A Treasure Found at Home

my aunt jeanie is in the icu. i got a call yesterday around 4:30 saying they’d taken her to the hospital and another at 7:30 telling me she had been transferred to the icu.

i just spoke with my mom; aj is getting worse. her heart is functioning normally but her lungs are white on an x-ray. they should be black if they’re full of air. my mom had called and asked to speak to the doctor when she was on her way to the airport to go to her next business meeting. when she heard this, she changed her flight and cancelled her meeting. she requested (ordered, mom’s the doctor of the family even if she’s an rn officially) a pulmonary consult. this was what saved my grandmother 5 or 6 years ago when she was having a similar problem in reaction to one of her heart meds—having a pulmonologist assigned to the case. she requested it over the phone because the 4 hours it will take her to get to the hospital could be critical.

mom says she figures they see 95 and figure they should just let the patient go, but aj is a feisty 95 and deserves a chance.

i’ll try to find a picture of her later. she is my grandmother’s aunt (which makes her my great great aunt), but is only six years older than grandma. they were raised more like cousins or sisters than aunt/niece. my brother and i have several memories of aj, the most remarkable thing about her was how she always always looked the same. the woman never seemed to age untill the last 3 years or so. she never learned to drive and only had an elementary school education, but she lived on her own and walked or took busses all over town until just a few years ago. she worked at goodyear with my dad when he and my mom were dating. she tells a story of walking to work with him and him stopping to look in a jewelry store window at rings. she remembers asking if he was thinking of getting married and not knowing he was dating her grand niece. (my dad says it’s untrue, the reason he was anything more than cordial with aj was that she was related to mom, she used to be aggressive on the floor of the factory and would swear and pick fights with the other women, who were afraid of her.)

my two most vivid memories were of trying on her shoes when she came to visit us in texas. they were huge on my little four year old feet! and her leaning over the table in ohio at grandma and grandpa’s house loudly encouraging me to, ‘mangia! mangia!’