| By :
Mark Etinger
My grandfather was diagnosed with cancer eight years ago last June. They found it in his lungs, his leg, his heart, and his brain. The doctors gave him six months to live. He and my grandmother were devastated. He had just turned seventy-one and my grandmother was six years his junior. Immediately he needed an operation to remove a malignant brain tumor. The operation went well and luckily my grandmother had chosen a short term rehab center that was nearby so we all could visit. He was resolved to live longer than the doctor's had given him. After that operation, as I sat by his bedside, he grabbed my arm and although it wasn't with the strength I had known him to possess when I was a child, I could see it flare in his eyes and in his widening nostrils. "Matt, I'm not going to beat this cancer, but you can bet I'm going to give it a run for its money." His eyes glistened and I knew that his fighting spirit was still alive. After he began chemotherapy he resolved to stay positive. We started spending more time together. My parents invited my grandparents over to dinner at least three times a week, in an attempt to let us share as much time as possible together before the end. About six months later, Grampa had to have a heart operation. When I visited him in the same short term rehab center I could see that the nurses sympathized with him and that whenever he spoke to them, a light flashed across his eyes. He looked weaker and had lost weight, but he was determined to live, and whatever they put front in front of him he ate it all resolvedly. This went on for four more years. Grampa had to have a total of eight surgeries and most of the time in between he was going to chemo twice a week. But his fighting spirit, the excellent care he had and the love we surrounded him with kept him going. A week before he died he was in pain and ready. He wasn't too happy, but I reassured him by telling him that he'd lived a great life and had given inspiration to us all. I was in the room with him when he died. It felt like a great vacuum had sucked all the life out of the air.
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