Shootout at the Lodden Corral
Jul. 25th, 2008 04:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanda_loddenI have decided that John's family has just as much of Teh Crazy in it as mine, but mine is spread out over more people, whereas Lodden Crazy comes in two-part concentrated forms that require both parts before they activate. Individually, they're just fine. Put them all together in a room, and it gets a little weird. Put them all together in a crisis, and it's a fucking free-for-all.
John's grandmother and head of the brood is in the hospital. Oh, look there, that's not just a crisis, it's the sort of crisis that makes the entire family swarm together.
Crazy-making Item One is that Grandma lives in the middle of absolutely nowhere (she lives about a mile away from the only traffic light IN THE ENTIRE COUNTY.) It's a four-hour drive for most of us (except for the Colorado contingent). It's also a half-hour drive from her apartment to the nearest hospital.
11:30pm on Wednesday night we got a call from John's dad, who had gotten a call from his sister that Grandma had had a stroke and was not expected to live. If it hadn't been Bar Night, I'm pretty sure that John would have packed us up and we'd have been on the road by midnight. But he was too tired to drive, and I was passed out from the Atomic White Russians (like a normal White Russian, but replace the non-alcoholic filler (milk) with Bailey's Irish Cream instead). So at 6:45, he dragged me out of bed, and we were out of the house and driving by 8am, rushing up to the hospital in Alpena...
... where she seemed to be largely fine. Oh, there was a Urinary Tract Infection and there had been issues with her blood oxygen levels, so she was a bit confused, but we're pretty used to that sort of thing nowadays. Other than the confusion, there was zero evidence of a stroke, and the confusion could easily be caused by EITHER the UTI or the low oxygen levels. The sister who had started everything off had been up all night and had gone home to eat lunch and take a nap just before we got there, so we spent about 5 hours going "What the hell?" and re-updating other family members, trying to re-establish some sanity.
Since it's murder to make the trip up and the trip back down on the same day, we knew we were spending the night up there no matter what happened in the interim. We got an adjoining room with John's dad, had dinner, checked back in on Grandma, and went to the hotel. Dad popped over with some brandy and we chatted for a while before sleeping.
This morning, Grandma had deteriorated instead of getting better, which is disturbing, but not super-surprising since she's removing the oxygen tube when she's left alone. We finally got more of the story from the sister who started the panic, and I understand a little better-- she and her husband and son had gone to visit Grandma and realized All Was Not Well, and during the half-hour drive to the hospital, Grandma became unresponsive, which is what set off the panic.
However, it's clear that the Loddens do not believe in objectivity in general, and in particular when it comes to communication. They each have their own reality, and everything passes through their reality filter before coming back out. Things that don't match the filter are discarded as unimportant. Everyone does this to some degree, but John's family takes it to new levels.
John's dad does not "do" sick people very well, and is therefore hoping for a quick resolution, whichever way it goes. If he spends more than about 15 minutes in the hospital room with Grandma, it becomes gloomier and doomier for him. He's too wrapped up in how uncomfortable he is to worry in the slightest about how uncomfortable Grandma is, and what he can or cannot do to make her better. Which is not to say that he's unconcerned about her comfort-- he pulled his sister out into the hallway to discuss things, and the phrase "The best thing we can do is make her as comfortable as possible" floated back in (and got Grandma's attention, let me tell you). I realize that his main concern was making sure that she could sleep comfortably and get better quicker (though he has also stated that if she's going to die, he hopes that she dies peacefully in her sleep, so there's that "quick resolution" thing again). The problem is, he was saying it to his sister...
...who filters everything through her martyr filter. See, it's her "turn" to be near Grandma (the other sister, who is now in Colorado for her own health reasons, handled it alone for about three years), and she's tiiiiiiiiired of it. I feel for her there, in that it's a drain to have to take care of someone for a long period of time, but she's decided that she's not going to get any help (and therefore doesn't bother asking for it), so her only "out" now is for Grandma to die. And deep down, she feels tremendously guilty about that and can't admit it to anyone, so she plays the martyr instead. Every little thing is The End Of It All, and the big things are blown so far out of proportion that no one has any idea what's real anymore. She's the polar opposite of John's dad, in that she can't be out of the hospital room for more than a few minutes at a time before she HAS to pop in and baby Grandma.
None of them are actually bothering to step back and figure out what Grandma might actually want-- John was the one who asked the nurse for a bubbler for the oxygen line to add some humidity to it and stop drying out Grandma's nose so much (which is why she keeps trying to take it out, it's hurting her). It doesn't occur to anyone that Grandma's difficulty in speaking isn't brain damage, it's a dry mouth, because she's breathing through her mouth as much as she can because her nose hurts. Give her some water, and suddenly she talks better-- imagine that! She also does fine with the oxygen line in her mouth (which is also acceptable, albeit a bit odd), but her kids see it and try to put it back in her nose again-- which hurts, so she tries to take it back out.
She is holding her head at an odd angle, but that's because she's turned slightly on her side (presumably to avoid bedsores), so that her entire body leans to the side. You can panic over it, or you can put an extra pillow under her and move into a position where she can see you easier. John moves into a better position. His aunt panics. His dad leaves the room.
John is staying with Grandma for a few more days. His sister Lisa and her husband are going up tomorrow, and Lisa is well familiar with caring for the elderly, so she should be fine at recognizing what's not worth panicking over, though she's made a comment several times that she'd like to bitch-slap the aunt that kicked off the panic, which has John's dad concerned that they're going to get into a fight (which is stupid, because Lisa might rant about things, but she's not about to get into a physical altercation unless she's being deliberately pushed and she knows that it's not deliberate, and once I passed on the "unresponsive in the car" part of the story, she understood where the panic came from too). Hopefully the sanity imparted by John and Lisa will be enough to get Grandma through the rough patch so that there's nothing left to panic over by the time the panicky people get left alone again (and John has a backup plan to go back up when his sister leaves if necessary).
John's grandmother and head of the brood is in the hospital. Oh, look there, that's not just a crisis, it's the sort of crisis that makes the entire family swarm together.
Crazy-making Item One is that Grandma lives in the middle of absolutely nowhere (she lives about a mile away from the only traffic light IN THE ENTIRE COUNTY.) It's a four-hour drive for most of us (except for the Colorado contingent). It's also a half-hour drive from her apartment to the nearest hospital.
11:30pm on Wednesday night we got a call from John's dad, who had gotten a call from his sister that Grandma had had a stroke and was not expected to live. If it hadn't been Bar Night, I'm pretty sure that John would have packed us up and we'd have been on the road by midnight. But he was too tired to drive, and I was passed out from the Atomic White Russians (like a normal White Russian, but replace the non-alcoholic filler (milk) with Bailey's Irish Cream instead). So at 6:45, he dragged me out of bed, and we were out of the house and driving by 8am, rushing up to the hospital in Alpena...
... where she seemed to be largely fine. Oh, there was a Urinary Tract Infection and there had been issues with her blood oxygen levels, so she was a bit confused, but we're pretty used to that sort of thing nowadays. Other than the confusion, there was zero evidence of a stroke, and the confusion could easily be caused by EITHER the UTI or the low oxygen levels. The sister who had started everything off had been up all night and had gone home to eat lunch and take a nap just before we got there, so we spent about 5 hours going "What the hell?" and re-updating other family members, trying to re-establish some sanity.
Since it's murder to make the trip up and the trip back down on the same day, we knew we were spending the night up there no matter what happened in the interim. We got an adjoining room with John's dad, had dinner, checked back in on Grandma, and went to the hotel. Dad popped over with some brandy and we chatted for a while before sleeping.
This morning, Grandma had deteriorated instead of getting better, which is disturbing, but not super-surprising since she's removing the oxygen tube when she's left alone. We finally got more of the story from the sister who started the panic, and I understand a little better-- she and her husband and son had gone to visit Grandma and realized All Was Not Well, and during the half-hour drive to the hospital, Grandma became unresponsive, which is what set off the panic.
However, it's clear that the Loddens do not believe in objectivity in general, and in particular when it comes to communication. They each have their own reality, and everything passes through their reality filter before coming back out. Things that don't match the filter are discarded as unimportant. Everyone does this to some degree, but John's family takes it to new levels.
John's dad does not "do" sick people very well, and is therefore hoping for a quick resolution, whichever way it goes. If he spends more than about 15 minutes in the hospital room with Grandma, it becomes gloomier and doomier for him. He's too wrapped up in how uncomfortable he is to worry in the slightest about how uncomfortable Grandma is, and what he can or cannot do to make her better. Which is not to say that he's unconcerned about her comfort-- he pulled his sister out into the hallway to discuss things, and the phrase "The best thing we can do is make her as comfortable as possible" floated back in (and got Grandma's attention, let me tell you). I realize that his main concern was making sure that she could sleep comfortably and get better quicker (though he has also stated that if she's going to die, he hopes that she dies peacefully in her sleep, so there's that "quick resolution" thing again). The problem is, he was saying it to his sister...
...who filters everything through her martyr filter. See, it's her "turn" to be near Grandma (the other sister, who is now in Colorado for her own health reasons, handled it alone for about three years), and she's tiiiiiiiiired of it. I feel for her there, in that it's a drain to have to take care of someone for a long period of time, but she's decided that she's not going to get any help (and therefore doesn't bother asking for it), so her only "out" now is for Grandma to die. And deep down, she feels tremendously guilty about that and can't admit it to anyone, so she plays the martyr instead. Every little thing is The End Of It All, and the big things are blown so far out of proportion that no one has any idea what's real anymore. She's the polar opposite of John's dad, in that she can't be out of the hospital room for more than a few minutes at a time before she HAS to pop in and baby Grandma.
None of them are actually bothering to step back and figure out what Grandma might actually want-- John was the one who asked the nurse for a bubbler for the oxygen line to add some humidity to it and stop drying out Grandma's nose so much (which is why she keeps trying to take it out, it's hurting her). It doesn't occur to anyone that Grandma's difficulty in speaking isn't brain damage, it's a dry mouth, because she's breathing through her mouth as much as she can because her nose hurts. Give her some water, and suddenly she talks better-- imagine that! She also does fine with the oxygen line in her mouth (which is also acceptable, albeit a bit odd), but her kids see it and try to put it back in her nose again-- which hurts, so she tries to take it back out.
She is holding her head at an odd angle, but that's because she's turned slightly on her side (presumably to avoid bedsores), so that her entire body leans to the side. You can panic over it, or you can put an extra pillow under her and move into a position where she can see you easier. John moves into a better position. His aunt panics. His dad leaves the room.
John is staying with Grandma for a few more days. His sister Lisa and her husband are going up tomorrow, and Lisa is well familiar with caring for the elderly, so she should be fine at recognizing what's not worth panicking over, though she's made a comment several times that she'd like to bitch-slap the aunt that kicked off the panic, which has John's dad concerned that they're going to get into a fight (which is stupid, because Lisa might rant about things, but she's not about to get into a physical altercation unless she's being deliberately pushed and she knows that it's not deliberate, and once I passed on the "unresponsive in the car" part of the story, she understood where the panic came from too). Hopefully the sanity imparted by John and Lisa will be enough to get Grandma through the rough patch so that there's nothing left to panic over by the time the panicky people get left alone again (and John has a backup plan to go back up when his sister leaves if necessary).
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-25 11:34 pm (UTC)I understand the crazy element, my family has a high concentration of it too. Keep your head up.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 02:53 pm (UTC)I hope she gets better, I like her. I also have no desire to weather the 3mo-2years that it'll take for (you know who) to get over her death.
AJ
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 06:27 pm (UTC)Her eldest daughter, the one in Colorado, is a decent human being who I quite like. The younger, panicky one is a lot like Pat-- when she's doing okay, she's nice enough, but when it all falls apart she loses rationality quickly and gets unpleasant to deal with.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-30 08:03 pm (UTC)AJ