{"id":482,"date":"2008-07-28T11:26:46","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T18:26:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sarahdopp.com\/blog\/?p=482"},"modified":"2008-07-29T17:34:37","modified_gmt":"2008-07-30T00:34:37","slug":"alone-in-a-hospital-room-surrounded-with-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/2008\/alone-in-a-hospital-room-surrounded-with-friends\/","title":{"rendered":"Alone in a Hospital Room, Surrounded with Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"
Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.<\/div>

I’m doing two things right now that feel a little… strange.\u00a0 One is that I’m spending days on end by the bedside of my dying grandmother<\/strong>, holding her hand and carefully watching her body shut down.\u00a0 The other is that I’m writing about it in real-time.\u00a0 On the Internet.<\/p>\n

My grandmother, Sarah “Sally” Dopp (they gave me her name but not her nickname) is going to die soon. The fact that she hasn’t yet is shocking. She’s come really close. Twice.<\/p>\n

The first was Friday afternoon, when my mother called me to say they had stopped her chemo and dialysis treatments, and that she was dying. The doctors didn’t think she’d last a few hours, let alone the whole night.\u00a0 They were in New Hampshire, I was in San Francisco, and the only bookable flights I could find were red-eyes that would get me there at 6am.\u00a0 I panicked, packed anyway, and shot a message out to twitter:<\/p>\n

\"Sarahdopp_normal\"<\/a>sarahdopp<\/a>: Grandma’s dying. I need a flight from SFO or OAK to BOS or MHT *right now*. Cant find anything that lands before 6am tomorrow. Can you? Help<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

I was flooded with messages. More sites<\/a> to check, tips on how to approach and talk to airlines at the last minute, offers of frequent flier miles, specific research<\/a> on possible flights<\/a>, offers to help raise funds to pay for the expensive last minute ticket, ideas for other airports I could fly into, echoes<\/a> to broader networks of people, and messages of love<\/a> and support<\/a>. A few people even started calling airlines on my behalf, asking which flights were already booked and what my other options were.<\/p>\n

A dear friend got to my apartment as soon as she could and drove me to the airport. I spent the ride checking messages and calling people, trying to narrow down what airline would be the most likely solution. For each possible flight someone had found for me, I only had a window of 15-30 minutes to buy the ticket and board the plane.\u00a0 I ran. I got a direct flight. It landed me in Boston at 10:25pm.<\/p>\n

I would not have gotten there on Friday without your help.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I spent the flight holding onto as much calmness as possible, preparing for the likelihood that she’d be dead before I landed.\u00a0 An East coast friend who also saw my twitter-panic came to get me at the airport. I got my mother on the phone the second I saw him.\u00a0 “She’s still alive. You’re going to make it. Drive safely.<\/strong>”\u00a0 I collapsed onto my friend’s shoulder and cried until I could walk again. Twitter breathed a sigh of relief<\/a> along with me.<\/p>\n

I arrived to find the rest of my family camped out in the hospital room with an impressive spread of snacks (“We’re gonna be here all night”), standing around my grandmother, holding her hands and each other. My family asked how I managed to get there, and I explained how “My friends on the Internet found me a flight.<\/strong>”\u00a0 They shook their heads the way you do when you witness a miracle and are too tired to talk about it.\u00a0 The last chunk of family would be arriving from Florida in half an hour.\u00a0 We all made it.<\/p>\n

I went straight to her, touched her face, and said, “I’m here. Sarah’s here.”\u00a0 She opened here eyes and stared at me in a morphine haze. “I flew from San Francisco to see you.\u00a0 I’m here.\u00a0 You’re beautiful.\u00a0 I’m here.”\u00a0 She stared at me with her mouth relaxed, half-open, and wiggled her tongue. I kept talking for a few minutes until she closed her eyelids again.\u00a0 Someone put a hand on my shoulder and said she’d been unresponsive all day, and hadn’t opened her eyes in a long time.<\/p>\n

Saturday and Sunday passed with me standing guard as diligently as possible. I took naps<\/a> every six or eight hours and mostly focused on holding up the night shift — those hours the rest of my family who’d been caring for her for months needed to rest.\u00a0 My grandmother had told my uncle a few weeks ago that she didn’t want to be alone when she died. We promised her someone would always be with her. We’ve been doing that.<\/p>\n

For those hours when I’ve been the only one in the family awake, I’ve kept my phone near me and read the messages<\/a> I’ve<\/a> been<\/a> receiving<\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter, text messages, blog comments, facebook notes, email…\u00a0 They ground<\/a> me and give me strength<\/a>. My family is so exhausted, and I can get support<\/a> without needing to lean on them.\u00a0 From dozens of people. In the middle of the night. Without having to speak. And without letting go of my grandmother’s hand. \u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

We’re watching her breathing and her facial expressions.\u00a0 When she starts flinching, we give her extra shots of morphine.\u00a0 She’s opened her eyes a few more times and we’ve used those chances to name everyone who’s here and tell her it’s okay to let go. My mother is a minister. My brother is a licensed nursing assistant. We’re a tiny family, but we’re taking care of her well, and we’re trying to take care of each other.<\/p>\n

Late last night when I was the only one awake, fluid started to fill her lungs, her breathing turned to deep gurgles, and her skin started turning purple. The nurse explained that she’s getting closer, and that her last breaths may be a choking episode.\u00a0 I called my family in and we stood around her bedside, holding her as gruesome things started to take over of her body.\u00a0 We held her there for hours.\u00a0 Prayed. Sang. Cried. It got worse. And she still didn’t die.<\/p>\n

As I write this, it’s been twelve hours since I made those calls to my family, and she’s still going.\u00a0 I started to snap — too much caretaking on not enough sleep wore me out deeply, and then seeing her body start to turn into something out of a horror movie put me over the edge.\u00a0 I became nauseous, had trouble breathing, couldn’t speak.\u00a0 My mother ordered me to take a break.<\/p>\n

So right now I’m at my aunt’s house, resting, and processing experience by blogging it. Because that’s where my stability is. In the documentation. And in the hundreds of messages of support I receive because I’m able to do it publicly.<\/p>\n

Sometimes social media doesn’t make sense to me. Today it does.\u00a0 Thank you for being there<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My grandma says hi.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Grandma<\/a><\/p>\n

Edit:<\/strong> Grandma Sally died July 29, 2008 at 3am Eastern time, about 12 hours after I wrote this post.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heads up, this content is 18 years old. Please keep its age in mind while reading.I’m doing two things right now that feel a little… strange.\u00a0 One is that I’m spending days on end by the bedside of my dying grandmother, holding her hand and carefully watching her body shut down.\u00a0 The other is that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,2,70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-story","category-personal","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdopp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}