04/28/10 · Filed in Internet
As I was editing this theme and reorganizing a few sitely things, it struck me.
Holy shit, I love Google Chrome.
I’ve been using it for a while, but just yesterday is when I really started using it excessively and bogging it down with 150 tabs open at one time. She ran like a dream.
Don’t get me wrong, there will always be a special place in my heart for Firefox. That was the first browser that I experienced outside of Internet Explorer and it changed the face of the internet forever for me. (A little too dramatic?) But the add-ons and extensions were bloating up my web browsing experience a little too much. I guess at the time I thought I really really needed them in order for the internet to function.
But there are things I actually dislike about Chrome as well. Like the fact that you can not print a simple selection from a page. The very thing I do, like, every single day. Little things that the developers probably thought to themselves “Eh, no one’s going to give a shit about this.” Well, Google, I DO GIVE A SHIT.
In conclusion: Chrome is the Leonardo DiCaprio to my Kate Winslet. And Firefox is like, her mom in Titanic. You know, always there but overly presumptuous and annoying sometimes. But still ok.
04/20/10 · Filed in Personal
My 86-year-old grandmother is having surgery today. Her heart doctor more or less insisted on giving her a pacemaker for her weakening heart. I wish she would’ve told them no.
That sounds horrible, doesn’t it?
A few days ago, she called me up to tell me about the situation. During her last visit to her ‘heart doctor’ (as she calls him), he noticed that her heart beat was irregular and skipped every now and then. His solution was to put her under the knife and insert a pacemaker immediately.
“But Kristie,” she told me on the phone, “I just don’t think I want it. I’m old. This is what happens when you get old. Things wear out and stop working. I’ve already had a heart attack and open heart surgery. I can’t live forever.”
I was both saddened and impressed by her courage. Most people would scramble to have modern medicine cure them of all their illnesses and use such technology for as long as their bodies could handle it. And although I pray that it doesn’t happen any time soon, when it’s time for her to pass away, she wants to bow out gracefully. She’s scared of having another surgery at her age. She’s afraid she won’t wake up again. I can’t really say that I blame her. She wants God to be in charge of her fate, not artificial medical devices.
Over the past several decades, she’s witnessed every one of her 8 siblings either die suddenly (from stroke or heart attack) or waste away in nursing homes. She’s always told me that she doesn’t want to live long enough to experience either. I don’t want her to die, I would be devastated, but I know that dying is a part of life and a very real possibility for her each day that passes. She has the right to choose how she lives out the rest of her life. Wouldn’t it be selfish of me, our family, and especially the medical professionals if we tried to convince her of anything else?
It would be, so I didn’t. Before hanging up with her I let her know that I understood and would support her if she officially decided not to have the surgery.
Yesterday evening she called again to let me know about her doctor insisting on the surgery. It’s probably going on right now as I type this.
I’m angry about it. Leave it to a doctor to insist on something without getting to know the person and asking what they think or feel about the situation. Seriously? This doctor who has supposedly ‘known her for years’ scheduled this surgery without even asking her if she wants it. He insisted all of this knowing (or maybe not knowing) that my grandmother came from a time when women only spoke when spoken to and blindly followed the men in their lives on every decision they made. Of course she isn’t going to object, no matter how much she disagrees with it!
All I can do now is pray that she makes it through. Though I’m still angry about the fact that she’s just another weak, old person to him – another time slot filled, another name on the dotted line, another body on the operating table…what’s done is done. I hope the pacemaker serves her well and that she learns to accept and live with it.
What a lot of doctors possess in knowledge, ability, and efficiency, they lack in personality, patience, and compassion.
I blog about my daily adventures, crafting (knit/crochet), art, photography, & more. I'm sometimes funny, sometimes somber, sometimes neither, but always myself. 
