On July 25, 2015, I was helping my mother-in-law write thank-you cards to everyone who sent their condolences after my father-in-law passed away 10 days prior when I got the call that my Grandmother had fallen at work. She fainted, was awake now, but was rushed to the hospital and did not have a concussion.
When I arrived 30 minutes later, my mother met me outside to tell me the rest: doctors had done an x-ray and there was something in her lungs. It looked like cancer, my mother said.
Later, a biopsy showed she was suffering from pneumonia — walking pneumonia. It was confusing. How could an 82-year-old woman normally function with pneumonia?
She was treated and eventually the coughing and runny nose she had suffered through for more than a year had finally subsided. She used to tell us the cause was a polyp in her nose. We casually begged her for months to get it checked out but she never did. More importantly, what was causing the high heart rate and horrifically low hemoglobin levels?
A colonoscopy and biopsy later showed a tumor. My grandmother has cancer.
I tried to visit her often. The hospital was close to work but a bit far from home. I made it a point to come at least every other day. Her hemoglobin levels dropped and dropped some more. She got at least two blood transfusions during her two-week stay.
She wasn’t picky or annoying or even a tiny bit of pain to the nursing staff. Later, the whole floor would send her a card, signed by everyone. At least once at every visit, someone told me how much they enjoyed visiting her. “I know the feeling,” I would tell them.
There was never a time in my life when my Grandma was not present. As a baby, my older brother and I lived with my grandparents and even later when we had our own home, eventually joined by my two younger brothers, we visited them often. In 1994, my grandparents were looking to retire, so they moved from Gaithersburg, Maryland to South Florida. Our family followed.
We lived 10 minutes away the rest of my childhood. In 2005, the summer after my first year of college, I moved in with my grandparents. A few weeks into summer, my Grandfather passed away. He was 74. He and my grandmother were together 52 years before he died. We have this unspoken bond from the summer of 2005: we both witnessed the death of the most important man in our lives. We have been exceptionally close ever since.
Two weeks after her fall, my Grandmother was discharged from the hospital and entered a rehabilitation facility for her pneumonia. She stayed on a liquid diet for another two weeks. She tried to go outside, even though it was August in South Florida. She had great help staying mobile and active — sometimes being cooped up for so long doesn’t really give you the opportunity to move around a whole lot. Many other patients — some even younger than her — were amazed at how much she could do for someone so old. “Where is your walker?” they would shout when she came in for exercises. She didn’t answer, because she thought maybe these people were shouting for someone that wasn’t there. “Hey! Where’s your walker? Your cane? What about an aide?”
She looked surprised. “I don’t need anything. I can walk perfectly fine,” she shouted back.
“Then what are you doing here?”
When my grandparents moved to South Florida in 1994, they started a handyman business. My grandfather, a skilled craftsman, spent the majority of his “retirement” helping elderly people fix things that were broken. That and being the best grandpa ever. He taught me how to do laundry and clean my house and dance and that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” At least once a week he would pick us up from school and take us to Taco Bell. He loved Taco Bell.
My grandmother did the bookkeeping, but also worked part-time at a church doing administrative work. When she lost her church job after 14 years, she struggled to find a new job. She applied everywhere, even working temp jobs and telemarketing that eventually let her go because they were “downsizing” or “transitioning,” even though we all knew it was because of her age.
A couple years ago she landed a seasonal job at a department store at the mall, but since she was so knowledgable about the products, they kept her on for more than four years after that — until the fall had taken her away from working.
My grandmother hated being out of work. She didn’t like not earning her keep and not paying her own bills and not staying busy. If she was able to work, she would, she would say.
My mother and I worried about her constantly. Just a couple months earlier, we discussed how we would get her to stop working. How we would work on paying her bills so she wouldn’t have to work. How she would play mahjong and canasta to keep her busy, and maybe volunteer at the library if she wanted to. How she could finally retire without having to support herself. Naturally, my grandmother was completely against it. She liked work, she would tell us. She liked her co-workers and her job and staying busy. Even at 82, she couldn’t stop. I compromised with her: “you can work,” I told her. “But no way you’re working on Thanksgiving again.”
Retail required all hands on deck, and a couple years in a row, one of us would drive her in after Thanksgiving dinner and pick her up on Black Friday morning, after the midnight rush. My grandma liked work but she couldn’t handle overnights anymore. I don’t care how many people leave their families to shop on Thanksgiving, she was going to stay with us. In a twisted turn of events, we didn’t have to make her take the day off last year.
Three weeks after her fall, my Grandmother returned home. She had a solid meal for the first time in 17 days: a roast beef sandwich.
Another 10 days later she had surgery to remove the tumor on her colon, about 10–12 inches. She didn’t eat for nearly two full days. By the time she could eat, she was moved to another rehabilitation facility, this time closer to home. She was there for another week before she was discharged.
Near the end of September, a couple weeks after getting home, she learned that the cancer in her colon had spread to her lymph nodes and liver. She had officially been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. In October, she started chemotherapy. She told me about her “cancer bag,” the bag that actually holds another bag of fluids that she takes with her after treatment. On chemo days, she gets treatment, keeps the bag in a bag on her for two days, then goes back to the doctor to get it removed. I asked her if she wanted to spruce it up a bit, maybe bedazzle it. “Why?” she asked. “I’m going to fight this. I’m going to beat this. I will go into remission and when this is over, I won’t need this again.”
Chemo treatments didn’t jive well with my work schedule, but I was able to make time to take her once in a while when I could. My job was very understanding and flexible with my workload, so I was able to take her when plan A, my mother, couldn’t. The plan was simple: we never wanted her to be alone on chemo days. We made sure she never had to be.
In November, we celebrated her 83rd birthday and later that month, she ate lukewarm turkey and stuffing. She never went back to work, so we had Thanksgiving in the evening. When many families are just getting ready to split for the day, ours made sure to hang around just a little longer.
Most of the time, she stayed busy. She played cards with friends at the clubhouse, drove herself to other doctor’s appointments, went grocery shopping or did laundry or caught up with family and friends when they could stop by. She lost her appetite and eventually lost weight. She lost patience. She hated the way the cancer made her feel. She slept a lot. A lot.
My family and I spent most of our time calling and visiting when we could — the blessing of living so close meant we could stop by a few times a week. My mom saw her almost every day. I called about that often. I let go much of my freelance work and worked less. I saw my friends less. I went out less. When you’re faced with imagining a future without the most important person in your life, you somehow find the time to spend with them.
She was in chemo six months until March of this year, when her doctor told her she is officially in remission. She quickly started to gain an appetite and eventually gain weight. She still liked sleeping but soon went without three naps a day. The oncologist noted her crazy progress. “You are doing better than most people that are 20 years younger,” he told her at one of her last appointments. “I can’t believe how we’ll you’re doing.”
I believe it.
