huo bao ~

huo2 bao3, chinese for "living treasure" is the only way to describe my grandpa. scarily enough, i can see where i get some of my quirky stubborness. *sigh* (why is it that i get to inherit all the bad genes of the family... the stubby fingers with matching nails, the rolls of tummyfat (hey em! we can compare rolls hehe), the predisposition to autoimmune diseases. oh and breast cancer. *zip*)

anyway..
your pride, that horrible habit of ciggie smoking, your stubborness, your gullibility, that "kia simi kia. gui kia wa!"* attitude... grandpa grandpa grandpa.. where do you want me to start! *literally translates to "scared what scared? ghosts scared of me!"

as much as i'd like to blame the incompetent doctor (that's doctor #2 i'd like to personally meet when i go home at the end of the year so i can decide if they warrant a verbal thrashing)... as much as i'd like to do so, my dear grandpa was to blame for some of it too..

mom called for the weekly dose of taiwan gossip ~ this week, she started with "guess what your grandpa did?" *groans* i don't know. the last time she started the conversation with that question, it was to tell me that he almost got seduced by a nubile pretty young thang who was around my age. *shudders* he had no clue.. he thought she was just being friendly. GOODNESS!
being an octogenarian doesn't give one the liberty or the license to be blur ...

this time, our living treasure had melena. for six days. *whistles* and he didn't tell anyone because he thought it must've been something red he ate at first before attributing it to tar. *piaks forehead* it bugged him enough to arrange for a doctor's appointment on the 6th day. thank goodness for that. no thank goodness for my grandpa's set ways of thinking that the older the doctor, the better the doctor. doctors back home get a registration number ~ the smaller the number, the older the doctor. grandpa genius went to pick the doctor with the smallest number in the hospital directory. aiyaiyai! incompetent he is. not so much my grandpa, but the doctor he picked. what kind of doctor asks their patient to go back home after arriving for their afternoon appt to retrieve a stool sample they did in the morning? one would think it seemed logical to get the patient to produce a new sample then and there. the good doctor obviously has not been initiated into the exciting world of rectal examinations where he could've gotten a fresh stool sample. (dr c's voice floats into my head...it's very important lubricate. now just stick your finger in there.. that's right. feel around, like how you would skirt the inside of a jar.. feel anything abnormal?) tisn't your normal way of getting a sample ~ an endoscopy would've been a better call but did that happen? of course not! my dear old grandpa got sent home with some painkillers and intructions to present to emergency if he got into strife in the middle of the night.

by this time, i was ready to sue the doctor for negligence. thank his lucky stars i wasn't there *death stares* my mom sent my grandpa off to another hospital's emergency dept where they did all the tests, crossmatched and gave him blood and found the cause of the GI bleed during the course of his 2-day stay in the hospital. white patch, dead tissue, intestines, source of bleed, benign is what my mom told me. i can't figure it out from that info but at least my grandpa's got enough blood in him to let him climb those 4 flights of stairs back home again. enough energy for him to be puffing on his ciggies 2 days home from the hospital despite explicit instructions not to smoke. arghh. the young doctor wasn't pleased and neither is this granddaughter.. i had half a mind to call him up and admonish him but didn't end up doing so. he's gone through enough crap (pun fully intended) this past week to enjoy some peace and quiet methinks.

*sigh* if you'll let me, i'll trade my life for yours grandpa...