Colon Care Health

hh6065 asked:


I've got to provide some background info first.

My grandmother is in her sixties and was widowed in January of 2008. For 80% of her married life, she took care of my grandfather, who was shot by a poacher when he was a game warden. So he was disabled for much of their marriage: she was the bread-winner, the care-taker, the everything. He died of colon cancer, and it was a long and painful death, let me tell you. It was the kind of dying where you hate to see them alive because the pain is just too much for anyone to bear. Of course, his passing was sad, but everyone was glad that he was no longer in pain. ESPECIALLY because he had been in pain for most of his life because of the gunshot wound, in addition to the horrible pain of spreading, incurable cancer.

Everyone was glad, except for my grandmother. She started calling his death a "tragedy" and started blaming herself for his death. No one could make her listen to reason- not hospice (who was there round-the-clock prior to his death), not her children, not her grandchildren, and definitely not her doctor.

Now, I know that everyone deals with death and with pain differently, and I know that I have never felt a loss similar to losing a spouse. But my grandmother has become a different person. Her main priority in life is putting as many pictures of her late husband in the house as she can. I mean, every surface is soon to be covered. She constantly talks about him, and if other people don't cry when she does, she is angry. She sees "signs" and messages from him everywhere, and she talks to him. She is only concerned with her dead husband, and not with her living children and grandchildren.

But all of these things is not what I'm worried about. I'm worried about her health. She contracted rheumatic fever when she was a child, which went untreated long enough to cause heart problems. And, needless to say, she didn't always take spectacular care of herself during her marriage because she was too focused on taking care of her husband. Regardless, she always kept doctors appointments and followed instructions.

Since my grandfather has died, my grandmother has completely stopped taking care of herself. She prefers weeping to sleeping. She prefers talking to dead relatives to sleeping. She prefers anything to sleeping. She also continues to drive and expresses anger when people offer to drive, even though her driving is highly erratic and unsafe. She rarely takes medicine. She doesn't report the results of her heart monitor or pacemaker. She doesn't eat or drink well (her diet is about 3 cokes a day and very little food). She refuses to rest and is always in the yard or on the lawnmower. Her heart is constantly out of rhythm and she doesn't take the medicine to help it OR call a doctor. She also refuses to get the heart surgery that is highly recommended by every doctor she's ever seen. She also lies to her doctors about her health: they think she takes every pill and monitors things carefully, and they think her heart is rarely out of rhythm.

Another problem is my grandfather's will. My grandmother and grandfather told no one about the will except the person who was left everything- their youngest son. Needless to say, that raises a lot of questions. My grandmother lies to her children and refuses to talk with all of them at once- no one gets the same story twice. This is obviously something that should be talked about, and my grandmother refuses and lies and pretends things never happened.

Basically, myself and my family are very concerned that she is going to kill herself. She's not in her right mind, and she lies to doctors so they have no clue what's really going on. And, of course, because of privacy laws and patient laws, no one can give or receive information as long as my grandmother keeps signing those forms, which she does. Even on one of her family-forced trips to the ER, my mom and her two brothers tried to talk to a nurse in the hallway about my grandmother's ACTUAL condition. The nurse held up her hand to get them to stop talking, and she said that all questions and concerns must be at the patient's request and through the patient.

Ultimately, my grandmother is stressed, she is unhealthy, she is not sleeping, she is not properly medicating, she is emotionally unstable, and she lies to doctors. She also lies to family members about her health and her behaviour, and she is entirely absorbed with my dad grandfather.

We don't know what to do. My grandmother is not herself anymore, and we'd like to see her caring about the living rather than the dead. No one can get her to see how much life SHE has, and how important and happy her life can still be.

I know this was long, but I wanted to make sure any readers really understood the situation.

Colon Cleansing in Plain English