Tables turn

I can't sleep because I feel weird. I'm nervous, I'm sad, I'm worried. All of the above.

Yesterday at around 5:30 my phone rang and it was my mom. 

Her: where are you?

Me: my house. why?

Her: are you going out?

Me: I'm going to Christina's. why?

:: enter side

note that my mother NEVER gets to the point, which annoys the hell out of me ::

Her: can you go to your grandma's, she's not feeling well.

Me: ok. what happened?

:: mom starts crying ::

My mother crying has two effects on me: it breaks my heart and I turn into stone. Not because I don't care, since it's breaking my heart because I care so much that there's nothing more than I hate in this world than to hear her cry. But it's because when I hear it I go into protective, what happened how can I fix it mode. I'm emotional but my mom is 2000x more emotional than I am. My mom, like many people, is slightly irrational when she's crying. If I was as sensitive as she was, her tears would bring out mine without even knowing what was going on and what I had to do.

Moving on...my mom proceeds to tell me that she has no idea what's wrong with my grandma. That she can barely walk, she apparently fainted and was laying on the floor for about an hour and a half. My mom was calling her through the day and she didn't even have the energy to grab the phone. Now anyone who knows my grandma knows that is NOT her. She lives on the 3rd floor of a walk up, goes outside constantly, still goes shopping on 34th st and Cross Country. ie, she's not a sickly elderly woman who can't do anything. She's super independent.

We decide that my mom will come over and meet me at her house. I hang up and I literally just burst into tears. Like sobbing tears because I do not know my grandma to be sick and I was so afraid to go over there because I didn't know what I was going to find. What if there was blood, what if she couldn't get up to open the door [neither my parents or I had keys to her apt], and [yes I went to the worst thought] what if she was dying? And as I sobbed because I was so scared I did something I don't really do and I prayed to God or whoever is up there, like with everything that I had in me, to please not only let her be ok but to please give me the strength to BE the strength, because with her her sick and my mom undoubtedly going to cry once she got there, I had to be the one to keep it together and figure it out.

And I don't know how but that's what I did. I sobbed for a good 2 minutes, wiped my eyes, took a breath and walked over there. She was thankfully able to open the door but she was so weak and clearly dizzy and fazed. I gave her some juice and I started calling my mom and my dad, who had stayed at their house because they were in the middle of a dinner party when all of this happened. And my dad flew into sergeant mode, asking me questions on how she looked, giving me ideas on what to do, and above all, telling me that I had to be the one to make the decisions and control the situation.

Thanks dad. It was at that moment that I realized I am an adult. Because the fact is that as kids, our parents are our superheroes. They are the ones that take care of everything when it falls to pieces, the ones WE run to crying with a problem, the ones that magically seem to know what to do when shit hits the fan. And here was the day that all of the tables turned. And my grandma, who is strong as hell, literally had to hold on to me to walk, couldn't get into her bed without me lifting her, and could barely drink the cup of juice that I had to hold for her. And my mom just choked up when she saw her and [justifiably so] was so scared that she just didn't know what to do.

And somehow I didn't cry and just went into fix it mode. Called the ambulance, went to get the paramedics, talked to them, etc. I spoke to all of the admin, PA's, nurses, the doctor. My mom has a hard time with english as is, when she's nervous forget about it. I was the translator, joke teller, and messenger to my dad. And this might sound so weird but watching things like ER I think helped me automatically do things. Like my mom running around trying to find some magical list of the meds my grandma takes and I calmly just grab her purse and throw the bottles in there.

Since she was coherent and awake we walked her to the ambulance and off we went. [I'd just like to throw in that despite all of the drama, I still managed to look at EVERYTHING inside the ambulance since I had never rode in one. They're kinda cool.]

Anyway...the rest of this story could be really really long seeing as how we were in the ER for 5 hours, but I'm happy to say that my grandma is ok. She's just disobedient as hell. She was clearly sick [I told my mom this before we even left the house]. But after the 5th time that I asked her when was the last time she had eaten, we discovered that it was Thursday. THURSDAY. This happened on Saturday!!!  I'm young and if I go the day without eating I feel like I'm going to pass out and I'm practically delusional. Imagine 82 years old, with a bad cold. She was dehydrated and weak. Extremely weak.

We went straight to my parents house when they finally discharged her and she spent the night there. Today I found a locksmith and made copies of her keys and my mom was going to finally force her to give her the second set. I'm looking into getting her one of those medical ID bracelets and am seriously considering one of those "I've fallen and I can't get up" gadgets that I remember the commercials for. Corny ad, totally, but that seriously would have saved so much time.

:: sigh ::

I think that now that everything is ok and we know what happened, everything is starting to set in. I think I just ran off of adrenaline yesterday and today the emotion and reality is actually hitting me. 

:(