My grandfather has always been very stubborn with a big ego. These characteristics are known to everyone in our family. My grandfather’s trip to Seattle was his first trip since falling in Taiwan in a very scary incident. This trip occurred during my winter break. On my Friday, we got a call from my grandmother. She informed us that she had brought my grandfather to the hospital because of a suspected stroke. Luckily he was okay but it was very scary. My whole family was there for my grandfather and he didn’t seem to notice or care. Over this three day period my grandfather was just complaining about everything whether it was leaving the hospital, the food there and even the doctor’s recommendations. As a doctor, one thing my grandfather always did was criticize the doctors serving him. It was always “idiot,” “he doesn’t know what he’s talking about” or “how would he know?” This time was really frustrating for all of us because our whole family was really worried about him. The doctor questioned the medicines he prescribed himself and he just seemed to ignore it. The doctor thought the medicines he was prescribing himself was harming him. My grandfather responded with the usual “she’s an idiot, how would she know?” This time was especially frustrating for my family because he was letting his ego and stubbornness get in front of his health and well-being.

Like I said before, my family was very frustrated with him which prompted most of us to ignore him for a couple of days. During this time, I started to reflect on this whole incident. I started to realize how selfish and ignorant my grandfather was to disregard everything we had told him and all the care we had put in to try to keep this from happening again. This made me angry about everything and helped me gain a new perspective on the way my grandfather was and acted.