Grandma Visit

During my lunch today at work I went and visited my grandmother at Swedish Hospital, which is about half a mile away from my company. She just had a little bit of cancerous tissue taken out of her throat. Bestemor had gotten in that morning and had the procedure done and is doing very well. Her doctor wants to keep her overnight though for monitoring because last time she had this surgery she almost died from bleeding when she went home. She should be just fine.

The room that they had us in had another woman in it who was very old and continuously moaning by herself. She kept repeating “help, help, help” in a very slurred voice so you could barely understand what she was saying. Every so often this old woman would say, “Please help, this is wrong, so wrong.” I felt really bad for her. She had no family or anything and the nursing staff ignored her. When I walked by her side of the room she called me to come over, so I did. She was slumped over on her side and picking at her needles in her wrist and said that they had something wrong. I told her I would tell a nurse, which I did. The sad thing is that the world is full of sick people slowly dying alone in misery and while people should do what they can to help others, everyone can’t be reached. I have limited my scope to those that I love and care about and will do anything I can for them. Outside of that, if I can do something nice, I will, but I won’t put much effort into it. I think everyone follows this philosophy, but most people are afraid to admit it even to themselves because of what it implies.

I never, ever want to be in that woman’s position. It’s not that her family are bad people necessarily; people can’t be there all the time when someone is failing in health over a period of years. Most of us will end up there, except for the lucky ones who die in accidents or heart attacks or other forms of sudden death. I have decided that before I reach that point, I will put a bullet in my head. I don’t want to have to rely on other people to care for me in my slow misery as I have no hope to ever truly be young, healthy and happy again. Fletcher has been firmly instructed that if I ever should become a paraplegic or quadriplegic or infirm, he is to kill me as quickly and humanely as he can.

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Joel Gross

Joel Gross is the CEO of Coalition Technologies.

One thought on “Grandma Visit”

  1. You really should let your brother’s do it. We wouldn’t just be giving you what you want, we’d be getting something in return.

    And I’m a little pissed that Bestemor did not mention this procedure to me. She just said it was a routine checkup. I won’t mention it to her, but I had always thought that I was the favorite. Dammit.

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