Hospital Shit

Grandma's in the hospital again.

I realized today that I hadn't told anyone that. It's actually pretty serious. She has a bleeding ulcer and apparently is quite out of her mind. She keeps saying that she's ready to die and she just wants to let go. She's talking to people who aren't there and she's imagining the hell out of things.

Wish I could say that behavior was unusual.

Okay, that's exaggerating. It is unusual. But the woman has gone delirious before. Unfortunately, she's the worst kind of hypochondriac...sometimes she's right. You know "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? It's like that, only it's been going on for almost eighty years. I've long since abandoned sympathy.

That, of course, makes me feel like a total shit. I wish I could care. I wish I could muster the concern and consideration that "should" be "normal" for a granddaughter to feel for her grandmother. I've just run out, I think.

But this is actually a real ailment this time, right? It isn't one of her imagined illnesses designed solely to garner attention and favor. Here's the thing, though: it didn't have to get to this. So many of her real physical dilemmas have been caused by her mind creating the manifestation in her body. In addition, if she's just seek medical attention at the first or even second sign of symptoms, so much of what has become deadly serious would have been nothing more than minor.

So I do care and I am thinking about her and all that. But I don't feel like I care as much as I'm supposed to. Whatever that means. Seems to be a theme though. Back when my uncle was dying, I believed I wasn't concerned enough over him too. I guess that shows more what my mother has drilled into me as the standards of love rather than what is natural for me. Yay guilt.