After a couple of days in the hospital, with mega doses of fluids. The doctor was able to determine that my Grandma had a mass in her colon. He suggested surgery right away to remove the mass and biopsy it. The only problem was that my Grandma was so dehydrated that she couldn’t have any surgery. Her body was so dry that she was still leaving chocolate flakes of skin all over the place. The IV had to keep on being reset because her veins were in such poor shape that they kept blowing every time there was a new puncture to her skin.

It was torture for us to watch her get the needles, but that paled in comparison to how it felt for her. It actually took a couple of weeks for her to be well enough to get surgery. That was two weeks of no food and no water for her. For us, that meant two weeks of around the clock hospital visits. We wanted to make sure that at all times one of us was there for her.

The good thing is that she doesn’t remember that time period at all.

It was scary to watch her deteriorate. She became delusional and disoriented. She would forget who my mom was when she came to visit. And she would get very confused about where she was.

It was also terrible to watch my mom suffer. As the only child, she had to bear the load by herself. As the Granddaughter I was able to maintain a smidgen of emotional distance but I can’t imagine what it was like for my mom to see her mother knocking on death’s door.

My Grandma was scared too, but almost as soon as she would tear up, she would crack a joke. For example, she had no idea how bad she looked. The bright lights in the hospital room were a stark contrast to the dim lights at her house. So, when she went in the bathroom and caught a glimpse of her ghost like appearance. She teared up, but then right away said, “I wondered why y’all were looking all sad when you came to my house. I must’ve scared the life out of you. I look a mess.”

“Yes Grandma. You were in bad shape.”

Then she asked for some lip balm and lotion.

My Lesson:

Stay optimistic – Don’t let your mind go directly to the worst case scenario.

Find the funny – Sometimes, in order to survive the most tragic situations, you have to find humor in the little things. To this day, my family and I still crack up about my Grandma asking the orderly for his ID before allowing him to take her for her x-rays. She was absolutely not going to go until he showed her something with his picture and the hospital name on it.