I’ve been told my entire life to never take anything for granted. Time after time I would go on church trips and the saying “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone” has been nailed into my brain. I’ve never really paid any attention to the quote. I’ve never had a reason too. I’ve spent the past few hours in the hospital and it’s given me a reason to really pay attention to that saying.
A few weeks ago my great grandmother broke her hip when she fell in the nursing home. They took her to the ER and she had hip surgery. She had been recovering for two weeks and she was healing pretty well. She was out of it, though. She didn’t recognize any of her children, grandchildren, or great-grand children. I would sit for hours with her at the home she was staying at. I would listen to her crazy stories about how she went to West Tennessee and she almost missed the bus back home. My great-grandmother and I have always been pretty close and when my mom got the phone call this morning that she was being rushed to the ER, I was surprised. It turns out that she was unresponsive, she was shaking uncontrollably and randomly twitching, and she had no control over her body movements or bowels. My mother immediately took me to the hospital so we could be with her.
We watched as my great-grandmother’s blood pressure shot from really low to really high – never normal for someone her age. We watched as she shook in pain, angry at herself that she could not make her shaking and twitching stop. We watched as she cursed, not knowing where she was. We watched as my grandfather bawled because his mother was in so much pain.
So far we know that she has pneumonia in her left lung, has some sort of unknown infection in her body, and she will have to stay at the hospital until Wednesday. If she shows improvement, she will go back to that oh-so-smelly nursing home that she hates. If she shows no improvement, she’ll have to stay in the hospital.
I’ll never forget the one thing she told me before she ever broke her hip. She said, “I don’t care where I am, my life will always be miserable. All I can do is trust in God and know that when we die, He will be waiting for us with open arms.”
The thought that I could lose my favorite person in the entire world just breaks me. I hope and pray that she gets better. I don’t want her to die.
All in all, this has been a very eye-opening, life-changing experience for me.
Love, Bee.
Have you ever had an eye-opening, life-changing experience? Tell me about it.
