Two and a half years ago, my grandfather suddenly took ill. I will never forget the late-night phone call. This was a couple years after his triple bypass. Up to that day, he was a completely normal person, as healthy as you’d imagine an 84 year old ox of a man to be. He’d forget words now and then, but was otherwise just like you or me.
He’d had leukemia for over thirty years, mind you.
After he took ill, he was never the same. Greene Memorial Hospital did everything wrong. Every little thing. They tried to put him in their nursing home (his doctor Taylor has a stake in that facility, FYI) over and over, where he only continued to do worse. They did not allow him the chance to get any better. And he didn’t!
In that system, he has lost his ability to walk and to swallow. Almost 100% of the life on this planet survives largely because of those two underrated skills. But what do I know?
His general health has declined steadily ever since. He became confused. So much that I am not 100% positive that he knows exactly who I am anymore or how we are related. He doesn’t seem to know his general layout in the universe anymore.
Which brings us to now.
Last Sunday night, he was having some trouble with breathing and a very rapid heart beat. We called a squad to take him to the hospital (not Greene Memorial). He had some pneumonia. He stayed in ICU for a few days.
Thursday: I was sitting with him, trying to make some kind of conversation (he’s a man of extraordinarily few words these days, alas), when he said “help me.” I got a nurse and she said that he was “guppy breathing” (exactly, more or less, what you would imagine a guppy breathing like) and he had some crap in his throat they found difficult to suction out.
His blood oxygen level was dipping below normal. When it fell below 85%, a doctor advised that they would have to put him on a ventilator, which itself could be fatal, due to his weakened condition and his low platelet count.
They ushered me out of the room to put the tube down his throat. There was an undeniable sense of emergency to the situation. I called my dad and paced around in the hallway outside of the ICU. About a half hour later, the doctor came out and informed me that they got the tube in him, but that his heart had stopped.
He had died. Died.
CPR was performed, which, par for the course, broke some of his ribs from the compression. He came back and was breathing with the ventilator.
When we went in afterward, his blood oxygen was well below 90%. He was not looking too good. In fact, he looked real bad. His left shoulder, I noticed, was gray. He made no movements or sound.
We all gathered around, my dad and his wife and I, plus nurses and doctors and a clergy woman. We had a terrible time. I cried and grieved and told him how much I loved him and how good he had been, etc. His blood oxygen bottomed out at around 45%. There would most likely be brain damage if he managed to survive at all, which was not likely at all.
He slowly became more responsive, and was eventually looking up and down with his eyes, and moving his arms. He’d take his arms and push them out above him, as if punching the air in slow motion.
I think now that he was saying: “God damn it! Stop talking to me like I was dying! I’m not dying, you bunch of assholes!” I think he was scared and more than a little pissed off.
He recovered from death. Unfortunately, little, if anything, can be done at this point, should his poor sweet old heart give up again.
This Sunday, a few days later, they took him to a room near the ICU, but out of it. His blood oxygen has been ~100% ever since a couple hours after he died. Later today (Monday), we will be taking him to Hospice for a week. After that, assuming he is still with us, he will go back to his home, where he has lived, off and on, for 35 years. He does not know whose house it is, but he will be home, with his poor broken ribs (which he has yet to complain about), where he can die, hopefully peacefully, and in relative comfort among his family.
I am 100% not ready for this. I love this man so much that it’s just killing me. He and my grandmother raised me. The flood of memories that assault me constantly is overwhelming. I drown in them hourly, revive, and drown again. Lather, rinse, repeat.
My poor father, who has been taking care of him for the last two years, is beaten and it’s showing. I worry for him. He has beaten a lot of odds himself, and is a fine, good man. In sheer kindness, my father is second only to his dad - who is lying in a bed, unsure of his world, and dying.
The floor is dropping out of this family. There are no more kings or queens in our domain; only two princes and a minor count. We are haphazard and spent, our empire having fallen to dust.
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