When you’re little you want space! Space, so that you can run, you want to be wild, you want to let out all the energy you have. You want to eat all that you can eat. You want to watch stuff you’re not supposed to watch. So, where do you go? Grandma and Grandpa’s house of course! Instead of causing havoc at your own home why not do it where your parents aren’t around? A place you can be all that you can be and as crazy as you can and not get yelled at, am I right? But then, you grow up. You make new friends, you go and hang out with them, and you settle down, you focus, you’re too cool to be at your grandparent’s house anymore. Then you think to yourself, maybe a year or two down the road…maybe I should call them. Maybe I should stop in and visit them. That maybe that you’re pondering, may be too late.

November will never be the same. When I got the text (starting at the end of October) stating that my grandmother, whom I have not seen in six years was in the hospital, my heart sunk. She was admitted with pneumonia. Which was something that I thought she could fight. She was strong and stubborn, my mother and aunt can attest to this. She stuck it out like the fearless woman she was, but she still was not well. They sent her back to the nursing home/rehab facility she lived in. Mind you, another bit of information that you should know about my Grandma K was that when I say stubborn, I mean bull headed stubborn. She refused to do anything she didn’t want to do even if it was for her own good. She did not take care of herself in a way that her physical and mental health deteriorated over the many of years. Hence, she was in a nursing home/rehab facility where she was being taken care of.

Not even two weeks later, she was back in the hospital with something much worse than pneumonia. She was rushed and admitted to the ICU with sepsis. Coming from someone who worked as a PCA (Personal Care Assistant) I knew sepsis was not good. You may be asking, what is sepsis? Sepsis is the presence in tissues of harmful bacteria and their toxins, typically through infection of a wound. However, the hospital that she was admitted at, the hospital that I used to work for, could not find that source of where the bacterial infection was coming from. So, now not only did she have pneumonia, there was another bacterial infection streaming through her blood. Then, I received a text no granddaughter would want to receive from their mother (The grandmother’s daughter). “…she is not able to breathe on her own. We had to make the choice to put her on a ventilator.” I knew in that moment, this was not going to get better. I knew what was coming but, I avoided it. I played it out in my head that she’s going to be that one. She will fight this. She will not need to be on the ventilator for the rest of her life. She will live. She will be that 1% that makes it! She is strong, she is stubborn, and she has this!

A few days go by with the normal update of her levels are stable, they are giving her IV antibiotics. She is okay right now. Then, a single text changed everything. “Gwen, her blood pressure keeps dropping. They currently have her on a medication that is helping it stay up. She still has a fever of around 102 and they can’t give her Tylenol because of the fatty liver.” At this point day after day just got worse. I knew her body was slowly starting to be eaten away by this infection. Into that week, she had to be resuscitated twice. It was coming down to that final stretch and we all knew it. Though, between work and everyday life I tried avoiding it like the plague. However, the final call hammered the nail into the wall.