By :
Mark Etinger
My grandmother was always a fighter, a rowdy woman, I guess you could say. She used to smoke a pack a day in her youth, which made her voice gravelly by the time she fed me in my crib. Recently we found out that she had cancer - everywhere. It was quite a blow. The doctor said she was going to need her lung removed as well as comprehensive chemotherapy. I had no idea such a process could even work, but sure enough, with no time wasted, I visited granny in the hospital. She was weak and even moving her head exerted her. Her eyeballs rolled slowly with exhaustion but she was glad to see me even though she couldn't talk. Being around really sick people is always a little scary, and a little boring, which you feel embarrassed to admit, out of the fact that you should be there for your loved ones. You don't want to be there - you're healthy - but it's that very verve that they can sense and remember and which helps them want to recuperate. But since they can't speak all you can do is hold their cold hand and talk soothingly, hoping for a head nod. Granny soon moved out of the ICU and into another part of the hospital, where people could walk around and talk. I visited her and now she was able to smile when she saw me. She could speak too, although not too much; she was still very weak. She said that it was almost time to move into nursing home therapy. This worried me. "How long are you going to be there Granny?" "As long as it takes," she said. Today it's been about three months since Granny's operation. The lung cancer is contained, although she still has to go to chemo every other week. She can walk around, albeit not very far; still she is weak. But her spirits are up. She can laugh again and her nursing home therapy still helps her with exercises that get her out and about. She's planned for a release next month, when she'll be able to do most of the things she used to, although she'll probably be frail for a long time (that operation was a biggie). But the fact is she's still alive for now and hopefully many more years, thanks to great medical care and quality nursing home therapy.
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