It's been quite a week for us. Steven's grandmother, Ruby Elizabeth, died Monday morning in Morehead. The family knew her days were limited, so 2 weekends ago Steven and Elizabeth visited her in the nursing home. Last weekend Steven visited her again and said his good-byes. The visitation was Tuesday evening from 4-9. Steven and I drove separately, and I ended up behind a car accident on the highway; no traffic moved for over an hour and 15 minutes. I finally arrived and saw many of Steven's relatives that I hadn't seen in literally 10 years. It was good to see them, but it was so sad to see them so sad.
Steven's grandmother, "MaMaw," was his favorite relative, and I completely understand why. He has many memories of being at her house with all his other relatives as he grew up - she was always laughing and cooking in the kitchen. She is buried next to his grandfather, in the same cemetery as Dad, Oma, and Opa.
Michael's adenoid and balloon sinusplasty was the next morning (yesterday). I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Looooong day, here's the summary: The surgeon ended up running seven hours behind, so Steven left for the funeral while I stayed with Michael at the hospital. We waited and waited and waited and waited. We were starving. We were tired. We (mostly me) were cranky. I ran out of fun and exciting word analogy games to play with him and he had no interest in reading. He did want to hear the plot of the book I was reading - an intense murder mystery book. He was a bit surprised so many people would be killed in only a few hundred pages. I didn't even tell him about all the deaths!
FINALLY he goes back for his surgery at 5:30 p.m. At 7:30 he's finished. Because of the anesthesia, his breathing was suppressed; the usual protocol is to monitor the patient a few hours, ensure his/her breathing has returned to normal capacity, and send him/her home. Because of the late hour (8:30 p.m. by the time he wakes up and is allowed to have us go back to him), the surgeon and anesthesiologist decided Michael would have to spend the night instead of being released within a few hours (patients apparently aren't routinely discharged at midnight, sigh). You can imagine how excited Michael was about that, as he'd said "I want to go home now" 4,236 times in the recovery room, awaiting the paperwork that would let us go home. No such luck. So the 3 of us basically pulled an all-nighter in the hospital last night but didn't have a term paper to show for it.
The "relatively simple procedure" was anything but and 25 hours later, we finally went home.
On a more positive note, his friend Stephen came over within 10 minutes of our getting home and they have played quietly and calmly (except during competitive wii games) all day long. He hasn't had any pain medication at all. Now it's 8 p.m. and I think we all need to go to bed.
We are thankful to have had Ruby (MaMaw) in our lives as long as we did, and we are hopeful that Michael's allergy-related breathing issues will improve.
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