Dying Without Dignity

My grandma might be dying.

She's in the ICU with carbon monoxide poisoning. She's been virtually unresponsive for several days. The doctors are talking tracheotomy or breathing tube, life support, and saying she will never be well again. I'm not sure if she's going to make it.

One of the things that makes me sick is that, if she does end up not making it, one of her last memories will be of EIGHT nurses crowded around her, rolling their eyes, struggling to lift her to make her more comfortable, enduring their disgust and exasperation, while she cries out for them to stop because she's scared and in pain and having EIGHT nurses hovering over her is stressful and humiliating.

I've written about my grandmother and her weight struggles before. My grandma weighed around 460 pounds the last time she was in the hospital. This time, they said she's gained at least 50 pounds of water weight in the past few months, so I'm positive she is over 500 pounds now.

Which is huge. Truly. But, when you think about it, 300 pounds is really pretty far along on the way to 500. I can't judge her for weighing 500 pounds, when I was over 300 and growing steadily. I can see how easy it would be to give in and add a few pounds, year by year, until you finally realize you're 500 pounds. So, like I said, I'm definitely not judging her.

But I CAN judge the hospital staff for making her feel so fucking miserable about it. She's barely conscious right now but when she does wake up, it's because these disgusted nurses are shoving her around like she's a cow carcass. When she woke up long enough to complain about her discomfort in the position she was in, they brought in a CRANE. It was this lift machine that they use for bariatric patients where they strap you in to this harness and hook you into this crane to wench you up above the bed and settle you back in. Picture the thing they used in Free Willy to get the whale to the beach. That's what they tried to use on my grandma.

I've had my own really uncomfortable and shame-inducing experiences with hospital staff. So has my mom. The indignity of those tiny gowns, the grunts and groans of staff members heaving you from one bed to another, the shame knowing that you won't fit into the machines they need to shove you into, the humiliation of hearing "We can't get a good reading because there's too much fat in the way."

It was terrible for me. I still have nightmares about it. It makes me physically ill that my mom went through it. But now that my grandmother might take her last breath at any minute, it's a real, visceral pain I feel thinking of the shame and humiliation Meme has felt before she'll soon slip away.

My grandfather is devastated. He has spent the last decades of his life caring for my grandmother. Leading her to the bathroom and wiping her when she's done, showering her and brushing her hair because her arms are so heavy she can't keep them up long, lifting her stomach to pat her down with baby powder to avoid getting those fat-girl yeast infections. He's devoted 24 hours a day to her care, and now he's blaming himself for not being able to protect her from this. From dying. From indignity.

It's so hard to know that my grandmother is dying. It's much harder to know that she's dying without dignity. All I can do is work hard now to avoid the same fate myself, but what can I do for her? I feel so powerless, and so sad.