Hospital

Today, I returned my parents’ call from last night and rang up my parents’ restaurant. No one had seen them and the waitress I spoke with said "Oh, they’re at the hospital."

Naturally, I freaked.

I called my dad’s cellphone, and found out my grandma (on my father’s site) ‘s in the hospital. She wasn’t feeling well yesterday, and it turned out she had lost a good deal of blood. For a while, near midnight last night, my grandma was refusing a blood tranfusion – something about her being worried the blood would be contaminated. A silly notion, but my dad and my aunt were trying to convince her otherwise. I guess they argued for a long while and, when her blood level started to reach a rather dangerous point… she got the transfusion.

Right now, things are fine. From what my dad says, she’s looking a lot better. A few tests were run to try to track down the cause of the bleeding, and it’s been determined that an ulcer is not the cause. I think they’re going more testing tomorrow, to try to find out where the bleeding is occurring.

I got pretty concerned on the phone. I talked to my grandma for a bit and it was hard to hear what she was saying. We talk mainly in Cantonese, so on a good day it’s a bit tricky. But her voice sounded a bit softer than normal, and it was scary… it almost sounded like she had had a stroke. Her voice was that bad.

I don’t know if my parents are trying to avoid telling me any bad news, or if it’s really not as serious as I’m making it out to be. From the sounds of it, she lost a good deal of blood the past day so that might account for her voice. On top of that, she got medication for the tests they performed today. I hope that’s why she sounded as rough as she did.

A long time ago, my other grandmother (on my mother’s side) took ill. I was an undergraduate in college, and worked at the Main Library there. I was high up in the building, deep in the stacks shelving books, and I got this chill out of nowhere. It was a very odd sensation that something was pretty wrong. When I got home, I found out my grandma had died.

I’m not one to claim knowledge through "sensations," although my sister claims to have them rather frequently. But I remember the library experience, just because I haven’t had anything like that happen before.

Right now, I guess the good thing is I don’t feel any of those bad or wrong sensations. No chills.

Right now, all I feel is a lot of worry.