Talk Is Good

My grandmother loves to talk. She used to follow you out to your car and lean in the window and tell you the story about how she and Granpa had a picnic outside the Bean Factory or inform you that the bus used to cost a nickel each way.

She's been on oxygen for several years, so she doesn't walk to the car anymore. There's a lot she can't do now, like take care of herself on a daily basis. She's 87 and still alert, but the flesh is weak.
My dad, who has been living off his mother since I was born, is supposed to be taking care of her, but he's disappeared again, so she's been alone for several weeks except for visits from my cousin and some friends from her church.

She's been feeling badly for a long time, but I talked to her just a few days ago and her only concern was for about her missing son- she didn't mention that the house had fallen into ruin and that she had tripped over her oxygen hose and fallen and hurt herself or that she hadn't passed for two weeks.

I found that stuff out last night when my cousin called to tell me that she was in the hospital, she'd started vomiting and was in severe pain. He had found her, sick, alone and injured in a filthy house and she hadn't even called for help. On the phone she said she was fine, but she wasn't.

I called her tonight. I asked her what the situation was.
She informed me that there was a tube in her nose and that her stomach was being pumped.
She has a blockage and there is stuff in her that needs to come out, and if it won't come out one end, it'll have to come out of the other.
If the stuff gets out, the tubes and drugs might clear her system.
I haven't talked to her doctor, but I gather that she has probably got a severe internal infection of a nasty sort.
We will know more after they finish pumping her, she said.
Then she gave me a detailed rundown on every invasive procedure she'd endured over the last day.
Tubes in here, tubes in there; food through a tube , water via tube.
She was getting aggravated by tubes.
But if the tubes work, she won't have to have surgery. Surgery is the second most dangerous thing. The most risky action would be to not have it.

She told me all of this while she was getting her stomach pumped. I've had my stomach pumped before and all I could do was make gargling noises that sounded like: "please kill me now."
My grandmother is tougher than that.

She likes to talk.
She can tell stories with a tube in her gullet.
She's determined to talk and that's a good thing because the last thing she said was to tell me that I shouldn't worry so much , that everything was going to be alright.

My grandma wouldn't lie to me.