What a weekend. It was very emotionally tiring. Some things that happened are only now hitting me.
My Grandma called Saturday morning to tell T and I that Nana (grandma’s mom) was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. Grandma and Grandpa had spent last weekend here in Orange County, and we had had a great family BBQ Sunday evening. I got to see cousins I hadn’t seen since last August! We had a great time. Anyway Grandma and Grandpa headed home to Bakersfield on Tuesday (4/26). I guess Nana had been a little sick and hadn’t told anyone.
On Friday, Nana threw up, and Grandma took her to the doctor. He prescribed something and sent her home. Grandma took Nana home and went to fill the prescription. When she got back, Nana was REALLY sick and very weak. Grandma called the paramedics and they took her to the hospital. Nana was in so much pain her whole body was shaking. They gave her some Morphine and it did nothing. She was still hurting. So they gave her another dose. That finally seemed to cut through some of the pain and her body calmed down. My Aunt S.S. hurried over to the hospital to sit with Grandma and Nana. They were there all night, till 5 AM Saturday morning.
Nana’s doctor didn’t know what was wrong with her, and he was talking about just moving her into a home to pass away peacefully. The whole family was under the impression that there was nothing left but to “make her as comfortable as possible.”
My Aunt S.A. and her two girls were on their way down from Oregon. My Uncle S was also on his way up from Orange County. We took turn all day Saturday and Sunday morning visiting Nana in the hospital. Nana was so excited to see us all!
Sunday afternoon, a doctor comes in and starts asking Nana some more questions about how she felt. They had been doing tons of tests, and had taken X-rays the first night she was in. Nana had net been able to hold down food, and she kept complaining that her stomach area hurt. The doctor said he thought the problem might me her gallbladder. He wanted the family’s permission to discuss surgery options with the surgeon on staff. Everyone agreed. Grandma went to the hospital to discuss things with the doctor and Nana. She came back and said that Nana would be having exploratory surgery on Monday morning. If the surgeon found something wrong while he was in there, he would fix her up.
Monday morning we all get to the hospital early to see Nana before surgery. The surgeon had told Nana that he had just operated on a 106-year-old woman and she was recovering just fine. I think that calmed Nana to know she wasn’t the oldest patient. She went into surgery at about 12:15 and the surgeon came out at about 2:30. He said that he had found a portion of her small intestine had died. So he had cut out the dead section and sewed the two parts back together. Everything had gone great with no complications!
They would hold Nana in ICU for the night for observation. We all went to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s to rest, and then went out for a big family dinner at Outback steakhouse. There was such a happy feeling and a feeling of relief. Nana was going to be okay!
Tuesday morning T and I went over to see Nana before we headed back home. They were going to keep her in ICU for a while longer because her blood pressure was high. The nurse noticed that when family was in the room, Nana slept better, and her heart rate and blood pressure would go down. We told Nana good by and headed home.
Updates from Grandma have been really good.
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On Saturday, while T and I were rushing up to Bakersfield we came upon a really bad car wreck. We had stopped for gas at Magic Mountain, and about 35 miles past MM we spotted an overturned car in a ditch. I thought the car had been there for a while, but T pulled off the road really fast. I pulled off after him and we began to walk up the hill towards the car. I still wasn’t really sure why, but I began to feel a little anxious as two more cars pulled over next to us. Once we made it up to the car, I knew it hadn’t been there for a while. You could smell burnt breaks really strong. Two guys were kneeling down by the passenger side of the car. Once I got to that side I saw a pair of legs sticking out of the back seat window, and the guys trying to pull on them. T gets down next to them and together they all pull out this elderly woman. They laid her down on the ground and…I was able to see the damage. Her left side of her head was crushed in and her right had had almost completely “de-gloved.” She wasn’t moving at all. One of the guys checked for breathing and shook his head. The other asked him if he was going to start CPR and he said it was no use. She must have died on impact because there was little blood, and none of her injuries were bleeding. The guys covered her face with a pillow from the back of the crushed car.
Another guy on the driver side of the car calls out that someone is moving. We rush to the driver side and see an elderly guy, upside down, still pinned in his seat. His head had come out of the window, and was caught between the car and the ground. Seven or eight guys lined up along the car and liftrd it off of his head while I pushed it into the car before they set it back down. We tried to pull him out of the driver side window, but he was caught on something. I kneeled down and looked into the car and saw he was completely pinned by his steering wheel. I couldn’t open the door from the outside because the handle was broken off, and I couldn’t reach the handle on the inside. The guy was trying to help us get him out, but he was still stuck. Someone else crawled into the car by the passenger side window and they are able to free his legs. They started pulling him out, and his shirt gets stuck on some bent metal from the car frame. I crawled inside the car and free him and they pulled him out.
They laid him down next to the woman (I am assuming it’s his wife) and someone hurried to cover her body with some sweaters and jackets so he couldn’t see it. The man was breathing really shallow, and kept trying to reach his hand over to the woman, but the guys helping just pulled it back. T sat down and held his hand. Someone on his cell phone called out that the paramedics were on their way, and someone else calls out the fire department were also on their way. Another man produced some bolt cutters and began to cut away the barbwire the car had landed on, and that the couple had been placed on. A CHP car showed up maybe two minutes later. He knelt down next to the woman and lifted the pillow off of her face, and just shook his head. He then turned to the man and started to talk to him. T and I left right after that.
I just kept thinking how horrible it must be for that man to have lost his wife right there, just like that.
I read in the paper the next morning that the man was 81 and the woman was 74. They had pronounced the woman dead at the scene, and the man had been taken to the hospital with massive head injuries. Apparently the car had been drifting across the lane and the man overcorrected and the car flipped off of the road.
I felt pretty much okay about the whole event, but then I really wasn’t thinking on it. When I told what happened to someone at work a few day later, it started to hit me. I’ve pushed it out of my mind for now.
