Essay About Family: Waiting for Papaw :: Personal Narrative Family Grandfathers Essays

Waiting for Papaw I am under the belief that the concept of time as we know it, does not exist in hospitals. Upon entering, one loses all sense of what time it is, what day of the week it is, and how long they’ve been there. Hospitals are places of healing, of caring, of great medical advancements and live saving procedures. They are a place of second chances, of last chances, and sometimes very little chance at all. They are also a place for dying. I learned all of this and then some during the eighteen days in December that I spent at my grandfather’s bedside in Holy Spirit Hospital. My grandfather went into the hospital with the symptoms of a stroke on Saturday, December 13, 2003. He spent the first 4 days of his stay in a coma, induced by the doctors’ misdiagnosis of his condition. My grandfather had not had a stroke, in fact he had a condition in which his liver was overloaded with toxins and was shutting down. It was a problem he’d been suffering from for quite some time; however, none of his doctors had diagnosed his symptoms correctly. The sedative they gave him upon arrival in the emergency room only worsened his condition. Upon waking up, he had to be restrained to prevent him from removing his IVs and attempting to get out of bed. He improved steadily over the next few days, and we were expecting to have him home soon. Unfortunately, he was left unrestrained one evening and was able to remove his IV, catheter, and then climb out of bed. The nurses found him on the floor of his bathroom. How long he was there, we’ll never know, becaus e the time the nurses told us he was found, we know is not correct. He was given another dose of a sedative which caused him to be extremely disoriented the following morning, yet his old self was still shining through. â€Å"Papaw,† I asked upon arriving in his room that morning, â€Å"Why are you so tired today?† â€Å"Because I made 300 faustnauhts last night.† He replied without hesitation. Now, I can imagine that anyone would be tired from that, but where my grandfather came up with the word â€Å"faustnauht† instead of â€Å"donut†, I’ll never know. On Christmas Eve, after spending eleven days in the same hospital bed, he lost circulation in his left leg and had to undergo surgery.