Holly's story - part 3

[Hollybrry82182]

Part 3 starts now......Both of my grandfather's died when I was just a little kid. I remember pulling my grandpa's (on my mom's side) stockings off for him and that he would give me a bit of his peppermint patty (we called them papa candy). I remember my Dziadzia (polish grandfather on my dad's side) showing me and Tim his garden and chasing us around the yard My babcia (grandmother on my dad's side) was really kool. When we lived in Winsted, CT, my parents would go out for dinner and stuff and we would go spend the night with her. She made really good polish food and was just really nice. She died in 2001. I miss her.

My grandma (on my mom's side) basically raised us along with my mom. She always either lived with us or lived nearby and was just always at our house. There isn't a family memory that she isn't a part of. When we moved to Tennessee, she went to stay with my aunt and uncle (her sister and brother in law) in Vienna, Virginia (right outside of DC) until we were able to get a place for her. While she was there, she wasn't feeling too well, so she went to the doctor and found out that she had a heart problem. My aunt and uncle thought it would be best for her to just stay there instead of make the 8 hour trip to TN. We went and visited her every month until we all moved and stuff and weren't able to visit near as much.

My aunt, her sister, died from lung cancer in April of 2002. We all went to the funeral and my grandma took it pretty hard. They grew up in a family of 11 kids. Wow! My aunt was the youngest and my grandma being one of the oldest sort of took her under her wing an was her 'mommy.' I remember at the wake, everyone was laughing and telling stories and of course they were all upset, but just kind of reminiscing. She's from way back when when at wake's, EVERYONE was very sad and somber and just didn't do that. I was crying a lot too, because I missed my aunt, but mostly because my grandma was crying and that made me cry.

She stayed in Va with my uncle and my cousin Teresa would visit every couple of months. We would visit as often as we could too. On July 8, 2004, my grandma was at the Adult Daycare Center that she went to every weekday so that she would have some other company other than my uncle. She LOVED it there! Well, she somehow slipped and broke her arm! That combined with her heart problem and just being really weak from it all kept her in the hospital for a week or so. I couldn't get up there to visit because my car was broke and I had no $$, so I wasn't able to get there until after they had put her in a nursing home/rehab center to get her arm back to normal. I visited her for 2 days and then was going to head back to Tennessee to get a job, since I was broke! Before I left, my cousin, Teresa, who lives in North Carolina and was visiting, was just talking with me, since we hadn't seen eachother in a while and she offered me a job. If I wanted it, I could stay with my other cousin, Victor (her brother), and just be a 'companion' for my grandma. Basically for as long as needed or as long as I felt like doing it, I could just stay with my grandma during the day so that she wouldn't be alone with just the nurses.

I agreed to do it. I would sit with her in her room, wheel her to her physical therapy and do her exercises with her. I also encouraged her to eat at mealtimes. She has never been one to eat a whole lot, but because she had been sooo weak, she needed to eat as much as possible. I actually only found this out a few years ago, but ever since she was a teenager, she has been bulemic. Anyway, we would also go to play bingo and card games. We were never bored, lol! Every couple of weeks, I would drive down to TN on Friday to visit everyone here and then head back up on Sunday. While I was down here, my uncle J and Vic would stay with my grandma. One weekend, she ended up in the hospital from dehydration. Even with all the liquid we were giving her, she wasn't getting enough because she was on sooo many medications to control her heart condition and those drained the liquid out of her. She went back to the nursing home and was a lot weaker, so wasn't able to do physical therapy (and also because of medicare/caid, something to do with all of that) and so I would still have her do exercises that we had already learned. She also was in the hospital another time because she had gotten a blood clot. We got kind of annoyed at the nursing home though because I had noticed something on her leg and pointed it out to a nurse and they bandaged it up, but that was it. Then it turned out to be a blood clot. Anyway, they gave her meds for that and she was back at the nursing home.