferred there to regain some strength through physical therapy until she was able to go back home. That night, though, I knew there was something very, very wrong.
Dustin and I took Makenna with us, thinking she would cheer grandmom up. Grandmom knew what was going on with granddad, but not really the severity of it. No one wanted to get her too upset until she was back to herself again, because she was already having trouble with her heart and her blood pressure.
When we visited her, she was not mentally stable. And that's one thing that grandmom always was...she was never confused, and she was never really out of it. But that night, she thought she was sewing, and kept asking us to help look for her needle. She saw people in the room who weren't there, including a little boy in the closet. And, she didn't know who I was.
I called for a nurse, and they said she had been that way all day. They thought it was just how she was, but I told them this was not right. Something was very, very wrong. I called my mom and aunt, and they said to have the nurse check her blood pressure, and that they were on their way. Turns out her blood pressure was so high that she was beyond stroke level, and they had to call an ambulance to rush her back to the hospital.
I'm not sure if I mentioned this or not, but grandmom and granddad were both in CMC. Grandad was on the 7th floor, in the Dickson Heart Unit, and grandmom was on different floors at different times.
I was so torn up from seeing grandmom that way the night before, and my mom and aunt had their hands full with granddad. He was declining, and losing function of his kidneys. They tried dialysis, but his body was too weak to handle it. So, they had to give him more time to rest and were planning to try again.
So ,that Wednesday, the 1, I stayed up at the hospital most of the day with grandmom. Dustin was with me, and we made sure she had what she needed, and was doing ok. She was very tired after the previous nights episode, but she was happy to see us when she was awake. They did a swallow study on her, which she passed, and diagnosed her with a UTI. She was on medicine though and starting to improve. She would ask us if we had seen granddad, and talk about him often. It was so hard to listen to, because it was hard knowing how bad he was doing, but trying to keep grandmom positive.
And keep in mind, I was 32 weeks pregnant with the twins at this time.
That was the day that we went down to see granddad for the first time. It may sound terrible of me that I hadn't been to see him until now, but he wasn't awake, and was on the ventilator, and just wasn't doing well. And that was something that scared me. Seeing a man who was usually so healthy in a hospital bed, with 5% heart function and not breathing on his own, was scary.
I cried. I held his hand. I tried to be strong, but it was too much. I couldn't bare seeing him that way, and it tore me up. We headed home afterwards, because I was completely exhausted.
The next day, I went back up to see grandmom and granddad. Grandmom had been transferred from the 10th floor down to the 3rd, and was doing much better. They wouldn't allow her to go and see granddad, which I know was hard on her. But she had faith that he would improve, and come walking through her door eventually.
I didn't stay for long, as I wasn't feeling too well. The stress and exhaustion had gotten to my 32-weeks-with-twins body. By that evening, I was having contractions. But nothing regular, and nothing strong, so I thought rest would make them go away. And, for the night, it did.
That Friday, I stayed at home most of the day. I took it easy, as I was every now and then still contracting. I went to visit my sister and her family that evening, and the contractions got worse quickly. By 8pm, they were almost every 3-4 minutes and lasting over 45 seconds each time, so I called the doctor and headed over to the same hospital, CMC, to the labor and delivery unit.
There, I was immediately put on monitor after monitor...one for my contractions, one for my heart rate and BP, one for each baby in my tummy. My heartrate was already over 140, so they weren't able to give me the 1st choice medicine to stop my labor. That medicine was known to speed up your heart severely, so it wasn't safe for me at the time.
So, I was given a second medicine (no clue what it was called!) and given an hour for it to work. Nothing happened. The contractions were still coming, and coming stronger. They checked me, and I had gone from 1 cm to 3 cm.
The next step was to put me on a magnesium drip to stop my labor. That stuff was nasty. It made me feel bad, and I wasn't allowed out of my bed, so I was stuck using a bed pan. No fun, but it worked. My contractions slowed, and were almost completely gone by the middle of the night.
I will never forget the nurse I had overnight that night. I can't remember her name, but I remember her amazing personality, and how perfect she was for me that evening. My mom spent the night in my room, so that she could keep checking in on grandmom and granddad.
Around 4am, we heard them call a Code Blue to the Dickson Heart Unit. I told my nurse my granddad was there, and that I hoped it wasn't him. My mom was asleep at the time, but I didn't sleep that night at all. The magnesium had me feeling too yucky, and I couldn't get comfortable.
This amazing woman who I had the privilege of having as a nurse told me she was going to call and check on things in the Dickson Heart Unit, to make sure it wasn't my granddad, and make sure that he was ok. She came back in and took my hand, and told me that unfortunately the call had been about my granddad, but that he was ok. I woke my mom up and told her, and she immediately went over to see him, and called my aunt up there. Around 6am, I heard the Code Blue called again. This time, a few minutes after, my mom came to tell me that she was going to be staying in there from then on. She said that they had made the decision, based on how poorly he was doing and the fact that really, only machines were keeping him alive anyways, and he wouldn't have wanted that, that from then on if he coded there would be no resuscitation.
I have never felt so numb in my life. I called Dustin, but he was still asleep. This nurse, who hadn't even known who I was just hours earlier, sat with me the whole time so that I wouldn't have to be alone. She held my hand, and listened to me, and told me things that were so comforting to my heart at the time. She stayed with me after her shift ended, and just sat with me until my mom came back.
Mom returned a little before 8 am, and I knew on her face without her having to say anything. The nurse just hugged me, then hugged my mom, and cried with us. My mom said that he wasn't in any pain when he left us, and that he wasn't going to suffer anymore. And I knew that was what he would have wanted. But we knew that grandmom had to be told, and that she had heard the code blues, but hadn't known they were for him.
I don't even remember the rest of that day. I know that eventually they stopped my magnesium, and that family was in and out making sure I was ok, and sharing tears with me over granddad. And I guess the rest of the time I was sleeping. I remember waking up Sunday and being told that I would be transferred to the another room where they could monitor me but without all of the chaos and machines of the room I had been in. I was allowed to shower there, and walk around the room some, and actually use the toilet to pee. And they told me that I was to stay until the next day to ensure that my contractions didn't pick back up after the magnesium was out of my system.
Monday, the 6th, I was released. I was told to stay on bedrest, as I was still contracting but not often, and not hard. But before I left they wheeled me up to see grandmom. That was so hard. She knew by then, of course, and she was doing as well as she could be in a time like that. She cried, and held my hand, and told me how she had been worried about me. She told me how much she missed granddad, and how she couldn't believe he was really gone. It was heartbreaking.
I went home that day, and showered, and enjoyed time with my girls. We ate dinner, and watched TV, and my shoulder blade hurt so much.
I've already written out my labor story, so I won't go into all of that.
But, the next day, February 7, 2012, Mikah James and Khoen Lee entered our world, so tiny and perfect.
Mikah James McGinnis, 4:45 pm, born naturally, 4 lbs, 16"
Khoen Lee McGinnis, 4:59 pm, born by emergency C-section, 4 lbs 6 oz, 18"
Grandmom never got to meet the boys. She wanted to so badly, and I wanted her to. And it is a little ironic to me that they spend the next month in the same hospital, all 3 of them, yet they never got to meet her.
She was on the 3rd floor in the infectious disease unit, and obviously 2 NICU babies couldn't be taken there to visit. We thought she would eventually be released, as would the babies, and they would get to meet at home, where she could love on them and they could heal her heart just a little.
Mikah got to come home on March 7, a month after he was born, and Khoen came home 5 days later on the 12. And on March 19, 2012, with me, my cousin, my mom, my 2 aunts, my uncle, the pastor and his wife all in the room, grandmom went to be with granddad in Heaven.
I don't think I have ever had the chance to fully mourne them, so I sit here in tears typing these words.
You'd think that I would have had time right then, but I didn't. The twins were finally at home, and life was so chaotic that everything seemed like a dream.
Then, on June 2, Khoen passed away from SIDS, and joined grandmom and granddad in Heaven. And from that moment on, my heart has been grieving my son, and I don't think my mind, to this day, has realized that grandmom and granddad are really gone.
It did make me feel a little better knowing that they were in Heaven to greet Khoen, because I know that grandmom is taking excellent care of him until I get there.
I just miss all 3 of them immensely. And I wish so much I knew the nurse who took care of me that nights name, so that I could thank her for the impact she made on me. She may never know it, but she was exactly what I needed at that moment.
She didn't know, and I didn't know, but God knew.
He never fails. And He will carry me through this life, and this pain, until I can reunite with my son and my grandparents again in Heaven. <3
No comments:
Post a Comment