Not surprisingly, my aunt managed to piss off every nurse on her hospital floor, as she has for almost everyone in the family. According to my parents, who have been there most of the time, she vacillated between being cooperative and shouting at the nurses about not taking proper care of her. *sigh* We're not surprised, but she tried to check out AMA at least twice that I know about, to the point where they ordered a psych exam for that to occur for her to leave without oxygen since, you know, she would die.

Having been a patient many (many) times over the years, there are things to be alarmed about. Literally "I can't breathe because my oxygen is in the 60s and I need someone now." "I'm having sepsis reaction." "I'm internally bleeding to death and my hematocrit is 15." All of these qualify for an emergency reaction by nurses and if I hadn't gotten it I would be dead. I was probably a bit harsh occasionally since they originally saw me as young and dramatic until they saw my stats and went OMG themselves. But verbally abusing nurses because they weren't putting me as their #1 priority or doing what I wanted because I was uncomfortable or that I was angry that I was sick is just...foreign to me.

She is home now, and my dad (her brother) is with her now to get her settled with oxygen and get home care set up. It was probably partly her attitude and her usual insistence of going home that led to it, but we'll see how it goes. She lives in a two story house with laundry in the basement and I doubt she's in any state to go downstairs to do laundry, or upstairs to her bedroom so hopefully she'll just stay on the main level and have caretakers do the rest (ha, as if!).

I don't know. We can't caution or control her since she won't listen to anyone including family, and she's difficult at the best of times. This is certainly not the best of times and only the beginning if she gets the valve replacement and stents, and she's an hour and a half north of where we live. We've tried to convince her to sell the house and move down here for about 10 years, but it's talking to a brick wall, and she's alienated the family left up north so that's not an option either.

They've only given her 3-5 years even if she gets the procedures, and I don't want those to be angry, bitter, and combative years, but that seems to be the path she's chosen. She's lucky that she's lived as long as she has without prior major medical issues, but she doesn't seem to internalize that, and only sees it as some weird sort of failure on her part instead of natural aging and consequences thereof. I guess maybe I'm lucky that I almost died at 20 so I know what it's like to be that ill, and if you make it out, great. If not, well, that's the way it goes, you just want to go quickly with as little pain as possible. And in the process be grateful for others, especially those taking care of you in or out of the hospital, and know that everyone is doing their best.

In short, it's not all about you.