I signed my name on the last of the hospital paperwork, not even bothering to read it. I had seen it all before. My Grandma had been in an out of the hospital for emergency surgery for most of my life. It all started with a really bad condition she developed after her 60th birthday.

Some people obsessively clean and other swear uncontrollably. Well my Grandma swallows things. Small things, big things, edibile things and not. It started off kinda silly, like the old kid song with her swallowing flys and spiders around the house. It was kinda gross but at the same time funny.

This year alone she’s required hospitalization over a croquet ball, a tv remote, and a bra. Sometimes it’s months between incidents, other times seconds. You never really know when it’ll happen. It’s starting to tear our family apart. Mom wants to send her to where she can be watched 24/7, but Dad will have none of it. He wants her at home where she can be with family. And me? I’m scared to death cause last night I swallowed a dime.