depressing new/events today /livejournal
My mom has been trying to get my granddad (her dad) to visit the hospital for ages, but he has violently refused to do it. Whenever I'd talk to him he'd say he felt sick, and sometimes he'd say he needed a doctor, but whenever we'd set up an appointment he'd refuse to go, and would instead have his primary care doctor visit him. Last week my mom visited him and he said he fell down the stairs and crawled back up and into his bed because no one was home. My mom asked my grandmother and cousin, who live with him, whether it was true but both told her he was telling wild stories to get attention.
Fast forward to today: my grandma flew to Louisiana to visit family, and my mom decided to demand my granddad finally go to the doctor; she had Henry Ford hospital drive to their house, bring a wheelchair, and take him to the hospital all while he told them to leave him alone.
My granddad worked at Ford for like 50 years, he has a pretty big pension and premier health care out the ass etc. The doctor said he was almost emaciated and quite dehydrated, has a broken hip (so he did fall down the stairs), might have bone cancer, and has some type of growth in his bladder that has spread throughout a lot of his body; due to his poor condition they thought he was homeless. The doctor said giving him a biopsy might kill him due to the growth (a "mass"), which I don't understand.
Henry Ford has no record of his primary doctor; my mom recently found out he was giving my granddad anti-depressants because the pain was in his mind or some shit.
So yea, he's in bad condition. My grandparents live in Detroit, more than 40 miles away and we can't visit them all the time. I'm sitting here baffled how my grandma and cousin have lived with him for years and didn't think something was wrong. Needless to say my mom is devastated, and she hasn't articulated it but I think she's extremely upset with my grandmother, who's reaction to the situation has essentially been "oh well. I'm going on vacation." My grandparents have an odd relationship: my grandma has been making condescending, mean comments to my granddad since I was little. Later I found out my granddad was quite the player back in the day, and I'm guessing that has something to do with the relationship.
It's just a horrible situation, and I can see this is going to cause major problems within the family. My mom is looking to get power of the attorney over my granddad, wants to start hospice, and told the doctor not to put him on life support if something happens - which pissed her two brothers (my uncles) off. Horrible situation
He's 88, so I know he doesn't have much time left, and have been at peace with that for some time. But what makes me feel shitty is knowing that he's been in pain for so long, at a time when he should have been enjoying his final year as best he could. I remember him being a huge, giant of a man with a loud voice. I remember him beating my dad in an arm wrestling competition when I was young. But over the last few years he has literally shrunken, and it's painful knowing this could have been caught years ago. :'(
