Friday, November 18, 2011

Senseless acts of horror

For those of you who know me you know my beloved grandfather "Aboo" is dying.  Last Monday afternoon he stood up from the table after eating lunch and collapsed having had a massive stroke.  The ambulance was summoned and rushed him to Winchester Medical Center where we were told all would be well and in a few days he'd be sent to a re-hab facility to get back on his feet.  More rapidly than I can tell you in words his situation deteriorated to where we are now which is in hospice at Care Haven in Martinsburg.  He was delivered there Tuesday...eight days after it started right on the brink of death.

We have since learned somehow he contracted a really rare degenerative brain disease called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.  It's very similar to Mad Cow Disease and they have no idea how he could have contracted it other than that it strikes alzheimer's patients more then anyone else. He had that plus a side dish of dementia just in case the first wasn't enough to fill you up.  This disease moves frighteningly fast and literally kills the brain minute by minute.  Each day they  did and MRI and you could watch as the grey lobes of his brain slowly turning white starting at the edges and working its' way in.  With that came loss of all movement in all extremeties save for his left hand and wrist, complete blindness, loss of swallow and speech ability, seizures, catheters, diapers and if that wasn't enough, pneumonia.  All of it in the span of a week.

I was with him last night and he could still open his eyes though his ability to speak is now competely gone.  He still pulled my hand a little and moved his head slightly which means he wants a kiss, so I was really grateful to see him still able to do that though by today he will not.  It was the first night I was with him alone and I spent a few hours letting him know it was ok to go, singing and talking to him, crying and just sitting quietly studying every feature of his face and hands so as not to forget a single one.  He's so frail and so close to death but he just won't go.  I let him know several times last night it was ok and we'd all be ok but I know him well enough to know he doesn't leave until he's ready and it's always been his way or the highway.  I just wish he'd find that highway before my heart breaks apart completely.

How do you get over this- you don't.  People keep telling me it gets easier and I already know it doesn't. You cope- that's it.  I am no where near over Aunt Win's death 10 years ago or Grannie's in April and yet here I am again.  Death is cruel and unmerciful and my faith is shaken.  I struggle to know why death can be so cruel to such good people.  My Aunt Win starved to death after a tumor wrapped around her stomach and starved her to death, my grannie with her mind gone messing her own pants, my Aboo as you see above.  Life is so hard so I don't get why death has to be so hard.  I'm so lost.