(no subject)
Jan. 14th, 2003 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
timepiececlockI went to visit my grandmother in the hospital today, after class. My dad had just arrived back home from San Diego, where he'd gone to see my brother's ship off, and we drove together. My grandma had been admitted yesterday, for the second time in a two weeks. This is the nth trip to the hospital in the last four years; we're not sure if she'll even be going back home this time.
As best I understand it, her lungs are failing. It's that and a hundred other things, but that in the end. This will be the second grandparent I've lost to tobacco in three years.
She was smoking cigarettes as much as two days ago. Her lungs are destroyed, eaten alive, after 60 years of it. If she'd stopped, she could have lived another 15 years, or more. My mother would have more than a meager 5 years grace time between losing her father too, and I wouldn't be reduced to a single grandparent.
A month or more ago, I asked my grandma something I never had before-- why she smoked. She gave me some bullshit answer, which boiled down too it's too late now, damage is done. She said "there's more to life than quantity-- there's also quality." That if she gave up the pleasures like smoking and candy and such, maybe she'd live another ten or so years, but she didn't think it'd be worth it.
All I could do was stare at her, and fight the urge not to burst into tears. Not to jump up from her couch and scream "WHAT ABOUT LIVING TO SEE MY CHILDREN, IS THAT WORTH IT? WHAT ABOUT BEING THERE ON MY WEDDING DAY? THAT'S NOT WORTH IT?!"
But I didn't, because that would have been unbelievably cruel, and it would have solved nothing. Because I was too busy staring at her wrists that were nothing but sinew and skin and blotchy red welts, too busy seeing the hunched, bent back of a woman who was once taller than myself or my mother, a beautiful 5'9" that I knew I'd never reach.
Now, two months later, she's like a paper doll, and instead of blotches on her arms where bruises flowered or tender vessels burst, the blood has spread under her skin from her elbows to the backs of her hands. She can barely hear and can't move her own weight and her eyes are kind, but listless.
And I stared at a small box by the side of her bed, watching a red bar of light rise and fall with semi-regular rhythm, like on a stereo system screen, and beside it a digital numeric read out. I asked my dad what the bar was, and he said it was a pulse indicator.
I've never seen a hospital pulse reading next to someone I loved before.
As best I understand it, her lungs are failing. It's that and a hundred other things, but that in the end. This will be the second grandparent I've lost to tobacco in three years.
She was smoking cigarettes as much as two days ago. Her lungs are destroyed, eaten alive, after 60 years of it. If she'd stopped, she could have lived another 15 years, or more. My mother would have more than a meager 5 years grace time between losing her father too, and I wouldn't be reduced to a single grandparent.
A month or more ago, I asked my grandma something I never had before-- why she smoked. She gave me some bullshit answer, which boiled down too it's too late now, damage is done. She said "there's more to life than quantity-- there's also quality." That if she gave up the pleasures like smoking and candy and such, maybe she'd live another ten or so years, but she didn't think it'd be worth it.
All I could do was stare at her, and fight the urge not to burst into tears. Not to jump up from her couch and scream "WHAT ABOUT LIVING TO SEE MY CHILDREN, IS THAT WORTH IT? WHAT ABOUT BEING THERE ON MY WEDDING DAY? THAT'S NOT WORTH IT?!"
But I didn't, because that would have been unbelievably cruel, and it would have solved nothing. Because I was too busy staring at her wrists that were nothing but sinew and skin and blotchy red welts, too busy seeing the hunched, bent back of a woman who was once taller than myself or my mother, a beautiful 5'9" that I knew I'd never reach.
Now, two months later, she's like a paper doll, and instead of blotches on her arms where bruises flowered or tender vessels burst, the blood has spread under her skin from her elbows to the backs of her hands. She can barely hear and can't move her own weight and her eyes are kind, but listless.
And I stared at a small box by the side of her bed, watching a red bar of light rise and fall with semi-regular rhythm, like on a stereo system screen, and beside it a digital numeric read out. I asked my dad what the bar was, and he said it was a pulse indicator.
I've never seen a hospital pulse reading next to someone I loved before.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
I'm sorry
Date: 2003-01-14 07:49 pm (UTC)Try and keep your chin up!
Ophelia
Re: I'm sorry
Date: 2003-01-14 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-01-14 08:41 pm (UTC)Take care of yourself.
-Cath