| sooo, last week was wrenching.
I get a call on Sunday, July 31st, that my grandmother was taken to the hospital with stomach pain. She's 81, and prone to being a hypochondriac, so I assume that everything will be fine, and to not worry unless I hear bad news. My family tends to be a tad emotional, and dramatic, so I was trying not to get sucked in.
Monday comes, I'm at work, and my cell phone rings. It was my cousin Kate, who, A, never calls me, and B, never calls during the day because she knows that i won't pick up at work. Usually I keep my phone off during the day, but I'm glad of the mistake now. I pick up the phone, and get to hear the news that they have discovered a basketball size tumor in her abdomen, she has developed pneumonia overnight, and if i want to see her alive, I best get up to Rhode Island (where the hospital was) that day. Trying not to panic, I hang up the phone, explain the situation to my employer, and go home to throw some clothes in a bag. Kate arrives one hour later, and we were off to Connecticut for an indefinite amount of time.
To take our mind off of the situation at hand, and the NINE hours it takes to finally get there, we resort to jokes and fun memories, and poof! I am a giggling 13 year old girl again.
So, we arrive at 10 pm and stay until midnight. (Bless that hospital; they did not enforce visiting hours.) She was so frail looking, but mad as a hatter that no one would let her go home and make dinner for us. The next day there was a meeting with my dad, my aunt kathy, and my two uncles, to deliberate the pros and cons of her having surgery or not. My grandma had had colon cancer twelve years ago, and had already decided that she did not want to go through surgery, chemo, or radiation again. However, if the surgery was not done, and her tumor went unchecked, she would die an excruciating death after her tumor either A. exploded, or B, suffocated her. It was growing by the hour, and had already reached and invaded her small intestines. It was an anomaly, to be sure; she looked pregnant in the span of a week!
No one wanted to see her go through that hell, she was already in severe pain. So, pending a stress test, it was decided to go ahead with the surgery. She passed, and it was scheduled for two days later, with a sixty percent chance that she would survive the surgery
Between visits to the hospital, my cousins who were in Connecticut, pitched in and cleaned her house. Her bedroom alone, with five people, took four hours to complete! There was so much junk in her room, my tears would not stop flowing. This was one of my worst fears realized. I cannot bear the thought of losing my memory, of not being able to remember how to rationalize, cook, dress myself, be independent! To think of not being able to remember the people I love, makes me feel so obsolete. Both sets of my great grandparents and grandparents have suffered from dementia, or Alzheimers's disease.
She has been suffering from dementia for the last five years or so, and requires constant care, which has been a huge strain on my Aunt Kathy, who carries the brunt of the day to day chores and, a lot of the time, my grandma's rantings.
The surgery was successful, and they believe they removed all of the cancer, but also she underwent a colonoscopy, and a hysterectomy, increasing her chances that cancer won't come back. Today, she had her ventilator removed, but is still in ICU, with a long recovery ahead. Please keep her in your thoughts. If you have made it through this long entry, I thank you. |
