I can remember getting into my mother's car after school, and I can remember her face. She usually asks me "how was your day?". Instead she was quiet and solemn. I asked her what was wrong, and that's when she told me my grandmother was having heart problems earlier that day and was in the ICU. She told me my older cousin, Lindsey, was just visiting her at her house when she suddenly started clutching at her chest. My grandma told Lindsey to call an ambulance, and my grandma is one of those people who goes to the doctor at the last minute or not all and just self medicates with Tylenol. She's always the one who claims she's fine and that it will go away when she's basically coughing up a lung. So my cousin knew this was a serious situation.

When the ambulance came they could hardly get into the house because her house is so cluttered with toys and newspaper and just random junk. She's also a mild hoarder so this made rescue more complicated. The paramedics literally had to waste five minutes or so just moving things out of the way with the help of my cousin just to fit the gurney in the house. When she finally got into the ambulance they rushed her off to the emergency room.

When I got into the car that afternoon we were headed straight for West Jefferson Hospital all the way across the causeway and into New Orleans, which was the same place I was born. When we got there my dad, aunt, three uncles, and a few cousins were already there in the waiting room. Only a few people were allowed in at the same time so just my mom, dad, and I went in to see her. We walked for what seemed like forever just to get to her: up the elevator, down this hallway, down that hallway, through this room and that. We finally reached her room, which was hardly a room and more like a section of a bigger room with doctors and nurses in their desks in the middle of the big room with a curtain cutting off her section from the others. We pulled back the curtain, not sure what we were going to be walking into, and saw my grandmother hooked up to all of these wires and a machine. She kind of sounded like Darth Vader because she was hooked up to a breathing machine and when she took it off to talk to us her voice was really husky and rough. She was okay, but she wasn't okay at the same time.

There was a great possibility she would recover, but at the moment she needed to be there if she wanted that possibility. They were basically keeping her alive. We found out she hadn't been taking all of her medications: she has congestive heart failure, COPD, diabetes, sleep apnea and lots more. She is also on a 24/7 breathing machine with the nose plugs and oxygen tank in tow. We found out also that sometimes her breathing machine wouldn't be turned on so she would be walking around and doing her everyday thing without her oxygen turned on. This has caused her to have short term memory loss from brain damage due to the lack of oxygen, which explains her not taking/remembering her medicine needed to survive.

Needless to say that wasn't her last trip to the emergency room because from this first trip we didn't know she had short term memory loss until the fourth trip. The hospital would nurse her back to health and then send her home and then the next week we were back at it again. We were thinking there was something we weren't getting. We had her go to a neurologist when he broke us the news and in that meeting he also said that she wasn't fit to live on her own. My family took her in in January, the month following the month of ER visits, which was in December. We had her for a whole year and now she is doing great and is now living back at her house, but with my aunt checking in on her during the day to make sure she's doing what she needs to do. When I tell you that year was one of the worst, hardest, and most stressful years of my life, I'm being serious.

It was a huge struggle to get her to where she is today, and I give my mother full credit for that. My mom had the patience, compassion, and dedication for such a role she was given even though it was not her mom to take care of, but my dad's. My dad worked all day, and was hardly home, so my mom spent most of her time with my grandma because she doesn't work. I love my family, and I am very proud of my mom for her courageous efforts.