I've been quiet for a little while, a week to be more precise. Have been struggling some with my body lately, spinal headache, neck pain and also issues with the small joints of my hands and fingers so I haven't been wanting to type much. I'm also going through a somewhat heavy period at the moment emotionally as May 9th marked one year since my biological maternal grandmother had a severe stroke which effects would later claim her life.
So while it is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome awareness month, I am dedicating this blog post to my grandmother and to stroke awareness.
My grandmother Lizzie was born on February 28th 1928, she grew up with her parents and her brothers and grew up to become a very independent, stubborn yet very caring woman with her heart in the right place. She got two children, my uncle and my mum and there's five years apart between my uncle and mum, my uncle being the older.
Due to my grandmother being a single mother in the 1950's, she faced some hardships from society, at the time when my uncle was born, she still lived with my great grandparents. At the time when my mum was born, she tried to get an apartment of her own in the same block, but the landlord refused to give her the apartment that was available "as there's already too many children in the building" yet my mum had already been born and already living there. It was just the landlord making a point about my grandmother being a single mother. Seeing no other option, my grandmother took mum to an orphanage as a temporary solution while she was fixing her housing situation. She got the apartment she had been denied before, but at that time, my mum had already gotten to a foster home which would eventually become the home where she grew up. When mum turned one year old, my grandmother came to visit mum in the foster home and when she saw how well cared for and loved my mum was in the foster home, she said that she'd sign the papers if the foster parents wanted to adopt, as all she wanted was the best for my mum and she saw that she couldn't give her that stability herself. Papers were signed, mum grew up with her now adoptive parents and had a very good childhood, she always knew she was adopted too.
After the papers had been signed, my grandmother was no longer allowed to make contact, but she never stopped thinking about her daughter, not a day went by without her thinking about my mum.
Years went by, in the early 1990's my grandmother was on a bus trip somewhere and there happened to be a lady from my hometown on the same bus, that lady knew my adoptive grandparents and gave my grandmother the news that her daughter was now married and had a daughter of her own. My grandmother was so proud! She was a grandmother!
Some more years passed by and on my mum's birthday in 1997 we got a call from this to us unknown man in Stockholm, this man shows to be a younger brother of my mother, on their fathers side, the reason my grandfather had left my grandmother while she was pregnant with mum. My biological grandfather had passed away that Easter and mum's name had showed up in some documents. My mum and younger uncle had not known about each other's existence up until then.
After that call, mum decided it was time to look for her roots, it didn't take very long to get an address and phone number to my grandmother. Mum tried to call a few times but no one was home, so she wrote a letter and left address and phone number to us in the letter. One day when I got home from school, and was the first one to come home, the phone rang and it was my grandmother! By the time mum came home from work, my grandmother and I had been talking on the phone for quite some time and mum got the phone from me and she and my grandmother talked for even longer and arrangements were made to go visit a short while later.
My grandmother had been waiting for that call and letter for 43 years!
The weekend of the meeting came, and my parents and I went to my grandmother. It was instant bonding! As if we had never been apart! Since that day, both me and my parents have had a very close relationship with my grandmother and uncle, we would visit each other as often as possible, my mum and grandmother would talk on the phone a couple of times every week, my mum and grandmother even went on a cruise together in 2006 all the way from Bergen to Kirkenes in Norway.
How things went with the younger uncle? My grandmother embraced him like a son of her own! And they had a great relationship as well, and me and my parents have a great relationship with that uncle too, as does my older uncle!
When we were first reunited, my grandmother was 69 years old, and to be honest, she didn't seem to age during the time we had with her. She was plagued by chronic pain from a young age, and a pretty severe kyphosis and scoliosis, so she was retired on disability from a pretty young age, yet she lived a very social and active life, she had a passion for crafting and an amazing eye for detail. She could cross stitch the most complicated cross stitch patterns you can find and make the most amazing embroidery you can imagine, she was also an avid knitter. Basically, you'd never see my grandmother without some embroidery or knitting project in her hands!
She kept embroidering and knitting up until the very end, she was in fact working on a table cloth at the time when the stroke hit her last year, taking away her ability to use her right side and her ability to talk.
My grandmother was 85 years old, she was very active, social and never even owned a walking stick, and apart from her pain and spine, very healthy with very little age related health issues. I believe she may have had Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome at a mild level due to the severity of her spine and long history of pain, and also migraines. There is hypermobility on that side of my family too, and my grandmother, as I mentioned above, didn't seem to age at all between 69 and 85, she looked very young for her age and her skin was silky soft.
So, on May 9th last year, my life was changed forever. My parents were traveling in the south in their RV due to it being a long weekend, I was at home, it was just a regular Thursday until mum called me in the early evening. My older uncle had been trying to get in touch with my grandmother that day but she hadn't picked up the phone, so he had gone to her apartment to check on her and had found her in bed still in nightdress. Ambulance was called and she was taken to hospital. My parents immediately turned around and started the long drive home, they were about 250 miles away by the time of the call. They came back home at about 1am.
Friday May 10th mum and I went to the hospital to see my grandmother and talk with the staff and my uncle. At first the prognosis was slightly positive. Due to the time that had likely passed between the stroke hitting and her coming under medical care, there wasn't much hope for a full recovery, but there was hope for some recovery and survival. My grandmother always knew where she was, who we were and what had happened to her, she just couldn't speak or use her right side of her body. But the trooper that she was, she was up in a wheelchair already that day when we visited her and we even saw what looked like controlled movements in her right foot. Things were looking really good!
A few days later, we got a call again. My grandmother had developed pneumonia in the hospital, pneumonia happens so easily in elderly people as soon as they get bedridden and unable to cough properly. The first slightly positive outlook now started to look more grim. Time went by, we went to visit as often as possible, I've calculated that I drove about 1000 miles in a month just between home and the hospital.
With the pneumonia, we knew it would only go one way. One evening we got the dreaded call from the hospital that they believed it wasn't much time left, we went to the hospital immediately, I went home late that night due to being in too much pain to sit through the night, mum stayed the night with my grandmother. My grandmother pulled through that night, and the next day, and the day after that, which was Mother's Day here, she was even up in the wheelchair again to our great surprise when we came to see her.
My grandmother appeared to recover some again so little over a week later, my parents had a week long vacation where they again traveled south in their RV.
On June 8th, I drove down to the hospital on my own and me and my uncle visited my grandmother. I stayed for longer than my uncle as he lives in Gothenburg and could visit more easily, and he isn't a fan of hospitals. As I was sitting alone with my grandmother, her breathing changed so I called for nurses. A few minutes later, she was gone, she had passed over to the other side peacefully, surrounded by love from her only grandchild! We firmly believe she had chosen her time and waited for me, she knew I could handle being there when it happened, she knew I had seen it before, almost 14 years earlier when my adoptive grandmother passed away from old age (88) and several rounds of pneumonia.
I am very grateful that I could be there until the very end, and it puts our minds at ease in the family too, knowing she went peacefully and surrounded by love.
I made all the difficult calls to my uncle and mum, the nurses had offered to do it for me, but I felt it was better I did it.
Strokes are relentless! They can kill instantly or slowly like in my grandmothers case, and they can take away a persons entire identity by claiming speech and memory. Rapid medical intervention is essential when someone suffers a stroke, regardless of severity of the stroke. They say that if you get treatment within three hours you have good chances of recovery. We believe my grandmother may have been waiting for help for about 6 hours or even longer.
Knowing the signs of a stroke can save someones life! The signs of a stroke includes but aren't limited to:
- Face drooping and inability to smile
- Arm weakness, the person can't hold out both arms
- Speech difficulty, speech may be slurred and/or the person can not repeat a simple sentence
You can read more here: http://strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/WarningSigns/Stroke-Warning-Signs-and-Symptoms_UCM_308528_SubHomePage.jsp
If someone around you show signs of a stroke, immediately call for an ambulance! You may well save that person's life!
Keep an eye on people around you, check regularly on elderly around you or people you know may have an increased risk of strokes. A simple phone call to the person can change everything! If someone isn't responding, go check on him or her to be on the safe side.
While my grandmother couldn't be saved as in still being alive today, my uncle's actions of going there to check on her when she didn't pick up the phone did save her in the sense that we got one more month together and both her and us in the family and her friends had a chance to say our good byes, and she got to pass surrounded by love, rather than alone and later being found without anyone knowing for how long she had been laying there or if her passing had been peaceful or full of panic.
Knowing the signs and checking on someone can make all the difference in the world!
The month when my grandmother was in the hospital after her stroke was the most physically and emotionally exhausting time of my life, but I came through it being a stronger person. It changed my view on life in a way, taught me to appreciate things even more.
The year of all the firsts has been rough, I still cry at times, missing her voice and missing seeing her. She was the kind of old lady you would have thought would reach 100 years old, and I'm sure she would have, had it not been for the stroke. I had seen her just two days before the stroke, and she had been totally fine then. Things can change so fast!
This is a long post, and it wasn't easy to write it. But I felt I wanted to share it, especially now as I'm in the one year anniversary of the most difficult time of my life.
Now my hands hurts like crazy though!
