My Grandma has always been a stubborn lady. She’s also just a little unreasonable at times. Last Friday she thought it might be a good idea to try to tape down some curled up contact paper in the home they are getting ready to sell. So this woman, who has had numerous small strokes, heart issues and is on many different medications, climbed up on a FOLDING CHAIR to take care of this task. You see where this is going?
She didn’t fall, rather she scraped her leg while getting down and got what they refer to as a skin tear. Grandpa suggested they take a trip to the doctor. Grandma thought not. So they patched it up with band-aids and gauze and she went about her day. One of the medications she is on is Coumadin, which is a blood thinner. Consequently, the darn thing wouldn’t stop bleeding and by the time my mom got up there on Friday night, Grandpa was wrapping it in towels trying to keep the blood at bay. Grandma insisted on going to bed with this mess and after taking a couple of Tylenol, did just that.
It was still bleeding Saturday morning and my mom suggested they go see someone about this wound. Grandma’s cheery reply, “We can’t go to the doctor, he’s not open on Saturday’s!” Mom muscled her into the car and took her to the ER where they quickly brought her back to an exam room. The whole leg was swollen and the flesh was a dark blue, almost black. The wound was open and raw. The doctor looked her in the eye and told her if only she’d come in the day before it would have been a simple matter of stapling it shut. Now? Now she’s going to have to have daily dressing changes, antibiotics, and won’t be able to walk on it for months. And today her doctor decided to admit her as it doesn’t seem to be healing.
She could loose her leg over this. And that my friends… that’s just going to piss her off. Keep her in your thoughts. She’s an ornery old bird, but we happen to love her dearly.
