SASEAWACABG Part Two

First things First...Thanks Vera for reading my blog and caring about Part Two.
Second thing...I am not going to keep you guessing as to how this ends because some of you know Grandpa and I don't want anyone to be worried about him.  He is fine, totally fine, as you will see.
Third...preemptive apology for the length.


Friday morning I was eating quiche for breakfast (store bought quiche, but quiche none the less) and getting into the zone of all things French as I anticipated going to the Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. My cell phone rang and my sister-in-law,Venice, was on the line. Her voice had that controlled anxiety tone.
" I can't get hold of Dave and something has happened to Dad. Can you call him at another number?" I said I could try and asked what was going on.
 "Dad has had a stroke or a brain hemorrhage of some kind. Glen (Venice's grown son) is with him and they are flying him to Harborview hospital in Seattle."
 "I'm in Seattle", I replied "Sarah and I will go right over there"
 She was relieved and getting in her car for the three hour drive to Seattle.  I quickly explained to Sarah and we headed out the door. We were only ten minutes away. We said something about not seeing the exhibit, but it didn't matter.

We arrived at Harborview before Grandpa. One the way in, Sarah, making sure I didn't think she was being insensitive, pointed out that the main building is well known for it's 1930's architectural style.

I took this picture as we were LEAVING, not at this point in the story.

Once inside, I couldn't find anything, but Sarah managed the maze of corridors and got us the the emergency room area. They asked for some family information on Grandpa and then I saw Glen. 

"I don't understand it,"said Glen. " he seems just fine to me, but his brain scan was really bad, he's over here,
come on."  With that, we entered one of the strangest places I have ever been.  It was an area about as large as a high school gym, maybe larger. It was partitioned off with those shower curtain type things into six or seven patient holding areas and an area for doctors, nurses and computer equipment. The other "rooms" were full and we could hear and often see everything going on in them. No one seemed to have any friends or family with them. Well, there was one guy that had a big policeman with him but the policeman seemed considerably more concerned about the doctors than he did the patient. Sarah said something about Grey's Anatomy being based on a hospital in Seattle.

When we saw Grandpa he looked fine. He was perhaps a bit pale and he seemed nervous but that was all. He asked Glen when the real doctor was coming. Then Glen told us that as they were taking Grandpa into the hospital Grandpa asked the doctor who was at his side, just how old he was and if he was a real doctor. The young resident doctor said something like, he would take good care of him but a neurosurgeon was on the way.  Hmmm, it seemed like Grandpa was his usual self.

The neurosurgeon arrived. He looked at Grandpa and had him touch his nose and lift his arms and push his hands against the doctor's. He passed all those tests with flying colors, especially the hand pushing strength test. Grandpa seemed quite happy with how hard he was pushing against the doctors hands. I half expected him to challenge the doctor to arm wrestle.  The doctor motioned for Glen and me to come and look at the brain scan and Sarah stayed with Grandpa. The scan showed the brain surrounded by white with white lines going throughout. The doctor said that in a normal scan all that white area would be black. The white  indicated that the spinal fluid around the brain was full of blood. He said it didn't make sense that a person with a scan like this would be alive. At the very least he should have been in a coma. Something did not compute!

When we got back to Grandpa, Venice and her daughter Christina had arrived. Grandpa was saying how nice it was that we were all having a little get together, since some of the cousins hadn't seen each other for a while. He might just have to have these spells from time to time to get the kids together.

The neurosurgeon returned to ask questions. "Tell me just what happened."  Grandpa said it all began with his alarm clock. ( Not that darn clock again! I thought to myself.  He can't figure out the alarm and always changes the time. He constantly complains that the clock is making him crazy.  Make a note to throw it away.)

The alarm went off and woke him up, but it was only four AM. It was confusing. He didn't feel good and had a headache. The doctor asked if he had taken any pills the night before. He had taken a sleeping pill, but he always takes one and it doesn't make him feel confused. He said he had tried to recite his favorite scriptures and couldn't get them right so he thought he was having a stroke and drove himself to the hospital in Tri-cities.  (By the way, he made a point of taking the back roads to the hospital  that have less traffic so if he got worse he wouldn't hurt anyone when he crashed.) The Tri-cities doctors acted quickly when an 88 year old man showed up complaining of headache and confusion. They took a scan, the scan looked bad, they got him on the plane to Seattle.  The Seattle neurosurgeon continued with more questions and suggested that the confusion might have been from waking up before the effects of the sleeping pill had worn off.   He asked Grandpa if he had been to the doctor for anything else recently. Grandpa said that he had a scan on his back a couple of weeks ago to track down some back pain. 

Glen interrupted. Glen's wife had taken Grandpa in for the back scan  two days ago, not two weeks ago.  If this had been an episode of the TV show Scrubs, this is where you would see an animated light bulb shinning above the doctors head. "And did they inject any dye into your back?" the doctor asked.  "Yes, it was a big shot, right in my back." Grandpa replied. The doctor turned to us and said that what looked like blood in the brain scan was the dye in the spinal fluid. It was likely that nothing at all was wrong, but he was going to do a couple more things to make sure.

 The doctor ordered another type of test and we waited. The people in the other "rooms" were very active.  The man with the police escort was yelling at the doctors about where they were not going to put  a catheter and where he would put it if they tried. If you rewrite that sentence and throw in all the swear words and vulgar words for body parts that you can think of, you will have an idea of what was really said. The woman in the nearest " room" kept unhooking what ever she was hooked up to and walked around in her hospital gown.  Sarah was treated to a view of this patient's bare backside. I fortunately missed that. However, we all got to hear the woman patient fake throw up as loud as she could and then yell out for the nurses and doctors to bring her Valium. The nurse was direct and to the point. "You will not be getting any Valium here."

We were all so relieved at this point that we may have gotten a little carried away with joking about the whole incident. I won't say who said what, since we all (except for Sarah) got on the family humor train.  There were comments about Grandpa not being anymore confused than usual and how he got a private flight to Seattle for what was now the most expensive headache in history. We talked about how he was thrown in the holding pen with the riff raff  and then shushed each other for saying riff raff loud enough for the riff raff to hear us. It was not our finest hour.  Sarah stood by Grandpa's shoulder and said things like," they don't mean it Grandpa, we are all just happy you are okay. We were really worried about you. This has been a very hard day for you." Least we sound like the worst people ever, I have to mention that even Grandpa got into the fray. His doctor in Tri-cites also goes to Church with him. Grandpa said he could tell the doctor didn't hold out much hope for him when they put him on the plane. So rather than call  this man and tell him he is fine, Grandpa said he would just walk up to the doctor on Sunday and shake his hand while watching to see if he reacts as if  he has just seen a ghost.

At some point in the middle of all this, the woman in the other "room" had been attended to and we could hear the nurse telling her it was time for her to leave. As she was leaving, she casually asked the nurse if she could have a Valium, to go. ( A Valium, to go?  Is that sort of like a Happy Meal, to go?)
  The nurse didn't fall for it.

As for Grandpa, all's well that ends well. The tests were clear and he went back to Tri-cities with Venice, Glen and Christina that very night.  Sarah and I left the hospital in time to have a late dinner with Michael and Ivy.
Stay tuned for Part Three...