How to remove a day from your life.

6:18am: The phone rings.

Never.A.Good.Sign.

Me: ughshufnsl$9@*@&4?

Mom: Your grandfather fell and you need to take him to the hospital and I can't take him because I have a meeting at 8 and can you take him because he fell last night and now he can't feel his leg or something.

Me: Huh?

6:19am: My day fall completely off this dimension.

So here is the long version. Make some popcorn, get a beer.

Mom calls me, I call Grandpa, Sister calls me, I call Dad, Mom calls Sister, and I end up zipping over to Grandpa's apartment because as it turns out he did indeed fall and now cannot move off of his bed.

I am at his house by about 6:40am. The maintenance man lets me in and lo and behold Grandpa is in fact lying in his bed, wrapped in a sheet like a mummy.

Curious.

Our conversation goes a little like this:

"So uh Gramps, what happened here?"

"Welllllllll I was going to sit down to put in my eye drops and I lost my balance and ended up on the floor. And when the police came, the EMT's looked me over and well I figured I was ok because I was able to stand up and then they put me back in bed like this and said to call in the morning if I didn't feel good and now I can't feel my leg too much and I have to pee. Owwwww!"

*sigh*

I hope that there is no part of me that decides to tough out pain when I am 93.

Grandpa tells me that he does not want me to call 9-1-1 for an ambulance. He wants me to call his own doctor and ask him to send an ambulance over. This is a ridiculous idea to me, because Dr. JTK is going to just tell me to call 9-1-1 and then he is going to think "What kind of a sh*tty granddaughter waits to call 9-1-1 while dear old Grandpa lies about with a possibly smashed-up hip anyway?"

But there really isn't any point to argue with Grandpa so I page Dr. JTK and I am on the phone with him by 7am.

PS: I love Dr. JTK. Everyone loves him. He could charms the birds from the sky he is that kind of awesome.

Of course he tells me to call the ambulance. AND I know what HE'S thinking. (see above)

The ambulance comes and by 8am or so we are on our way to the hospital. I ride in the back with Grandpa and Benny. I could, for lots of reasons, never be a paramedic but mainly because I get horribly carsick and would barf all over the patients.

Also for the record we totally lucked out today as far as medical professionals go.

Benny and Stan take us over to the hospital. They were great, very calming and reassuring, and just really restored my faith in people who do their job well for such little recognition.

Oh but importantly, let me just say that once we arrived at the Emergency Room the space-time continuum collapsed on me completely. I know that x-rays were taken and that tests were administered and that I sent about 700 text messages and talked to about 47 different staff and other traumas swirled in and out, but really from about 8:30am until about 2:45pm when my sister arrived, I have no clue how the time passed.

But it was definitely not in a blur because I can tell you all the weird little details, like how I saw evidence of two very bloody traumas come in and out - presumably out to operating rooms. And how when Grandpa is asked if can feed himself, he tells the WHOLE story of how one of my aunts comes up periodically and fills his freezer with homemade chicken pot pies, not just yeah he feeds himself. And that Melissa, the fantastic nurse who tended to Grandpa, had no problem giving him half an Oxycodone for the pain because even though he wanted to "tough it out" she was like "please, spare me". And that also my Sister and I took goofy photos of Grandpa and us in dumbass poses, much to our hysterical amusement.

When I finally looked at the clock, Sister and I were sitting in the Observation area, where they move you before moving you on, and it was 4pm.

How the f*ck did that happen? One minute I am in my comfy bed, minding my own business, and the next I am sitting in the Observation area wait for the transport to the rehab center.

Whoa!

I shoulda gotten the other half of that Oxy is what.

Oh and as it turns out, THANKFULLY, Grandpa did not break anything. Well, he is sure he broke his skinny ol'behind, but I say he was born with that crack in it...

We finally get to the rehab center. He looks like crap. I look like crap. We both sort of feel like crap, but he is on that Oxy high so I win the feel like crap contest.

But since he is the patient he gets cleaned up and tucked in by nurse Diane who we both now love completely because she is unbelievably nice and no bullsh*t. Not only that, but Gramps gets dinner delivered to his bed - a chicken sandwich, sherbert, puddings (two!), nasty soup, and some sort of protein in a can. I steal the peanut butter & jelly sandwich he doesn't want because frankly neither of us has eaten much and we are both famished.

By 7:45 I am DONE. But first Sister comes to get me and we both go back to Grandpa's apartment to get him some clothing and shoes and a book, oh and his Walkman. Because it turns out he can't do his physical therapy nekkid and shoeless. Rules, rules, rules! Geez, time to break a few if you ask me. We then schlepp the bag BACK to rehab before finally saying an official goodbye, so long sucka, to Gramps.

At this point I have this peculiar zombie like feeling and a certain sneaking feeling that this day did not in fact happen. Totally bizarro. Hospital-land time and regular-land time don't seem to be in sync at all. It was like being in a Seinfeld episode. I was up, I did stuff, things occurred, people talked, BUT NOTHING REALLY HAPPENED.

Weird!

I finally rolled in at 9pm and stole my housemates last Vanilla Coke Zero. I know she won't mind, but since this day didn't really even happen for me, maybe she'll never even know!



Oh and I would like to thank the following people for being so awesome and not letting this day suck: EMT's Benny and Stan, BWH nurse Melissa, Dr.'s Perkins, Wall, Katz, & Tan, Cataldo transport, SRH nurses Jamie and Diana, and mostly my Sister who knows EXACTLY what I mean when I say "ok, who flipped the turtle?", and Mom and Dad and Betsy. And also Anna and Brandon for being like "don't worry about it, we got it" because they totally do.