The man to your right was supposed to be dead by now.Instead, my grandfather today was eating, talking, laughing, singing and announcing to no one in particular, "I'm happy!" He wanted his false teeth, his glasses and his watch. My father and aunts are now weighing their options in terms of nursing homes for a man whose blood pressure was plummeting three days ago and whose kidneys recently changed their mind and decided to be useful for a while longer. I can't imagine it happens much, but he's likely to check OUT of hospice alive in a couple days as if he was there for a weekend getaway. Meanwhile, my father today received a condolence card from one of his neighbors.
So...I'm flying home to get back to my real life Saturday evening. My grandfather may not last much longer even with all this good news, but I've visited and gotten so much more out of it than I expected. I'm contented with these important memories.
While I've been here, I missed out on covering a Chinese acrobat slave saga, a shooting at the New York-New York and the start of the World Series of Poker.
Oh well. It's Vegas. Something off-the-wall will happen next week, too.
2 comments:
Don't forget, the great Art Buchwald decided against treatment for his failing kidneys, checked into a hospice... and eventually got kicked out because he'd overstayed their timelimit of 18 months! Clearly you can't count on those tough old jews to vacate the premises before they're good and ready! :)
I was just going to post the same thing. This story sounds so similar.
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