How to turn 86

I don't know why but hanging out with old people in the hospital is more unsetlling than seeing people at wakes. I spent the first 4 days of spring break visiting my grandma's hospital room and my sleeping in my grandma's unusually untidy house. My mom and I met my dad down there at the hospital who had already been down there for the better part of last month and they had both told me little more than the basic facts:
Grandma has a goiter in her neck that must be removed,
Removing a goiter is hard on the heart so grandma needs a bypass as well,
She is in the hospital recovering

So when I walk into grandma's room I'm expecting to see grandma, wearing a gown but basically the same. The feel of the room is one of quiet tension. She doesn't have her dentures in or her glasses on and the gown makes her look real skinny, though she wasn't fat to begin with. Most importantly she is unconscious and seeing my dad reading a magazine off to the side implies that she's often this unconscious.

My dad hops up and over to the door and updates us on some the happenings in the hospital...They want grandma moved...doctors have been coming and going for the past week with test results, the latest is a cat scan scheduled for later today. The most poignant news is left for our discovery. Grandma is very sick of the hospital. She'll try to talk to me and will open her eyes to look at pictures but she won't open her mouth to let nurses feed her and won't open her eyes when the doctors ask.

They call her depressed, I think she's just strong-willed. They tried to drug her to let her be more lucid, but the only results I saw was when her son, uncle nate, talked her into following doctors orders. I guess if you get that old, 86, you have to be a little more than docile. I visited my great, great aunt Ruby while I was down there. She is 92 and she needs a cane to walk and still has to grab on to walls and chairs in order to get around. Yet she saw no problem in hauling a chair from room to room. Why? Because she lost an argument with her son who didn't want to get a chair like Ruby wanted.

I think this stubborness is a big part of how they got to be this old in the first place. When people are in the hospital they tend to treat them as if they are weak, as they usually are, but grandma thinking she's weak is the worst treatment they could give her. She is used to being the boss and they need to keep that notion in my grandma's head Especially when the doctors roll in there. They operate on this assumption that everybody in the room agrees with what they want, when it seems like one person, grandma, is on the exact opposite page of the doctor.

Grandma moved out of the hospital and now she is in a nursing home, hopefully they'll treat her better over there.