After almost a week on a ventilator, dropping from "sedated but responding weakly" to "possibly vegetative," my grandfather woke up and talked this weekend. He's coherent, he's more or less lucid (he's still getting a handle on exactly what happened to put him in the hospital) and he's doing his damndest to get up and walk around. I fully credit my grandmother for pulling him out of it. On Thursday, when we'd started to talk about disconnecting life support as soon as Monday if he didn't improve, she sat with him for almost an hour, talking to him, singing, holding his hand, doing anything she could to get a response. At the end of it, he opened his eyes and looked right at her. The next day, he was off the ventilator for two hours, breathing on his own. The day after that, he went off the breathing machine completely. Today he was himself again. If my marriage is ever half as awesome as that, I'll consider my life a success.
