Jesus fucking christ you remember what minor charecters in books you arn't particularly fond of are wearing?
As for people. In general I have almost nothing in common any more with general society.
I have become quite the hermet these past four years. After my ordeal with caring for my grandparents which was about 2 years I hardly left the apartment I shared with my friends. EVER.
That was another year separated from the masses.
Then another 4 or five months before I found a job after I moved into my current apartment.
And now it's either work or home.
I try my damdest to avoid groups, crowds and the like.
I just don't relate to people.
This and the DCMB are the only real link to people I havn't given up on.
I know it's sad.
Speaking of my Grandparents, yesturday was the two year anniversery of the death of my grandmother and the end of my obligation.
The end of the two years when my grandparents both came down with cancer about the same time. My Grandfather Renal cancer which shut down his kidneys and grew tumors the size of golf balls and grapefriuts in his body and put him on dyalisis THREE fucking times a week AND confined him too his bed AND ground his body down to nothing. My grandmother breast and bone cancer .
My Grandmother had a great combination.
Add her breast cancer and bone cancer to devoloping parkinsons disease and a pinced nerve in her neck you get a nice long painful ugly dehumanizing death.
Then they were middle class so guess what? Horrible health care options. YEA!
Too much money to qualify for help paying for a live in nurse to take care of them and not poor but not enough money to be able to pay for live in healthcare themselves without it leaving them destitute.
Enter the 21 year old boy with very little or no help from anyone but his two friends and his girlfriend to save the fucking day.
So I took care of them.
Everything a nurse would do. Except when it came to my grandmothers hygene that I need help.
Their blood, vomit, piss, and shit were all mine to wade knee deep through.
Changing my grandfathers diapers he needed because due to the cancer he could no longer feel when he need to go. Bathing and changing him. Lifting him in and out of the wheelchair . I had to catheterize him.
My grandmother required many, many medications. Including insulin shots for diabitis.
Both had special diets.
Had to be housekeeper and cook.
All on my shoulders. My family decided that since I had stepped up to the plate they could go back about thier own lives as if nothing were happening after all the 21 year old boy was taking care of things.
They looked on any plea for help from me as an inconvienance. So I became inclined to ASK less and less.
Chapter 3: And it all came tumbling down.
Fast forward to three days before the 99 or 2000 survivor series.
The van arrives that brought my grandfather to and from dialysis three times a week. The guy in the van wheels my Grandfather in and he says there is a problem and that he believes my Grandfather had been over dialisysized or whatever. He wanted to know If I wanted him to get an ambulance. Looking at the driver and my Grandfather I knew the real deal.
Call an Ambulance and he gets another month to live or dies in a hospital.
Don't call an Ambulance he dies at home, now.
I chose hope and brought the Ambulance.
Why not? At the time my Grandmother was admitted there recovering from pnumonia.
They even broght her down to the emergancy room on a gurny so she could see him just in case things took a turn for the worst.
I watched from across the room as two people who I loved very, very much and had spent the last 60 + years of thier lives going through thick and thin together hold hands perhaps for the last time.
They finally stabalized my grandfather enough to admit him into the oncology ward just two rooms away from my grandmother where he quietly passed on the next day. Three days before Thanksgiving.
When my Grandmother came home from the hospital things wern't the same. She was very depressed and the house started to feel very empty. Altough the pnumoina was good everything else came back worse probably due to her sadness and loss.
We got along as best we could through february and at the beginning of march my Aunt Linda came to visit Grandma and give me a short but long needed break.
Which brings us to 11:30 ish Pm March 7th.
I had just come home from bowling I hadn't been out in weeks. Walking through the house I walk by the Bathroom and see the door partly open and my Grandmother in there struggling with her clothing and her breath.
Thank God my girlfriend and future fiancee was staying there that night. My grandmother hadn't made it to the bathroom in time because of the fact she could hardly breath. My Aunt Linda asleep grandma sruggled into the bathroom by herself.
My girlfriend was kind enough to give her a good bath and get her back to bed comfotably. Also seemingly able to breath much better.
The next morning her breathing problrm started up again so we rushed her to the emergancy room where she was rushed in and hooked up to monitors and oxygen. My parents arrived to the emergancy room from thier jobs and we all took turns visiting grandma in the emergancy ward where only two of us were allowed at a time.
Or so we thought. I'll get back to that.
During one of my shifts in the ward I notice that the numbers on the monitor hooked up to my grandmother dropping stedily and surely.
So I ask a nurse.
I asked " Are those numbers supposed to be dropping like that?"
"Didn't anyone tell you?" She said " She's dying. This is it"
See the nurse had told Aunt Linda that and said we all could wait in there with my grandmother but it failed to sink in with Aunt Linda and therefore Aunt Linda never told us what the skinny was.
In less than a minute after the nurse told me that my grandmother was dead.
I got a front row seat.
I tell you these things not to pat myself on the back mainly because I don't even think I deserve it.
Many people who loved my grandparents and knew what was going on all said I did a saintfull selfless act. I keep getting told I did a wonderful job but I still feel like shit.
I was 21 -23 years old in the prime of my life feeling young, powerfull and almost damn near immortal but I compare it to Superman the movie what Clark says in the seen after Jonathen Kent dies " I can do all these things, But I couldn't save them" was all I thought.
I keep thinking of how it was something everyone would do nothing special and realized I was wrong.
It has taken me a long time to recover. A long time but fuck, now everyday bullshit is nothing to me. All the little shit that we think is just such a horrible burden on our lives just ain't shit. Alll that matters is is that I am alive. Here today and able to enjoy it. Everything else is butter.
PS:The day my grandfather died was also the day of the Survior Series and the day before I got the results of the AIDS test I took.
The test came out negative of course.
I still remain slightly haunted. Sometimes I get flashes reminding me off blood, vomit and catheters but life goes on.
Why I choose to lay this all out here I don't know. I seem to post this shit somewhere once a year about this time.
Forgive my spelling and thank you for reading.
