The Emptiness
Current mood: depressed

The emptiness is my life. I have had so many changes
in my life this last month that have made me a
different person. Not the person that most people
know and see, not happy, friendly or outgoing. None of
the above. On the inside I am hurting, depressed,
lonely and very sad. If you see me you may not even
realize that something is wrong, I can fake smile very
well, the actress in me I suppose. For the most part
this all started when my grandma became very sick. My
grandma is so special to me, more like a mother and of
course a close friend. She has been fighting lung
cancer since diagnosed in January 2006. I took her to
most of her chemo appts. and all her CT scans for the
last year. The chemo did not work so we stopped
treatments Feb. of this year. I got a call from my
mother 2 weeks ago that my grandma was being
transported to the ER, which was a red flag because
she is on Hospice so I knew it was bad. I remember the
night very well it was a Tuesday, very rainy and I
drove over 120 to get to Norman because they were
waiting on me to sign a form to put her on a
ventilator. When I got there she was in critical
condition and being transfered to ICU. My family got
there a hour or so later and me and Heather slept in
the ICU waiting room. We went to sleep around
midnight and someone STOLE our purses that we were
laying on and when the doctor came to wake us up at
2:00 we realized they were missing, security found
them dumped out and our cash gone but at least they
didn't take anything else.. Anyways I had to leave at 4 a.m. to drive
home to take my kids to school and how I got home is
Beyond my understanding, a blessing from God because I
had been given medication to calm my nerves and I was
a complete Zombie. Wednesday I stayed at the hospital
and they moved her to PCU. She never slept after that,
me and Heather stayed with her all day but Dimensia
had settled in and she did not know who we were half
the time and thought we were trying to kill her and so
the hospital had to put her in restraints. She begged
me not to leave her and to help her escape and it was
just horrible not to be able to do Anything for her.
The rest of the week is pretty much a blur but it
wasn't a good one. I worked one day and the rest I was
with her. They released her to Hospice and 24 hour
care on Friday. When we left the hospital she did not
know who I was. I actually went home that night to
sleep so I could stay the rest of the weekend. On
Saturday one of my friends from work came up to help
me and I was SO grateful. I realized I was not strong
enough emotionally or physically to handle it alone.
I had already hurt my back trying to move her from her
bed to the chair. I cried about every 15 min and my
nerves were pretty much Shot. She kept begging God to
take her and begging me to take the pain away. That
day was one of the longest of my life. Later that day
my cousin Heather came to stay so Beverly could go
home and she was just as much of a mess as I was
because we have both always been Grandma's girls and
are so attached to her. We stayed up the whole night
with her having delusions, taking trips back in time,
thinking we were other people, hallucinating, at one
point I remember she thought her bed was a car and was
Screaming at us to get in so she could help us escape
and would not calm down til we were in there with her
and she was pretending to drive like she actually
believed we were going somewhere. I wrote down almost
everything she said that night because I Honestly
thought it was her last. We did survive the night and
the next day was not much better. She floated in and
out of our world into other one's and had so many
hallucinations. She thought bugs were all over and
would freak out and try to wipe them off of our faces
and off her clothes, I thought it was like living a
nightmare. She thought several times that she seen
people that of course were not there. The next work
week I worked half days and then drove to Norman to
stay til 10 at night with her and my mom stayed the
nights. She went home on Thursday and that night
grandma was convinced that there was a raid of the
apt. building so me and Heather had to put her in the
wheelchair, with the portable oxygen and actually get
her in my little car and take her somewhere so she
would believe she was safe. If you could have seen her
face, you would have known that she was scared to no
end and believed it was happening, needelss to say
that was quite the adventure. So I was off with
grandma on friday and me and Heather had Such a good
day with her. She remembered who we were all day and
told me she was ready to move in with me and knew that
she could not take care of herself. We drove her with
us to Del City and that is when things went downhill,
she had been doing so well she denied her medicine and
that just started her anxiety back in full swing and
her pain level and she started freaking out and there
was nothing I could do but drive fast to get us back
to her apartment and call Hospice when we got there.
They told us she would not live much longer that it
was probably just a few more days. Talk about a shot
after having such a good day with her. I guess we
both convinced ourselves that she was fine and better.
Foolishness. We moved her the following day to my
house. Did we have help? OF COURSE NOT. Me and Heather
packed all her personal things and I loaded a
truckload of things, that was the hottest day of the
year so far (real smart). We only had about 2 hours of
oxygen to get to Shawnee so I knew I needed to be
careful and make it on time so the medical equipment
company would meet me at my house and have her put on
the oxygen machine there. So on the way it was like
she woke up and was confused and took the oxygen off
and was trying to open the door, I flipped out, pulled
over to the side of I-40 and when I pressed unlock she
got out and me and Heather could Not get her to calm
down, she did not know us and thought we were trying
to kill her and was screaming and hitting and she bite
me and was trying to flag down cars, I can't tell you
how scared I was that she was going to be hit by a
car. We did of course wrestle her back into the truck
and made it to my house. This was quite the
adjustment as well. I put her in Chase's room so Chase
is sleeping in my room and I moved to the couch so I
could be near her when she needed me. The next
challenge was that she never went to sleep. I took her
off of morphine because she was just all OUT Mean, it
was not something I could handle and I knew she was
scaring my kids so I stopped that right after she got
here. My life changed so dramatically, everything felt
so out of control and without sleep I was just walking
around in a daze and confused myself. I have definetly
found out who my true friends are. I must say I can
depend on those people more than I can my own family.
So THEY decided that
my grandma should be moved back to her appt. because
she started eating some food and could walk a little,
They
have no idea how she is because they were not living
with her. Just one more challenge for me. I don't know
what will happen now, Hospice has told me I have no
control in this situation and so I will just hope they
realize their mistake otherwise I will be back driving
to Norman every day and doing the best I can.