Sick

Have you or anyone you have known ever been very sick? Have you ever been hospitalized or visited anyone in the hospital? If so, try describing the experience. Use your five senses, as well as your emotional response to the experience. If you have never had any such experience, try to imagine what it is like and describe it. Try to create a mood using your own personal style.

I've never been sick to the point of being on the brink of death. I have been hospitalized before, however, due to a severe asthma attack in the fifth grade, though I view this as a relatively insignificant event in my life as a whole.

My grandfather was diagnosed with colon cancer three or so years ago. He underwent chemotherapy and was in and out of the hospital depending on the time of the year and his health state.
A year or so after his diagnosis, he was hospitalized and my father raced our family to the Chiayi hospital as fast as he could. When we arrived, my grandfather was laying in bed, awake but weak. He had no tubes (my father later told me that he had specially requested for this. I assume that my grandfather did this because thought if he were to pass, he should be allowed to do so with dignity. Or it could simply be he doesn't like tubes running into his body - I know I don't) and had difficulties breathing. Within the hour, he passed into a coma.


The experience was emotionally devastating for me. I spent the days in Chiayi in quiet remorse, regretting the lack of time I had spent with him, fearing the the moment when the ECG would emit a slow beeping. The second afternoon of his hospitalization, I staggered over to his bedside. I softly whispered in his ear who I was, telling him that he had been important to me in my life, and that from then on a part of me would be playing sports and committing to my work in his honor. The teary-faced relatives watched on. My grandmother looked close to having a nervous breakdown (which she would, later at the funeral processions).

He passed away two hours later.