Hospital

On November 24th I was in the living room with my mother. The TV was playing, I was listening to music, and my mother was in and out of sleep. She was mumbling nonsense in her slumber. I can't remember what she was babbling about. I think she was trying to argue that students should be airdropped to school.

I got frustrated with her. She was denying everything she said and told me she wasn't asleep. I decided to go to bed once she fell asleep. I figured she would stay that way.

While I'm laying in bed, wide awake, my mother screams for me. I figure she's dropped her drink or that one of the cats knocked something important over. I run out to the living room. Her bedroom light is off, the house is dark, and I can't see her. Only when I walk through the kitchen do I see my mother, lying in the kitchen floor.

Her knees had given way. She fell on the cold, hard tile. One of her many medications had some nasty side effects on her. It made her shake and weak in the joints. Taking less of the medication made the effects worse.

I called 911 on the home phone. I propped her head up with a pillow and waited for the paramedics to get to our house. I called my grandparents and they arrived before the paramedics left. I was in my pajamas; just a plain T-shirt and some basketball shorts. I grabbed a jacket and my flipflops and we were out the door. I even heavily considered going without a jacket or shoes. I figured that probably wouldn't go over too well with my grandparents.

I was crying the entire ride to the hospital. I blamed myself for everything. I couldn't stop the sobbing. My grandparents tried to comfort me, but I couldn't stand it. I sat in the ER and cried. My mother was completely out of it from the anxiety medication she was given. The doctor's wanted to do a CAT scan, but my mother freaked out. Everything felt like it was falling apart every second that passed. The whole time I was so petrified that she was fatally injured.

We stayed in the ER until 5:00A.M. After that, my mom was moved to the ICU. We waited to see her in the ICU for a while before we left. We all hated to leave her alone in the hospital, but we couldn't stay.

We went back to my house so I could grab my things for school. Thanksgiving break was almost over. I would have to go back to school the next day. I gathered all my school supplies, my laptop, my phone charger, and several sets of clothes, and another pair of shoes. No one knew how long she would be in the ICU.

By the time we got back to my grandparent's house, it was 6:30A.M. We had arrived at the hospital just after midnight. Everyone was exhausted and wanted to sleep. I was ready to sleep for hours upon hours. Unfrotunately, that didn't happen.

I was woken up just after 9:00A.M. My grandparents said we needed to be at the hospital by ten. There was no time for breakfast, barely time for coffee. My Pawpaw, as we call him, let me take a cup in the car. It had a lid and was insulated. That was my breakfast.

After almost an hour, the doctor finally showed up. My grandparents were going to talk to him and I was going to listen. My Nana didn't want me to listen to what the doctor was going to say, but I snuck up on her blind side. My mother told me that later.

The doctor said that if she didn't start using her trilogy machine willingly and get the fluid off her lungs, they would have to intabate her. If they couldn't get her off of it in fourteen days that she would lose all her muscle mass, she would need physical therapy, if she even survived. It was like living my worst nightmare.

I blamed myself for the entire situation. If I had stayed up a little bit longer, maybe I could've prevented her fall. Maybe she wouldn't have ended up in the ICU. I don't know for sure what would have happened, but I just wanted things to be okay.

My mother was in the ICU for six days. She was in a regular hospital for another two days after that. The entire time, my grandparents were driving me back and forth between their house and mine. I had to do my chores, clean up the house, fix the furniture that the paramedics moved, clean out the fridge and the pantry, and make sure my cats had plenty of food and water every day.

Once my mother came home, everything seemed to slow down. I could stay at home. I didn't have to go back and forth anymore. I could finally relax. I didn't have to stress at school because I would rather stay at the hospital. Things could finally start to be normal again.

My mother still has physical therapists and nurses come out to the house. In just over a week in the hospital, they removed over forty pounds of fluid from her lungs. She started using her trilogy machine like she's supposed to.

My mother calls the whole situation a blessing in disguise. If she hadn't fallen, no one knows what would have happened or how long she could have continued. There was so much fluid on her lungs. Her needed level of oxygen went to eight and a half liters to just over five liters. Her levels haven't been that low in years.

Everyone in the family is grateful that my mom is okay. The past month or so has been very rough on everyone, but things are slowly getting better. Hopefully, my mother's health continues to get better.