rose did in fact have to have her leg amputated this morning. she had to have her leg removed from right above the knee, down. it hasn’t hit her yet, and i feel so horrible for her. everything is about to change so drastically in her life…

when i got to the hospital with her niece, she was in and out of sleep. she wasn’t really moving around, we made a little bit of small talk. she was running a fever and didn’t feel well, but natalie and i tried to make her laugh a little here and there.

i know it still hasn’t fully hit me yet, and it didn’t even hit me when i saw her in the hospital bed. i think it finally hit me a little bit when she asked the nurses to move her down because her back hurt. they made us leave the room, so natalie and i were right outside of her ICU room with the glass door open. through the drawn curtain, we could hear rose screaming in pain. i seriously fought tears when i heard her crying and screaming out about the pain.

rose has become a motherly, aunt-like figure in my eyes in the last few months. i care for her greatly, and i feel absolutely awful knowing she’s in this horrible pain. and the fact that she’s all alone right now in the hospital also breaks my heart.

the road ahead is going to be so different and difficult for her.

natalie had mentioned that when rose is finally out of the hospital, she’s going to have to move rose up to albany to be with her and roses’s best friend diane.

a few weeks ago we were talking about moving elsewhere because i had mentioned (if i ever had the balls) that i’d love to move to utah, and she had mentioned that she wouldn’t want to live upstate. so that really sucks.

i’ll really miss her.

my upstairs neighbor rose is in the hospital…  she had bypass surgery on her legs years ago and the stints that keep her blood flowing closed up, resulting in a blood clot.

around 7:30pm on wednesday, she started realizing that her foot was cold and numb. it happens to her quite often, so she didn’t think much of it. after a while, she realized that her foot had turned white, and that’s when she started really worrying. she was trying to hold out for the hospital until the morning, but she couldn’t get comfortable or get to sleep. finally, a little after midnight, she decided to call me and head for the ER…

the initial nurse and then her doctor had some portable speaker with something attached to it so that they could listen for a pulse and there was absolutely no sound coming from her right foot at all. the doctor said that it was a good thing we came when we did, because if she had left it until the morning her foot would probably have been unsalvageable.

i felt really bad leaving her at nearly 6am, but they said they were taking her in for x-rays and scans and surgery, so i had left to come home and sleep. i figured i wouldn’t have even been with her anyhow.  i didn’t get much sleep though…

it turns out, the next morning, she still hadn’t gone in for surgery. i think that they were trying to avoid it, and just to remove the clot but i think it’s reached the point where surgery was the only option.

i’ve been keeping in touch with her niece so that i know what’s going on, i don’t think she has a room with a phone yet and i am not sure if she has a phone charger or not.  her niece has been texting me with updates, and the last one was her telling me that they’re probaby removing her leg from the knee down.

it’s so awful… this year has been shit for her…  her cat died, she fell twice this winter, she slipped discs in her back, fractured her tailbone or something in her back, now this…