Shock and Sorrow

I went to work today, much like any other day. Had been there a little over half an hour or so, taking care of a few things, when I received a phone call from my wife. She was in tears, telling me that my mother had been trying to get a hold of me. My Grandmother passed away this morning. She had been a little under the weather, and had actually been in the hospital the last few days. Turns out the little bug she had was pneumonia. She was being treated, and responding well to treatment. She was scheduled to be released to come home this evening. That's how well she was doing. Out of the blue, her heart rate dropped to 40 bpm, while the nurses were en route to her bedside, her heart stopped all together.

I have yet to hear a satisfactory explanation as to what happened. The only thing anyone seems to be able to tell me, is that she was 85 years old, and these things happen sometime.

I was in shock most of today. I'm not real sure how I got home, or when my wife arrived with the girls, packed everything up, and loaded us all into the car. We drove three hours, most of which is a blur, to be with my family.

While there is an underlying sorrow through-out everything, the shock is slowly starting to fade. I'm not sure what the stages of grief are supposed to be, but my shock is giving way to anger. Not anger at my Grandmother for leavign me, but anger at the medical staff. This is the second grandparent who went into the hospital very ill, responded well to treatment, and after they'd been stepped down from ICU to a 'normal' ward, suddenly died.

The investigator in me wants to head to the hospital right now, and start grilling people, the grandchild in me wants to start twisting arms, and breaking fingers until I find out exactly what happened, and why, and make someone pay.

I guess it's a good thing my wife and mother made me lock up my duty weapon before I came out of shock. I'm normally a very level headed kind of guy, but right now, I'm wanting to just go do something, anything, to un-make this tradegy.

I know not many folks read this, and those who do probably aren't interested in this sort of thing, but I think I'm going to try and get things out of my head and onto the blog while I'm here, and see if it helps me to deal with this.

Hope your day was better than mine.

Casey

PS- I'm posting from my iBook Indigo, and there seem to be some issues with how I style my posts. I may try to go back and edit them when I get home so that they match the rest. Then again, maybe not, maybe this will just be how my 'on the road' posts look.