So I'm just back from 6 hours in the hospital. Here's what happened...
Just before 8:30am, my mum and I both heard a noise from my Granny's room, it sounded like she screamed as she/then she fell. We both rushed through to her room, to find her on the floor, having a fit. Her eyes open, but completely non-responsive, almost rolled back in her head and beginning to foam at the mouth.
We tried to sit her up, at first and upon doing so noticed a massive amount of blood on the floor, we were used to head injuries from when my Granda was around though, so we knew that blows to the head produce a lot of blood.
The fit continued until... It just stopped suddenly. At which point, both my mum and I thought she'd gone, that she'd died. -- She hadn't though, and she started to make a weird snoring kind of noise, we rolled her onto her side.
My mum called 999, and an ambulance arrived shortly after. They gave her head a quick, temporary dressing and gave her some oxygen, which before too long she was starting to fight, which was a good sign.
I went with them in the ambulance, to the hospital, leaving my mum (the driver) to contact her sisters and head up after us - I thought it'd be better to have someone she knew with her, to keep some sense of familiarity.
In the ambulance, she kept trying to take the oxygen mask off, so much so that, eventually, the paramedic told her she could just leave it off, if she wanted and although she was making eye contact by this point, she still wasn't actually responding.
Once at the hospital, I was told to sit and wait, while they got her into a treatment room and got her cleaned up and stuff.
The doctor came out and asked if I was her grand-son, I said I was, and he asked me for some info about what had happened that morning, I told him and told him that she was usually responsive and talkitive, even if what she said didn't always make sense -- She still wasn't talking, at times it looked like she was trying to talk, but no words were actually coming out.
He said, because of that, he was going to order a CT Scan, to check that she didn't have any major injuries, before sewing her up. We waited around some more and I was asked if I would go with her to the scan to make sure she was OK.
Because she was starting to fight the fact that she had things coming out of her arms and a massive bandage around her head, I was asked to actually be in the room with her while she got the scan and was given a big ol' lead vest to wear, I held her hands, so she couldn't get at the band holding her head in place.
After the scan, which went well, we went back to the treatment room. I called my mum to see where she was, I expected her to be there by now. She was in the waiting room though, and came through now that she was back from the scan.
After some more waiting, the doctor came back with the scan results and it was good news, no skull fractures, no stroke, nothing out of the ordinary... apart from the whole fact she has dementia. Katie and me left my mum in the room while the doctor stitched her up.
While sitting in the corridor, the doctor came past and said that the stitching had gone fine, but (and he pointed at his arm) the blood had squirted a bit. Apparently she'd cut through an artery, the whole treatment room looked a bit mental -- The doctor even had some on his face.
All properly bandaged up though, she finally had her breakfast, which she wolfed down, followed closely by her lunch, which she wolfed down.
They want to keep her in for 24-48 hours though, to keep an eye on her, check for concussion, etc and to also try and determine what caused the fit/seizure. One doctor suggested that instead of the fall and blow to the head causing it, she had the fit/seizure first, causing her to fall and hit her head.
And all that took, literally, six hours. I had planned to sleep...
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