Grandma Henke

Recovering from surgery seems to have its way of getting worse before it gets better.    Lynn’s is no exception.   Today, his second day home from the hospital, his leg is swollen and angry he has been miserable.

It started around 3:00 AM when he suddenly awakened from a sound sleep and realized he’d taken the wrong pills.    Not wanting to wake me up to give him the two pain pills that were due, he’d taken them himself.      He panicked when he realized shortly afterward that he’d taken two Coumadin instead of the two Loratab.     He was afraid to get out of bed for fear he’d fall and do something that would make him bleed, and his attempts to arouse me from my sleep in the bedroom down the hall weren’t working.   Apparently I slept through him yelling, my telephone, the bell I’d given him to ring so I would come running, and the television volume which he’d turned full blast.

“EDNA … EDNA, HELP”, I finally heard from the far side of my foggy slumber.         

“I’m up,” I called out as I stumbled from my bed thinking it was morning.   “I’m coming!”

He was clearly shaken as he told me he’d made a serious mistake and I needed to call the hospital and let them know he’d overdosed his Coumadin.   That brought me wide awake, but right after my heart started racing I remembered I’d put them safely in a drawer just so he wouldn’t make that kind of mistake in the night.   I tried to calm him but he was insistent and worried.    

“No, No, I know I didn’t take the pain pills.  I took two of those big, multi-colored capsules,” he told me.   “I’d better start eating broccoli.”    (Broccoli is full of Vitamin A which is one thing that might counteract some of the affects of the drug.)

I got out the two pill bottles and counted them to be sure, and showed him that the pills in questions were not big and multi colored, but were small and round.      All of the pills that should have been in the bottles were accounted for.

Hubby was relieved when I finally convinced him he’d had a bad dream and wasn’t going to bleed to death, and I was relieved when I realized it was only 4:00 in the morning and I could go back to bed.

Since there is not room in the bed for the two of us and his sore leg, tonight I adjusted the ring on my cellular phone to a very annoying one and it is turned VERY LOUD.   I will put it right by my head so I can’t possibly sleep through it and if he needs a drink of water I will probably have a heart attack from the sudden noise.   Just to be on the safe side I will still move his pills to a new spot.  

It’s good to be needed.