Yesterday was the BIG day. We said goodbye to my grandma's pinky toe for good.
She is not diabetic but she is severely arthritic and I guess life has just taken it's course and the toe decided to move underneath the rest of her toes. It's hard to imagine at first but if you sit with you right leg out in front of you and then look at your pinky toe imagine it sliding under your other toes and you were constantly walking on it and the pain from your shoes was unbearable. Well that's what happened here. After several months of going back and forth to different podiatrists and orthopedics we finally were referred to one that suggested total amputation. Dr. Park made this as a last suggestion because the first option was to break the toes and replace them, this procedure would have months of recovery time and physical therapy and didn't guarantee that the toes wouldn't move again. So we opted to just take the thing off.
In my last post I discussed all the pre-op appointments which leads me to yesterday's excitement. I got a call on Wednesday afternoon from my grandma (while at Disneyland) saying there was a problem at the doctors office. It was hard to understand what she was talking about with all the noise so I managed to find a semi-quiet spot in the park to call the doctor's secretary. She explained that UCLA had not run the proper labs and they needed a current chest xray as well. This would require us getting out to Torrance by 8:00 am. Well I'll admit this was not exciting news when I'm sitting in the middle of Disneyland expecting to watch the fireworks and not leave the park till well after 10:00 pm and to top if off I would be commuting from Santa Ana. Nevertheless, I confirmed the appointment with the lady and went about my day.
I left Santa Ana at 6:30 am to pick up my grandma by 7:30 ish... then by luck of something we actually made it to Torrance Memorial by about 8:20. We went in for the blood work and chest x-rays and everything was going pretty well. Now of course this day (or blog) would not be complete with out some type of shenanigan from my lovely grandmother. As we were walking out of the hospital to head over to the surgery center she asked me if I remembered what Dr. Park looked like, I nodded my head and said "a little". Her follow up to this was based on a conversation that she had with the xray tech. When she was telling him about her surgery and he asked who the doctor was and when she said Dr. Park his response was "oh yeah, he's Asian right?" To which for what ever strange reason she responded "No." So when she asked me (while walking through a crowded waiting area) if Dr. Park was Asian and I said yes, she was AMAZED! She had completely forgotten what he looked like. I laughed and we made our way to the car and we drove on to our next stop.
Now it was after 10 am by this time and I was Starving and she was unable to eat until after the surgery. She said I could stop at Starbucks and eat something and she would just wait in the car so she wouldn't smell the good flavors, and she was happy reading her book. By the time I got done in Starbucks and we were heading to the surgery center she asked me again, are you sure he's Asian? I had already forgotten our earlier conversation. I told her I just vaguely remembered his face but I was pretty sure he was Asian, she shook her head in disbelief again and we arrived at the center.
We walked in and as I was checking her in she asked the lady at the front desk if she could ask her a "weird" question I looked at her wondering what in the world she could be asking NOT prepared for what was about to happen! She asked the nurse if Dr. Park was Asian!!! I just about died. She laughed and said yes he was Asian. I just couldn't understand why she was fixated on this at all! luckily the nurse just laughed it off, but I think it sounds worse than she actually meant it. Sure enough through all her prep time in the back Dr. Park finally walked in and she got a clear picture of what he actually looked like, and I wish I could have recorded her reaction to seeing him or at least taken his picture.
The surgery went very well and in about an hour and a half she was toe free. When I walked into see her she was still drowsy from the anaesthesia but was completely fixated on eating because it had been SO long since her last meal. Earlier while being prepped for surgery the nurses were asking her a series of questions one being when was the last time you ate anything (normal answer would probably have been 7 or 8 pm the night before) she answered 4:00 am! Why?? Because that was 8 hours before the scheduled time. She had set herself up to get up and eat something so it wouldn't be too long before the surgery. The nurses all laughed including the guy working on the AC in the room. They even had to stop and ask her what she ate at that time of morning (left over burrito). *CLASSIC*
Moving forward again, after about half an hour from when I was allowed to see her we could finally get her home and Oh Boy was she hungry. The nurses gave her graham crackers and juice but wanted her to really take it easy and not eat anything too heavy or rich do to the fact that the anaesthesia could make you nauseous. While on the way home she was already planning what she wanted to eat and I had to reminder that it wasn't time to get creative with food she had to just keep it simple. She nodded and then without pause she said "can you believe Dr. Park is Asian?" I burst into laughter because here we were having this conversation AGAIN! I think what was happening is that she is slowly loosing her memory or memories of certain things and she doesn't know how to handle it. so something like this has rocked her world. She did bring it up again later in the evening and just laughed at the fact that she had neglected to remember what someone looked like.
By bed time she was feeling a little more "normal" pain wise and the anaesthesia had worn off. But the discussions (fights) we had in between will lead me to additional posts about: My grandma the pack rat! and My grandma cooks everything in the microwave!
She is not diabetic but she is severely arthritic and I guess life has just taken it's course and the toe decided to move underneath the rest of her toes. It's hard to imagine at first but if you sit with you right leg out in front of you and then look at your pinky toe imagine it sliding under your other toes and you were constantly walking on it and the pain from your shoes was unbearable. Well that's what happened here. After several months of going back and forth to different podiatrists and orthopedics we finally were referred to one that suggested total amputation. Dr. Park made this as a last suggestion because the first option was to break the toes and replace them, this procedure would have months of recovery time and physical therapy and didn't guarantee that the toes wouldn't move again. So we opted to just take the thing off.
In my last post I discussed all the pre-op appointments which leads me to yesterday's excitement. I got a call on Wednesday afternoon from my grandma (while at Disneyland) saying there was a problem at the doctors office. It was hard to understand what she was talking about with all the noise so I managed to find a semi-quiet spot in the park to call the doctor's secretary. She explained that UCLA had not run the proper labs and they needed a current chest xray as well. This would require us getting out to Torrance by 8:00 am. Well I'll admit this was not exciting news when I'm sitting in the middle of Disneyland expecting to watch the fireworks and not leave the park till well after 10:00 pm and to top if off I would be commuting from Santa Ana. Nevertheless, I confirmed the appointment with the lady and went about my day.
I left Santa Ana at 6:30 am to pick up my grandma by 7:30 ish... then by luck of something we actually made it to Torrance Memorial by about 8:20. We went in for the blood work and chest x-rays and everything was going pretty well. Now of course this day (or blog) would not be complete with out some type of shenanigan from my lovely grandmother. As we were walking out of the hospital to head over to the surgery center she asked me if I remembered what Dr. Park looked like, I nodded my head and said "a little". Her follow up to this was based on a conversation that she had with the xray tech. When she was telling him about her surgery and he asked who the doctor was and when she said Dr. Park his response was "oh yeah, he's Asian right?" To which for what ever strange reason she responded "No." So when she asked me (while walking through a crowded waiting area) if Dr. Park was Asian and I said yes, she was AMAZED! She had completely forgotten what he looked like. I laughed and we made our way to the car and we drove on to our next stop.
Now it was after 10 am by this time and I was Starving and she was unable to eat until after the surgery. She said I could stop at Starbucks and eat something and she would just wait in the car so she wouldn't smell the good flavors, and she was happy reading her book. By the time I got done in Starbucks and we were heading to the surgery center she asked me again, are you sure he's Asian? I had already forgotten our earlier conversation. I told her I just vaguely remembered his face but I was pretty sure he was Asian, she shook her head in disbelief again and we arrived at the center.
We walked in and as I was checking her in she asked the lady at the front desk if she could ask her a "weird" question I looked at her wondering what in the world she could be asking NOT prepared for what was about to happen! She asked the nurse if Dr. Park was Asian!!! I just about died. She laughed and said yes he was Asian. I just couldn't understand why she was fixated on this at all! luckily the nurse just laughed it off, but I think it sounds worse than she actually meant it. Sure enough through all her prep time in the back Dr. Park finally walked in and she got a clear picture of what he actually looked like, and I wish I could have recorded her reaction to seeing him or at least taken his picture.
The surgery went very well and in about an hour and a half she was toe free. When I walked into see her she was still drowsy from the anaesthesia but was completely fixated on eating because it had been SO long since her last meal. Earlier while being prepped for surgery the nurses were asking her a series of questions one being when was the last time you ate anything (normal answer would probably have been 7 or 8 pm the night before) she answered 4:00 am! Why?? Because that was 8 hours before the scheduled time. She had set herself up to get up and eat something so it wouldn't be too long before the surgery. The nurses all laughed including the guy working on the AC in the room. They even had to stop and ask her what she ate at that time of morning (left over burrito). *CLASSIC*
Moving forward again, after about half an hour from when I was allowed to see her we could finally get her home and Oh Boy was she hungry. The nurses gave her graham crackers and juice but wanted her to really take it easy and not eat anything too heavy or rich do to the fact that the anaesthesia could make you nauseous. While on the way home she was already planning what she wanted to eat and I had to reminder that it wasn't time to get creative with food she had to just keep it simple. She nodded and then without pause she said "can you believe Dr. Park is Asian?" I burst into laughter because here we were having this conversation AGAIN! I think what was happening is that she is slowly loosing her memory or memories of certain things and she doesn't know how to handle it. so something like this has rocked her world. She did bring it up again later in the evening and just laughed at the fact that she had neglected to remember what someone looked like.
By bed time she was feeling a little more "normal" pain wise and the anaesthesia had worn off. But the discussions (fights) we had in between will lead me to additional posts about: My grandma the pack rat! and My grandma cooks everything in the microwave!
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