Trying to keep hopeful...

The prognosis is not so good...

She's hooked up to a respirator now and will remain in that situation until she stabilizes.
She had most of her bowel removed, got an Ileostomy and is
resting quietly.
At least this way, the doctor says with time she can
have a good chance at recovering and having a normal life for whatever
time she has left.

He says it will take at least 3 months before her body heals enough to
go in and reconnect what's left of the bowel to her insides again... and even that is a hopeful assessment.

It's not a pretty picture, but it's the only one we have right now.

I keep thinking that there must be something we've done in the past as a family that warrants this sort of run of bad luck.
This could very well be the 5th major tragedy among my immediate relations within the last 3 years... both my Father's father and step-mother, his real mother, and then my Father himself...

I'm trying my level best to be positive... but it's getting to be a harder and harder sell with each successive blow.

Keep working, Greg...
Keep working...

"Cross your fingers..."

It's going to be a long night for me...

My Grandmother is under the knife as I write this.
She is undergoing surgery to remove the blockage within her colon that is keeping her from being able to defecate properly.
Although at her age (89) this sort of operation is incredibly risky, her physician has so far been unable to dislodge the blockage through conventional or standard alternative means... and something radical has to be done to prevent her waste from poisoning her system further.

I was supposed to go visit her this coming May on the 25th to celebrate her 90th birthday...

I guess that I'm just hoping that I'll still get to make that trip for that purpose.


I find myself thinking back to the last time I visited her and my Mother last year...
She was never one for sentimentality... and when I tried to tell her that I loved her one evening after dinner, she asked me to leave her apartment out of flustered embarrassment. It wasn't a mean-spirited sort of reaction... just a sort of unconscious adaptation she had developed for avoiding uncomfortable situations, I suppose. She just told me that she was suddenly tired and needed to get some sleep and hurried me out the door. It was so awkward and forced... if she really wanted to think it through, she could have told me that my Mother was surely getting impatient waiting for me in the car in the parking lot below. It didn't matter though... in our family, that sort of affection is rarely put on proper display, so she did what she had to do to pass an uncomfortable moment.

I suppose that I can only hope that in the many months since those few minutes passed between us, those simple words might give her some comfort in the hard times ahead for her...

I'm just sorry that those humble past sentiments are all I have to offer her now.