The pain of not acting in my grandmother’s final days

When I stop to think about it, I only ever heard about people slipping into a coma while they were already admitted to a hospital.

I had never heard of someone who was sick at home going into a coma, until I saw it with my grandmother, who died soon afterwards.

The night before that, she had been speaking about dead people and, as superstitions go, usually that is a sign that the end is near for them, too.

None of what she was saying that day made sense, which makes me sad because it feels like I did not get a chance to say goodbye to the real her.

The day she went into a coma, I thought she had slept in because she did not wake up in the morning as usual. I unknowingly assumed she was just exhausted and would be up by midday at the very least.

She was sleeping facing upwards, breathing loudly and uncomfortably, unable to swallow mucus.

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It was my mother who noticed that something had changed and when she called out to my grandmother several times, trying to wake her, we all knew something was amiss.

But none of us had a prognosis.

We had become the household that gets frequent visits from the paramedics in an ambulance. The bright red lights and wailing siren sound still rings in my head sometimes when I close my eyes.

That last visit was a little different from the usual and possibly the most traumatic. They needed our assistance in lifting her from the bed to the stretcher.

I had the responsibility of holding her head.

What was particularly horrific for me was seeing how her eyes had turned over and her tongue had fallen to one side of her mouth.

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She had a pulse but she was as good as gone.

Usually, I am the designated escort going into the back of the ambulance with her, assisting the paramedics with her medical history while they check vitals.

But this time, they asked me to stay outside and wait.

Diabetic coma they said, and my shock comes from the fact that I did not imagine something like that could happen in my own home and there was nothing we could have done to stop it.

My grandmother had her first stroke last December and her state kept deteriorating until she was bedridden, immobile and needed to be bathed, changed and fed.

My mother and younger sister, who is a firstyear nursing student, were her primary caregivers, doing the hard work that a professional nurse or caregiver should be doing.

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We had the difficult conversation of whether or not she should be sent to an old age home where she would be taken care of by someone whose job it is to do so.

Even though we agreed it would be a good idea, we never followed through with it.

Although my family was able to provide my grandmother with the daily care that she needed, it was mentally, physically and emotionally damaging for all of us to witness the deterioration of our loved one.

Which is why if I had to make that decision again, I would make sure that we followed through with the plan of placing her to an old age home.

That day she went into a coma was the beginning of the end.

Now, we are all traumatised and will continue living with that trauma of witnessing her like that because we were too afraid of sending her to a care facility when we had the chance to.

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