Calm My Anxious Heart

She calmly sits in the hospital chair with a look of hope and of restoration in its eyes. She carries his clear blue dress of hospital as comfortably as a dressing gown and shows me proudly its arms liberated of all the IVs. She says me while boasting how she ate soup of chicken that in the morning and how she spoke with Rosa on the telephone, that she called directly in the hospital piece. My grandmother is excited to return tomorrow. We discuss how she needs to accelerate and returns to do my stew of more of chicken of grandfather.

Liz, the nurse clinic enters and we exchange polite greetings. She says me that the levels of potassium of my grandmothers are dangerously low; this not to be good for his heart. I translate for my grandmother. I say it that she needs the potassium to heal after surgery. They need to inject this in his IV. She understands not why she needs this additional potassium. She says that she eats a banana everyday. Liz explains that she did not eat uniform food for a week and that now its levels are low; she needs the intravenous dosage for his heart.

Liz warns my grandmother that medicine can burn or can prick. "Some said patients that it injures a lot," she says as her pushes the drugs in the cork of abandoned IV. My grandmother begins quivering and to shake in his chair; she the miserable sounds neck and firm its eyes solidly as the fists. She moans and then she yells and pleads for the pain to stop. My grandmother of 78 years, a Russian obstinate woman, sits in this hospital chair that begs Liz to stop the pain that she injects directly in his body.

This a minute is held always a long time after it passed already. This a minute that begins an event collection that will stamp themselves on my memory and strolls my dreams a lot of longer more than more necessary.

Liz stops medicine. I say my grandmother that she stopped it, but she cannot hear me, she screams that it injures. I say his noisier one than she stopped it; I walk towards she. My grandmother seems weakened and beaten by the entire incident. As a treatment of changeable shock totally a person, she went out of the experience that demands for knowledge "Why"?

"Why do have-t I need of this"? she keeps to repeat. As a confused child that will persist to ask a question until someone replies it, she continues to saying every nurse and every doctor that just this morning she felt wonderful. She had had just of the soup; she had led of the and the exercises done. "Why do they me this"? I continue to translate medical gibberish of Liz in Russian for my grandmother. I hold his hand and says him to breathe by him. I try of him to give my force.

Liz enters with a hot pile for the arm of my grandmother. It takes the half an hour for the pain to leave and then my grandmother must take four the too big, chalky pills and of potassium. There is not enough liquidates to help the dry mouth of my grandmother descen these pills. They lodge themselves in the basis of its diaphragms and time slowly and the digest painfully.

In the minutes there is a quick one that rings solid and the races of Liz in the piece. She asks how my grandmother feels and the says quickly that they need to obtain it in the bed. They need to take a picture of his heart they say it. I say it they need to do an EKG. Liz wonders me to ask my grandmother which injures. My grandmother says me that she feels not well. She was fine until this potassium. Liz explains that the pain was too energetic on his heart.

Liz is in a hurry; she redarrange the chairs and the unoccupied carts in the piece, making room for the metallic voluminous cart of EKG. My grandmother is ordered to go to bed right away; this is an urgency. "This is well," I say it. "Your heart does them just concerned".

Back up arrives in three more with a cardiologist already on his manner. "She needs to go to bed right away"! they resound ae" the one on the other. "The one fib, the d-bobard, Nail," a word string that every medical drama taught to hate me.

Three of we obtain it in the bed, moving tubes aside, prudent in order not to to injure his repairing stomach. Two nurses begin lowering his dress to put the sticking cushions for the EKG. She says that it injures. She asks why this arrives. "This is not my defect," she says. "I was fine before the potassium pulled".

I hold his hand and brush its hair of his face. I repair his dress for that its breasts are covered. I push my manner between the bed and the wall and the position reassuring it there in a manner that does me feels powerful and powerless anyway. She gets angry and the pain is excessive and disconcerting. The faces the mind-blowing one on exasperate it.

I look at the readings on the devices above his head. His arterial tension goes dangerously top to dangerously bottom. The more medical personnel between the piece; I move myself ampler and more against the wall and the bed crushes me.

All begins bothering my grandmother ae" the oxygen tube, the heart supervisor, all the IVs, its increased legs, and all pouring voices. She wants to know that every bleep signals and that every medicine done. They order the work of more of blood and another IV. She refuses; she says them that they put just a new the one in this morning. There is not the color of more of skin left on his arm, just an increased vessel in the shadows of magenta and navy. I see the sewer of color of his face as her renounces the fight a little. She feels beaten and stifled; an unexpected pip in his curative way.

She says that she wants them all to stop. "Not more"! she yells. She uses at last his English to yell out "I am dead".

I take his hand and the says that is not acceptable; it there a lot of persons has working to obtain it better now. I try to fill a role of a mother, a friend, a majorette, but I am granddaughter ae" terrified and worried.

The new IV needs to be put in right away, they demand. My grandmother consents. She recognizes the nurse that inserted his last IV and says that it does the good work. She allows him procedure. She rents his work again.

The new IV means more injections ae" a lot of to prick and cleaning then the IV. They try to check his cardiac rhythm. A normal cardiac rhythm is 75 beatings by the minute; his is 180 now. They use a stethoscope to try to listen but to say that they not can hear not imports what; this is also quickly they say. They ask the cardiologist again. More of medicine is injected in the IV.

All the white coats muster around the bed. They are clearly nervous and confused. They compare numbers and graphs and keep to run the machine of EKG. They scream to my grandmother. It is noisy in the piece and since she does not speak the English they speak noisier. They ask it where it injures but she knows not where. "It injures everywhere," she says.

The bleeps keep to jump and the required intercom more of people ae" they push in a cart of accident and the attach to this supervisor. I cannot keep the heart of beating of my eyes of this picture of TV of my grandmother irregularly. I speak more soft and more calm. I all translates they say. I say him to breathe.

My grandfather is a statuesque face on the chair in the bottom. It has the faith in medicine and the says to calm and the fact permits that they need to do. It seems abnormally calm, but adrenaline and the denial are an interesting force together. It begins me to say that this is a good hospital. It says to give their space to work.

My grandfather likes my grandmother in the manner that I imagine a man likes his woman after 58 years. A love that transcends a begun life together in another a half century of continent there is. To Kiev they were married. They had two children ae" a boy and a girl. They worked two jobs and allowed themselves each an apartment of two rare pieces and a small VW annoys. They immigrated to the America in the first wave of Russian immigrants in 1976.

In America they constructed a second one full of life with the American grandchildren that they fought to understand. My grandfather survived cancer of throat and the surgery of open heart. It speaks with an artificial can of voice and has a permanent stoma in his neck. After his quadruple by-pass, the thinner blood they gave him it caused to begin bleeding of the hole in his neck. But this man can construct, can rebuild and can repair does not import what ae" the cars to 3D enigmas of Jigsaw. It does not do drunk of uniform water ae" only the coffee with the milk and Sugar during the day and the soft red wine of the verseuse of gallon with the dinner.

Now this strong man of 5ae²7ae³ looks at my grandmother in his surrounded bed with the doctors and the nurses that pulls tubes, injecting medicines, and piling up on the bags of more of IV on the center. Just this morning she was iv-libre. She returned tomorrow. Now this disorder. His heart beat also quickly and there was not model. She did not reply to medicine. His arterial tension was dangerously irregular. The cardiologist arrives and student the frightful impressions of EKG. She prescribes another medicine ae" first a dosage for 6 hours and then a smaller other dose for the next one 6 hours.

For two hours they inject and measure. They take his arterial tension on the left arm and then the right. I help them Velcro and unvelcro the wrist. They use the machine to verify arterial tension and then they do it manuellement. My grandmother keeps to ask me that the readings are. I reply it vedridiquement every time.

At last his heart slows down and regulates. She puts to the bed of the drained and sounds beat and resentment with every word. She cannot understand just which arrived just. She was fine this morning she keeps to say.

"Maybe this is because your husband was in the piece," the jokes of Liz.

My grandfather gets up of the chair and repairs the cover of my grandmother. She asks him to twist its socks in place and it does, prudent in order not to to touch its increased legs. It walks on to his head and leans itself in her. It says that it wants to see if she is hot. It puts gently its lips to his forehead and smooths its hair to his place. It kisses his forehead, the same skin that it knew for 60 years.

Its eyes water. "It is my first one," she says to whoever always listens.