I am so very tired right now! ...and I slept all day.

Yesterday was physically and emotionally exhausting. I went to visit my grandfather who is in the hospital because of extreme pain from a broken arm... and in a matter of a few hours it went bad really quickly.

I think I mentioned it before, but my grandfather has lung cancer. We found out in January that it came back. Just a few days ago we found out that his cancer has spread to the bone, and then he fell and broke his arm exactly in the spot where the cancer was. They went to the hospital and he decided to go home. My uncles were taking care of him, and I guess the pain was so bad that he was getting morphine every hour. So, Sunday afternoon they decided to take him to the hospital.

He was admitted into the orthopedic ward, and I guess he was very cranky because of all of the pain. Yesterday, at around 3 pm I went to see him in the hospital and acouple of my family members were there. He was sleeping and no one could really seem to wake him up for very long. The doctor had explained that it was a side affect of the narcotics, and that they could reverse it but then he'd be in more pain. We decided to let him sleep it off.

So, other than that everything seemed ok. Of course he has cancer and the cancer is spreading and we all know that his time left here will not be long, but other than that and the broken arm all is well. Then my grandfather started to scream out that he was freezing and so cold, and we start to pile blankets on him. I think I one point he had three sheets and 2 blankets, and he was still shaking and shivering, but he was in and out of sleep during that time. Since he has diabetes and wasn't eating his blood sugars where really low, and my aunt was able to feed him a little bit. Shortly after though he threw it all up. We all started to get kind of worried and had the nurse come in. He didn't have a temperature and his blood sugar was still getting lower even though they had given him some stuff to up it. At this point I was sort of getting upset because we had to go get the nurse, and she was really good and very nice, but I didn't understand why he was in this hospital room when he couldn't press the nurses button. He definitely needed to be in a higher level unit because he needed a nurse to be watching him, and I'm glad that we decided that someone should be with him at all times.

My grandmother and aunt ended up leaving me with my grandfather for a little bit to go smoke, and I was trying to take care of him. He started to scream about his arm, and I went to get the nurse and he was was very delirious. Saying some pretty wierd things, and while I thought it was kinda warm in the room he said that he was beyond freezing. They took his temperature again and even though like 30 min before he was fine his temperature was 101 and then 30 min later it was 103. It really started to get scary. His blood oxygen levels were very low, and they kept cranking up the oxygen and nothing was working. The doctor said that they were going to move him to ICU, and I called my grandmother on the phone to come back to the room. They called a lung doctor to do some tests, and it was decided that he had pneumonia and that he might have an infection called sepsis. Every doctor that came in to look at him and talk to us asked us if he had a DNR and if not we needed to make a decision and soon. We started to call all of the local family to the hospital to see him and make this decision.

My grandfather was finally moved to CCU at about 10, and all of the family arrived at about 9:30. It took 5 hours to move him, and the main reason it took so long was because my mother works in ICU (where they originally want to move him) and they didn't want to compromise that. It really doesn't matter because she works in both places, but really they should have just moved him and worried about her work schedule later.

At about 11:00 pm my family decided to sit down and make their decision... and I was originally told that I could be in on it, but then they decided that it wasn't appropriate. This made me angry... I'm not a child... I was there when things were getting bad and only lost it once in the stairwell when I was calling my mother to get to the hospital. I have an opinion and it is this: He has cancer, and his cancer has spread, he's took sick to do tests to see how far it has spread but we know that it's at least spread to the bones. We also know that this time he cannot be cured, it is terminal. If he starts to die, why keep him alive just to have cancer eat him away even more. The doctors keep saying how painful cancer is... it would be inhumane to let him live through that pain... even if the doctors say that they'll give him pain meds to help. BUT... I don't get to say it because I was not allowed to discuss it. Even now, I'm not entirely too clear on what the decision was. I followed them all around to see what they decided and no one would talk to me. Finally my aunt sort of told me... since he has pneumonia, they have decided that they don't want him to die from that so if he needs medical intervention for that they will give it to him. They won't shock his heart of to compressions since his bones are so weak that they'll just break, but they will let them use chemicals to keep his heart going. I personally don't agree with that last decision... but again I wasn't allowed in the discussion.

Anyway, after all of that my family started to leave. We had gone up to see my papa and he was a lot better. He was able to remember things, and was wide awake. He was still in pain though. It was decided that my mom, my brother, and I would stay overnight with him.

And I'm going to end it here for tonight. I stayed most of the night with him, but there were a few things that went on which I'll discuss later.