Blessings on your grandmother and your family, Laura ... Canada and healthcare ... I am grateful beyond measure that I live in Canada. I've been quite ill for over two years, and so far, my medical needs are being met. I take care of the rest. So glad that Ruby has daily care ... and how sad that humanity's sense of family (at least in the West) has eroded to the point where we have to hire other people to give hands-on presence and care to our elders and any loved one in need of practical aid. Our culture slices the love right out of relations -- they're transmuted into deals and sales. It is also a tragic fact that we tend to work so long and hard outside our homes that we're are exhausted at the end of the "working day" -- What's left for those we live with but fast food and half-awake care? 46 million American citizens without healthcare ... That's more people than the entire population of Canada (We're about 34 million people). At the same time, there are powerful people inside and beyond our federal government who want to eradicate our healthcare system. Forgive my harsh words here but Stephen Harper, our prime minister, is sometimes referred to as "George W. Bush with a brain." I read this phrase -- "Canada's population grew by 0.19% in the fourth quarter of 2008, the fastest fourth-quarter growth rate since 1992" -- and I think: Doesn't that sound an awful lot like a corporate annual report? (Link: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/090326/dq090326a-eng.htm)   What must come to matter to the nth degree in our culture -- a meaning that we have desecrated -- is that one beloved grandmother is injured and needs consistent, compassionate and practical tending. Every family has a "beloved grandmother" -- someone who is ill, injured or otherwise depleted; someone who needs a loving eye and a competent, merciful hand. There are many, many people who are willing to step in for family members who are too busy with other things to care for their own. People who often come from places that we call "third-world" -- judged habitually as "third-rate" -- people from the "lower classes" and from cultures that honour the value of relation above such values as wealth, power, fame, conquest ... Family is biology, yes ... and it is also a choice.  As you ask, Laura: "How big is your family?" P.S. -- I read and commented as I went ... and I see that your grandmother is holding her own!  :-)