hemorrhage

Today was a v. long day, but I suppose it was a good one. I woke up a little before eight under extreme duress, took a shower, grabbed some tea, and was out the door with [censored] by nine to go to Des Moines. My grandmother had an endoscopy today, so most of the family convened at the hospital up there since she'd been transferred up there from our hospital earlier this week. She's in the same hospital that my dad was in last year, so I'm all too familiar with its setup and am unhappy that I had the morbid realization that my visits home in the future are statistically likely to contain more hospital visits than they did in the first ten or twelve years that I lived in California. Boo.

Anyway, [censored] and I got there around eleven, and we saw her a couple of times in between preprocedure procedures. When the phlebotomist came in to draw blood, I had to step out, then felt vaguely faint, so I abandoned my dad and brother and went to Starbucks (the only saving grace of that hospital) to get some quick sugar. [censored] came down to join me, and our group soon expanded to include Aunt B (who must be brutally tired since she just got back from New Zealand, was working like crazy, and spent last night at the hospital), Uncle Mark, Aunt Kathy, and Drewbaby (who must be brutally tired since he had to hang out with his family without the benefit of all that cheap college beer he's probably used to). We ended up having lunch in the hospital cafeteria, where three out of three children would agree that the food wasn't entirely up to our expectations.

After lunch, we went back upstairs just as they were wrapping up the procedure, so I delivered food to my dad and the siblings got the verdict while [censored], Drew, Kathy and I waited in the waiting room. I also may have forever destroyed my fertility by accident, since I was washing my hands in a leisurely manner after using the bathroom and then noticed the sign that said 'female patients of childbearing years must check in with the receptionist before using the restroom'. Uh. I'm going to assume that this has something to do with wanting to do a pregnancy test and not that the restroom is unavoidably contaminated, but if that's not what it was, I apologize to my unborn children.

As it turns out, it appears that Gram's issues are going to resolve themselves, and she should be out of the hospital on Friday. So [censored] and I came home, followed closely by our father, and we rendezvoused with our mother and went out for supper in town. There, we ran into the town pharmacist and his wife and encouraged them to have a drink with us while we ate, since they were on the way out the door. So that was super lovely; I see the pharmacist occasionally since the pharmacy is one of the stores I go into when I'm home, but it's usually a thirty-second conversation since he's always busy there. I also saw Ashley and Nikki, who were in my class in high school, and I think we're going to try to get together when I'm home over Christmas (thus violating my usual hermitville tendencies, but it would be fun to see them).

And now I must sleep since I'm failing *miserably* at my goal of resting and relaxing on this vacation - goodnight!