Colostomy bags and photos of Europe

You guys, I went to see Lillie today (yes, that's her real name, I think it's fine to use it), and she had a colostomy! I haven't been to visit her in several weeks, maybe a whole month - August sorta kicked my ass - and so I finally went to see her today. She didn't recognize me, which I expected, but she was very agitated. She's always been such a sweet, happy person, always laughing. This was not normal.

I asked her how she was, she showed me her hand (which she fell on last November and hurt pretty bad - I guess it still gets achey), her stomach (right by her belly button she's got a little pouch of fat - she's gained weight since she's been there), her leg (also hurt in the fall), and touched her forehead and said "high blood pressure." This is all normal, but usually she laughs about it and forgets and we talk. This time she wouldn't let up. She talked about how she wasn't supposed to be there, she's 80, she should be somewhere with old people. They don't give her medication, they don't take her to the doctor when she's sick, they just give her a pill, she can't sleep because they're too loud, etc, etc. She was very distressed.

This was shocking to me. There was a wheelchair at the foot of the bed that I sat on while she talked to me. After about 10 minutes of this, I reassured her that I would be talking to someone about her situation. Then I pulled out my pictures from Europe and went through them and talked to her about it. She laughed quite a bit, smiling, made a few comments (she really liked the picture from Cinque Terre with P and the cat). Then I said goodbye. I just emailed her care manager, and I should be meeting with the both of them next week.

As I was walking out, her roommate asked if she could see the pictures. Her sister just went on a vacation to Greece, so she was interested to see those. She is a woman in her 40s (I think) who is bedridden. She doesn't seem to get confused, she can carry on a conversation, but she does a lot of exclaiming. "Oh, that's so beautiful!" "Oh my gosh!" She has a very soft southern accent, and I can imagine that if her situation wasn't as it was, she would be somewhat of a southern belle. She seems to be quite a flirt, wears her heart on her sleeve. In fact, she was really taken with the pictures of A! A new question for every picture of him. She asked me if that was my husband, I said no he was my boyfriend; she asked me if we were still together, I said no we broke up in March; she asked if there was any hope of getting back together, I said no, I was the one who ended it. The picture of him standing against the railing over a canal in Amsterdam (which is one of the better pictures I took), she said, "Oh, there he is again!" And the picture of him on the train to the airport, WITH A MULLET, the light streaming in behind him in a very angelic way (another good picture), she said, "Oh Laura, he's gorgeous!" HA HA!

So that was my morning.