Family thing...

My great-grandmother (98 years old) had a nasty fall last night and was taken to the emergency room. My cousin called around, and stated it was a life-or-death situation. My mother, sister and I went down to see her along with my other family members... and my cousin's friend and her pastor. She awoke a few times but couldn't communicate due to a breathing tube down her throat. We stayed a few hours just talking amongst ourselves, and 2 of us at a time could visit her, then left when no updates were coming in (plus mom couldn't stand the heat in the place and was getting sick).

Last night i got a call from my cousin again, and she left a message stating great-grandma was in stable condition now and we could go visit her today. She's staying in intensive care, so she's not out of the woods just yet.


That's all the important things to mention. Now for the silly details of drama and silly situations.

While hanging outside with my mother and cousin-in-law, a woman came up to us asking how long of a line was the ER having with its patients. We told her and then she said the hospital in another county was having a lock-down, only accepting patients and no visitors allowed so she ended up here... however she knows this hopsital is known to take forever compared to the other so just wanted to know. Then she started chatting with us about what the reasons it could be and times she and her friends been in the hospital and their experiences. I made the mistake of adding on to her story so she went right up to me and just kept chattering and chattering. Being the polite guy I am, I didn't want to tell her to stuff it so I had to listen to her life stories (some interesting, some she got so hung up on details it was annoying). Luckily, my cousin-in-law noticed I was trapped, so he sent my cousin to save me by saying she needed me for a moment. :P It wasn't horrible or anything, but after awhile, that lady really should have stopped talking. She apologized for it too as she just realized how much she was talking, so I chalk it up to being nervous and lonely since her girlfriend was in the ER.

My cousin's friend who was with us has been acting as caretaker to my great-grandmother for the last 4 months or so. In some sense, she is close to G-grandma I suppose, but she being a bit too pushy in conversations and for when we did visits. For one thing, any time I was trying to talk to someone, she would interrupt with a story of her own. In fact anytime someone was talking around her she would do that. Then, when it came to visiting G-grandma, she was trying to go for second visits when some people hadn't even gotten one. Mom believes that she is trying to make her way into the family or something just to get something out of G-grandma's will (which is pointless considering she won't be changing it anytime soon) or otherwise trying make her look so important and gather attention. These things were minor compared to what we heard her say, in that when G-grandma had her fall, this girl performed CPR on her because her heart-rate was faint...

I don't know my CPR too well, but isn't that only when the heart stops, or someone stops breathing or whatever? We (mother, sister and I) are starting to think this girl has hero syndrome or just is an attention whore of some sort. Mom said she wouldn't be surprised if we started hearing from our family, "Oh [girl's name here] saved G-grandma's life!"

The only other thing that stood out last night was the pastor. Similar to my cousin's friend, she was a bit pushy as well, making her way into the conversations and all... she acted like she had some sort of authority in the hospital but here's the odder thing... my G-grandma doesn't attend to that church really, my cousin, her sister and mother do. In fact, the pastor was annoying grandma (you know, g-grandma's actual daughter) with all these prayer things since grandma I don't think cares too much about religion, it's more of a habit to go to church. Eh, she waited with us for two hours too, which I thought was a nice thing to do, but mom thinks she just either doesn't have a life, or is expect a big donation in collection plate for Sunday because of this or something.

That's all for now. I'm fine with this really, I'm not super close to my G-grandma like my cousin and her sister are... They were devastated about this. I'm more hoping she won't be in pain is all. She's 98, and has lived a very long (and interesting) life. If she dies... well... I'll be sad but not depressed over it.