Late Night Phone Calls

I dread these so much. They're rarely to relay good news. Back in the day before both my sister and I were married and still living at home, we had some relatives who passed away. It eerily happened around the same time each year for a few years, usually in the beginning few months of January or February, and we would get the call in the early hours of the morning around 4am. I consider myself a light sleeper and whenever the phone would ring, my sister or I would race to the phone before the ringing would wake up my parents. When we noticed the coincidence of these kinds of calls during these hours, I personally stopped jumping out of bed to reach the phone first. I left that up to my sister...after all, she was the oldest.

After years of sharing a room with my sis, she finally moved downstairs. The basement was located directly below our bedroom. The heater vent could basically act as an intercom because you were able to hear everything that was going on downstairs- the TV, the radio, and the phone. In fact, whenever we used the phone downstairs, we'd unwrap the cord and drag it into the closet for extra privacy. If she answered the phone and it was for me, instead of calling me from the bottom of the stairs, she'd walk under the heating vent instead.

When the phone would ring in the middle of the night, my eyes would automatically check the time of the call on my clock. During the 4am calls, I'd purposefully let the phone ring so that my sister could pick up downstairs. Of course at night, the house is so quiet that you could hear everything. I'd lie in bed, listen to the phone ring, hear my sister's bed creak as she gets out of bed, sleepily answer the phone in a hushed voice, hear her tell the caller to hold on, hear the click of the door open and my sister climbing the stairwell, creak open the door at the top of the stairs, and finally hear her knock on my parents' door to relay the message. All this time, I'm lying in bed wondering who the call was about. Through the years, I've come to really dread late phone calls. Again like I mentioned before, they're rarely to relay good news. Rarely.

So I got a phone call from my sis yesterday evening, 12:30am-ish MN time. Caller id told me that it was my sister, but my heart started pounding because she rarely calls me this late. Bad news. Her voice was calm as she tells me that my mom is in the hospital. Abdominal pains...perhaps due to food poisoning. She hadn't been able to keep anything down since the day before and she was experiencing major stomach pains. Turns that that my dad took her to the doctor when it started and was prescribed some medication, but it didn't do jack for my mom. As the pain continued and increased, they ended up going to the E.R.

As it turns out, it's not food poisoning; rather, her pains stem from a blockage in her intestines. The doctor said that this was common in hysterectomy patients. In my mind I'm thinking, "Her surgery was back in 1991!" Goodness gracious...so all this time, a leftover flap of skin has been the cause of a blockage that perhaps has been building up. Her prior bouts of what we originally believed to be food poisoning was probably due to this. Now that they've confirmed this (through scans and x-rays), it was decided that she would need surgery.

Well, as I write this, my mom should be in the resting in the recovery room. According to my sister, the surgery involves a simple procedure. I will spare the details of tubes and catheters, but the doctor did confirm that there was nothing else wrong with my mom...a very good sign. As much as I miss my family, friends, and CA in general, it's times like these that make me wish I was only a hop, skip, jump, and a quick drive away. It sucks not being able to be there. I'm glad that it's only a couple more weeks until hubby and I make the trip out there.

Thankfully, the phone call this morning wasn't so serious. I mean, it could've definitely been worse, but hey, let's not even go there. I'll hear more news on mom tomorrow, but in the meantime, I'll be saying my prayers and I'd appreciate if you could add my mom in yours, too.