#1 ·
I won’t drag this out. Three months ago, my grandpa—the guy I looked up to more than anyone else in the world—passed away. Our relationship was... complicated, which I’ve actually gone into pretty deep on the psychology thread before. But here, I’m stuck on how this actually happened because we still don't know the real cause of death. I’ll lay out all the symptoms, what we suspected, what we knew, the whole mess. He’d dealt with hemorrhoids forever. They’d bleed, then settle down, just his "normal" for years. Then, maybe around spring this year, I noticed he seemed more wiped out when walking around the house. I didn't think much of it at the time. He was a powerhouse—67 years old but built like an ox, always hiking, mowing the lawn, barely ever sitting down. He had a heart attack back in 2014, but he handled it fine because he actually stuck to his meds. This summer, he went to visit my aunt (his sister) out near Chicago, and she noticed he was getting tired too. When he got back home, I saw it for the first time—that pale look in his face. Because I’m so attached to him, I started spiraling into this paranoia that wouldn't let go, and then the worst happened. We spent July and the start of August practically begging him to see a doctor. He just wouldn't go. He was terrified. Besides the fatigue and being pale, he was getting these feverish chills at night, followed by unbearable pain in his shoulder and sometimes his leg. Even when he was just sitting there, he was breathing fast. We finally cornered him into getting blood work done. The results were bad: severe anemia, low iron, low hemoglobin. He ended up being rushed to the hospital—it was a total "code blue" situation—and they had to keep him because his life was on the line and his kidneys were borderline failing. That’s when he finally admitted that his hemorrhoids had gone crazy over the last year, bleeding heavily, which explains the hemoglobin loss. Once they started treating him, his color came back, the shoulder and leg pains faded, and after two weeks, his blood counts improved and the bleeding stopped. While he was there, they did lung scans, abdominal ultrasounds, the works, just to rule out anything malignant. The one thing they *didn't* do was a colonoscopy, so we can't officially rule out colon cancer. His heart was mostly okay, just a little enlarged, which makes sense given his age and that old heart attack. So, Grandpa gets discharged. He goes back to his usual routine, but then a few days later, he hits a wall with constipation. He wasn't going normally; he felt massive pressure and bloating. We immediately booked a colonoscopy to rule out that damn cancer he seemed so worried about. Of course, hemorrhoids could cause those same symptoms, too. If it were a tumor, I’d think the bleeding would be more consistent, but for him, it kept stopping and starting. By September, things took a turn. This agonizing pain in his right calf. We were certain it was a blood clot from receiving so much blood during his hospital stay. It turned out we were right. The pain was so bad he had to go back to the hospital. They didn't do a thorough enough job, though—they ran a Doppler on his leg and said there was no clot, which gave us a huge sense of relief. But the pain didn't fully go away; it just dampened, and then his appetite vanished. To me, that screams cancer more than hemorrhoids, but hey, both can do that. He was sent home with orders to rest until his colonoscopy on the 22nd, but he insisted on going out because it was a beautiful sunny day. He spent the whole day on his feet. The next morning, the pain was unbearable. Overnight, that leg pain turned into him gasping for air. He collapsed into the water—completely ignoring the doctors' theory that there was no clot. The clot had broken loose, turned into an embolism, and he died right there on the hospital table from a pulmonary embolism. My whole world fell apart. I'm still not okay, and I'm grieving like hell, but honestly, that doesn't matter right now. My grandpa's death leaves so many questions hanging over us. I'm losing my mind over this dilemma because I can't change anything, but I keep wondering if I missed something. How can they say there's no clot when there clearly was? Could that massive bleeding have been *just* from hemorrhoids? Did he have colon cancer? Why did his kidneys almost fail from the blood loss? The clot killed him—that's a fact. It likely formed because of the transfusions and because he wasn't on enough blood thinners. But the cause of the bleeding? That's the mystery. Hemorrhoids are old news, but why did they suddenly get so intense? Is there any sign it was a tumor? Regardless of whether it was cancer or not, I feel like the doctors failed him by missing that clot. That clot cost me my grandfather. They were irresponsible. He should have seen a doctor way sooner. Whatever. The doctors didn't do their jobs, and here we are.