Have you ever conducted an RCT? Who would have done it? Where would you prioritize this in terms of doing RCTs of other things? What you propose probably would cost $2 million dollars. If you were at NIH with finite money to allocate in 2020 what would have defunded to fund this?
Given the medical staff was working Herculean hours early in the pandemic what should they not have done in order to have this debate you find so crucial? Do you believe in the “public” part of public health? I’m so embarrassed for someone to reveal they don’t understand how to do a study or science takes actual resources, and that they’re kind of a jerk who cares only about the individual immediately bob front of him.
Brilliant, humane & thoughtful essay. Thank you for sharing. I’m so glad your grandfather had the opportunity to pass at home surrounded by the love & warmth of family & friends. I’m sorry for your loss but as you say death is something we’ll all face one day. The treatment of patients in hospitals during Covid was something that tore me to pieces. Esp for those who were elderly, vulnerable & suffering incurable illness. Likewise treatment of pregnant mothers; in Ireland, where I am, they were treated appallingly. Partners barred from coming in, etc. The whole thing was soooo inhumane.
My cousin died of breast cancer during the pandemic, alone in inpatient hospice. She called me a few days before she died to say goodbye. I was her flower girl, close to her entire family but especially to her. We shared a common love of books despite our age difference, had two daughters born on the same dates, and enjoyed wine and theater. It was heartbreaking to take that call and even more so when her family couldn’t have a funeral that extended family could attend. I still grieve her passing and that I was never able to say a proper goodbye - and that her little grandchildren missed spending time with her because of COVID. I’m an infectious disease physician and am still shocked by how many people can’t give up masks and isolation, most of whom are bright and should have a better understanding of our current situation. Thank you for a great piece, Ben!
The senseless cruelty of those policies can never, ever be forgiven. Yes, I'm biased since my family was personally affected by the no visitation rules, but objectively and dispassionately speaking... it is so go**amn f*****g idiotic that a hospice patient and their family could be robbed of their irreplacable last time together by an organization ostenably committed to bringing comfort to the dying. Three years later and I'm still. So. Angry.
Not all of us were fearful in the early days. On March 8, 2020 I calculated the infection fatality rate to be .1%. The so-called experts had it at 4%; 40 times too high.
Wait until people learn that Covid-19 doesn't exist.
There are multiple videos on Bitchute of Dr. Andrew Kaufman & Dr. Tom Cowan explaining truth about the fictitious virus.
The phony virus & fraudulent PCR test were used as tools to create the illusion of a pandemic, to destroy economies around the world, to implement communist policies & to justify roll-out of toxic jab.
If Covid-19 doesn't exist then what were people dying from?
For starters, the CDC created a special ICD code allowing ANY death to be reported as Covid-19 death - NO evidence necessary. It's NO coincidence that Covid symptoms just happen to fall under same symptoms as every respiratory illness under the sun.
In addition, a drug called Remdesivir was mandated by Fauci to be used as Covid treatment in hospitals/nursing homes. Remdesivir was taken off market in 2019 for killing 53% of participants in an Ebola treatment study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019. Remdesivir is known to shutdown kidneys & fills lungs with fluid. Deaths by Remdesivir were reported as CV19 deaths.
Ventilators are another barbaric treatment mandated by Fauci, despite fact that they actually LOWER oxygen levels in blood & significantly increase patient's risk of developing pneumonia.
People with nothing more than a minor respiratory illness or anxiety were heavily sedated & placed on a ventilator to die. Death by ventilators were also reported as CV19 deaths.
Furthermore, countless vaccine related deaths have also been reported as CV19 deaths.
Do people really believe flu cases in U.S. went from 38 million in 2019 to 1,822 in 2020? That stat alone should have been massive red flag to everyone in healthcare industry.
Needless to say I’m stunned & disgusted by the # of docs/nurses who lied to patients about safety of vaccine & who continued to treat patients with Remdesivir/ventilators, despite witnessing their deadly effects on patients over & over again.
Before dismissing idea that Covid DOESN'T EXIST I ask that you follow the money. Those pushing the phony virus narrative have enormous financial stakes in the game. On flip side, those who oppose existence of virus have NO financial stake in the game. In fact in most cases they sacrificed their jobs, medical licenses, reputations, relationships with colleagues/loved one & their safety.
Yes, I watched a close family member die on Zoom. Truly, one of the low points of my entire life. There's an element within the medical system that is deeply inhumane. COVID allowed that element free reign over all of our lives.
Excellent essay. Florida is working on a "Patients Bill of Rights" to try to deal with this problem. No one should be allowed to keep the family away during this time.
One suggestion I have is to add to the patient's online chart a place where it tells the family if visitors are allowed or are requested. There is so much lack of communication between the hospital staff and the families and then the hospital changes the rules, and always neglects to tell the family.
Unless you are one of those aggressive people who gets in the face of the nurses every day, the family has no clue what is going on at the hospital.
My husband was diagnosed with stage 3B kidney cancer nine days after we moved cross country in May 2020. He had zero symptoms before that day and when I rushed him to the ER I was not allowed in with him, the staff never called me once with an update and when he finally stumbled out of the ER hours later to where I had sat in my vehicle waiting the entire time he was doped up on pain meds and handed me a paper that said he had a large mass on his kidney and would need follow up.
After that I was not allowed in when he went for imaging and doctor appointments, and I had to drop him at the doorstep of a hospital like carry-on luggage the day he had the surgery to remove his kidney. I was not allowed in for surgery or for the entire week he was there. Getting nurses or doctors to give me updates or any type of information was like pulling teeth and rarely happened. I was not allowed in to advocate or care for my husband. And frankly I think a lot of doctors and nurses preferred it that way.
In April 2021 I was hospitalized with sepsis and the start of organ failure. All because a scratch had become infected, morphed into staph and then into sepsis. What should have and normally would have been a simple appointment and antibiotics was anything but. When I feared it was a staph infection, I could not get any doctor's office to see me and even urgent cares in my area (an hour from our rural home) didn't want to let patients in. I literally sat at home having staph turn into sepsis and was slowly dying. I kept telling my husband I won't go to the ER because I was so weak, I couldn't stand and barely talk, and I was terrified to be dumped at the door like I had to with him and then be alone, weak and helpless inside by myself. Thankfully, when he took me to the ER he basically forced his way in and they acquiesced. I was told by the ER doctor that admitted me, that if I had not come in when I did, I would have been dead within 48 hours. And while I am laying there after hearing that you know what their biggest concern was? Not the sepsis ravaging my body and organs and the 103.5 fever I had, but shoving a damn qtip up my nose to test for covid and to quiz me if I was vaccinated. I am not and will not ever take the magic potion. I was lucky enough that they agreed my husband could come in to see me in the ICU every evening for an hour during the 7 days I spent in the hospital but that was it.
I will never excuse, forgive or forget how the medical profession shirked and hid from their duties and hid behind "covid" policy and rules to do so. And to be honest, healthcare had been on a downward slide already and this just hastened the descent into mediocrity, neglect of patient care and loss of patient trust. How many people died that didn't have to because of these policies? How many people were forced to die alone and afraid because of these policies? How many people live daily now with guilt and anger that they could not see or touch their dying family member? How many are still being punished, impacted and abused thanks to these policies?
Just....it would have been nice if actual doctors could have located their Ethics Balls 3 years ago when all this was happening *because even then they knew it was wrong*, instead of waiting until now when the dust has more or less settled and it’s suddenly safe to be critical of “things that were well-intentioned but ultimately turned out to be less than helpful.”
No. They knew it was wrong then. They had an ethical duty to speak up. And if they’re unwilling to apologize for failing in that duty, then I’m uninterested in 2020 (ha!) hindsight.
I could put a long diatribe about how many of us questioned the policies that have negatively affected us as a country and as humans but it would pale in comparison to how you personalized it Ben. Thanks for sharing a personal moment. It will serve you well as a physician going forward.
My husband retired in November 2021 and he was a very strong man.
He was losing kidney function in May of 2022, and the doctor wanted to give him an implant, so that he could do dialysis at home.
He tested positive for Covid but had no symptoms, and so he needed to go to the hospital for hemodialysis.
My husband was in the hospital from May 29-June 20th, 2022 for 22 days before he died 6-21-2022-10 months ago.
They would only let us be with him from 10am until 6pm every day...and only two people at a time.
We had to check in and out with the front desk and wear a name tag.
I wasn't able to talk to the doctors, who did their rounds early in the morning and it was awful.
I felt that I wasn't able to properly advocate for him.
He went in to have Hemodialysis; ended up having two stents put in for a 22 year old bypass; coded and was intubated for 3 days; then extubated.
By that time he couldn't get up any more, and he was put in a life vest and sent to a Skilled Nursing Facility, the evening of the 20th, where he died that night.
I know that the doctors and nurses did so much for him, but I felt so helpless as far as being able to make it better for him.
I don’t have any answers…but we need to be with our loved ones as they are sick and/or dying.
I am so very sorry. And even more sorry that the medical professionals in this country have treated patients and their advocates i.e. family members so unnecessarily poorly through all of this.
Sir William Osler said, “The good physician treats the disease, but the great physician treats the patient that has disease.”
I think a lot about Covid now that we are in the debriefing stage. This observation by Sir William Osler sums up why we failed in this instance. We treated the disease instead of the patients. And this is why so many of our policies seemed inhumane at the time, and even more inhumane in retrospect. Public health is often removed from the individual patient, and necessarily so since it covers populations. We physicians on the ground should have been braver, myself included.
My father-in-law was hospitalized with Covid in August 2020. He was being treated in a hospital where I have privileges, but even I was not allowed into the Covid unit. My mother-in-law, who also had Covid before him, and was recovered, was never allowed to his bedside, and he died without her. They had been married for nearly 60 years.
I was able to convince the Intensivist to let me in when he started to fail in the ICU, and it was clear that he would likely not make it. And even with that I was sneaking in. He told me to keep a low profile. Because there were no visitors there were also no names on the doors, and as I traveled around the big circle of 40 ICU beds, the horror of seeing every one of those rooms with the patient completely alone and without loved ones appeared apocalyptic. I could only imagine the fear and despair that every one of those souls must have been feeling. As I arrived at my father-in-law‘s room, I sat down at the nursing station, and tears started rolling down my face before I even went in to comfort my father-in-law. The kind nurse sitting next to me at the station noticed my distress, and she stated,”I see this is your first time in the Covid unit.” Unable to really speak. I nodded, and we sat together in silence for a time before I went in to be with my father-in-law to hold his hand, and to tell him that I was there, and I loved him.
Practicing medicine for 30 years I am no stranger to the intensive care unit. I have held many hands of my patients in their last days. It took every ounce of will and the understanding that I might not be able to come back in to resist going in to every one of those 40 rooms and hold those hands that day. It would have taken me all night, but I would have. However, I knew that there was a real possibility of not only getting myself in trouble, but also the Intensivist that allowed me to come in.
Instead, I laid awake all night thinking the things that you just wrote about so eloquently. You are 100% on target with your musings about evidence-based medicine, humanity, and public policy/responsibility. You are an Oslerian!
I am encouraged that there is a future with you as a healer in it.
When I came down with covid in September 21, I told my husband under no circumstances, should he take me to the hospital in town. I have friends who work there as nurses and doctors and I know they did their best to be family to patients there during the miserable times of covid. It was hard for them too, and to me they really were heroes for being there. But to isolate people who are sick enough to be near death is so cruel I can barely think about it. No, it didn't prevent the spread of covid.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your Grandfather. My heart skipped a beat when you mentioned being by the side of a loved one when they died. I missed my father's and I still feel like a failure. We lived in the same city. I was scheduled to visit him the following day. Evidently, the facility he was living in called and called and called me. They called my husband too. They called our house phone (we had one back then). They called our cell phones. We each had one. I don't know what happened. My husband doesn't know what happened. We never heard ANY of the calls. How is that possible? The ringers were on. They were In the same room. Did God somehow put His hand over our ears for a reason? What kind of reason would that be? We were awakened at about 4am by a family member who drove 40 minutes across town to inform us that my dad had died and the nurses had been trying to call us for hours. When we checked our phones, sure enough, there were the missed calls. There were the voicemails I will never understand what happened. But it did. And I feel unbelievably awful for it. My father died, not alone, but without me, his only blood relative. And I hate that. There are so many "why's?"; one day I know I will get the answers. But for now I can just say that I am grateful for you, that your grandfather had his family with him at the end of his life. And I'm praying that mine had angels by his Sending you a hug.
You did your best and your father knows it now! I was blessed to be with my father at his death but not with my mother, I missed her by a few hours, and that will always make me feel desolate. But again, she knows, and God knows. Your Dad knows how much you love him.
Have you ever conducted an RCT? Who would have done it? Where would you prioritize this in terms of doing RCTs of other things? What you propose probably would cost $2 million dollars. If you were at NIH with finite money to allocate in 2020 what would have defunded to fund this?
Given the medical staff was working Herculean hours early in the pandemic what should they not have done in order to have this debate you find so crucial? Do you believe in the “public” part of public health? I’m so embarrassed for someone to reveal they don’t understand how to do a study or science takes actual resources, and that they’re kind of a jerk who cares only about the individual immediately bob front of him.
Brilliant, humane & thoughtful essay. Thank you for sharing. I’m so glad your grandfather had the opportunity to pass at home surrounded by the love & warmth of family & friends. I’m sorry for your loss but as you say death is something we’ll all face one day. The treatment of patients in hospitals during Covid was something that tore me to pieces. Esp for those who were elderly, vulnerable & suffering incurable illness. Likewise treatment of pregnant mothers; in Ireland, where I am, they were treated appallingly. Partners barred from coming in, etc. The whole thing was soooo inhumane.
My cousin died of breast cancer during the pandemic, alone in inpatient hospice. She called me a few days before she died to say goodbye. I was her flower girl, close to her entire family but especially to her. We shared a common love of books despite our age difference, had two daughters born on the same dates, and enjoyed wine and theater. It was heartbreaking to take that call and even more so when her family couldn’t have a funeral that extended family could attend. I still grieve her passing and that I was never able to say a proper goodbye - and that her little grandchildren missed spending time with her because of COVID. I’m an infectious disease physician and am still shocked by how many people can’t give up masks and isolation, most of whom are bright and should have a better understanding of our current situation. Thank you for a great piece, Ben!
The senseless cruelty of those policies can never, ever be forgiven. Yes, I'm biased since my family was personally affected by the no visitation rules, but objectively and dispassionately speaking... it is so go**amn f*****g idiotic that a hospice patient and their family could be robbed of their irreplacable last time together by an organization ostenably committed to bringing comfort to the dying. Three years later and I'm still. So. Angry.
Not all of us were fearful in the early days. On March 8, 2020 I calculated the infection fatality rate to be .1%. The so-called experts had it at 4%; 40 times too high.
Wait until people learn that Covid-19 doesn't exist.
There are multiple videos on Bitchute of Dr. Andrew Kaufman & Dr. Tom Cowan explaining truth about the fictitious virus.
The phony virus & fraudulent PCR test were used as tools to create the illusion of a pandemic, to destroy economies around the world, to implement communist policies & to justify roll-out of toxic jab.
If Covid-19 doesn't exist then what were people dying from?
For starters, the CDC created a special ICD code allowing ANY death to be reported as Covid-19 death - NO evidence necessary. It's NO coincidence that Covid symptoms just happen to fall under same symptoms as every respiratory illness under the sun.
In addition, a drug called Remdesivir was mandated by Fauci to be used as Covid treatment in hospitals/nursing homes. Remdesivir was taken off market in 2019 for killing 53% of participants in an Ebola treatment study that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019. Remdesivir is known to shutdown kidneys & fills lungs with fluid. Deaths by Remdesivir were reported as CV19 deaths.
Ventilators are another barbaric treatment mandated by Fauci, despite fact that they actually LOWER oxygen levels in blood & significantly increase patient's risk of developing pneumonia.
People with nothing more than a minor respiratory illness or anxiety were heavily sedated & placed on a ventilator to die. Death by ventilators were also reported as CV19 deaths.
Furthermore, countless vaccine related deaths have also been reported as CV19 deaths.
Do people really believe flu cases in U.S. went from 38 million in 2019 to 1,822 in 2020? That stat alone should have been massive red flag to everyone in healthcare industry.
Needless to say I’m stunned & disgusted by the # of docs/nurses who lied to patients about safety of vaccine & who continued to treat patients with Remdesivir/ventilators, despite witnessing their deadly effects on patients over & over again.
Before dismissing idea that Covid DOESN'T EXIST I ask that you follow the money. Those pushing the phony virus narrative have enormous financial stakes in the game. On flip side, those who oppose existence of virus have NO financial stake in the game. In fact in most cases they sacrificed their jobs, medical licenses, reputations, relationships with colleagues/loved one & their safety.
Yes, I watched a close family member die on Zoom. Truly, one of the low points of my entire life. There's an element within the medical system that is deeply inhumane. COVID allowed that element free reign over all of our lives.
Excellent essay. Florida is working on a "Patients Bill of Rights" to try to deal with this problem. No one should be allowed to keep the family away during this time.
One suggestion I have is to add to the patient's online chart a place where it tells the family if visitors are allowed or are requested. There is so much lack of communication between the hospital staff and the families and then the hospital changes the rules, and always neglects to tell the family.
Unless you are one of those aggressive people who gets in the face of the nurses every day, the family has no clue what is going on at the hospital.
My husband was diagnosed with stage 3B kidney cancer nine days after we moved cross country in May 2020. He had zero symptoms before that day and when I rushed him to the ER I was not allowed in with him, the staff never called me once with an update and when he finally stumbled out of the ER hours later to where I had sat in my vehicle waiting the entire time he was doped up on pain meds and handed me a paper that said he had a large mass on his kidney and would need follow up.
After that I was not allowed in when he went for imaging and doctor appointments, and I had to drop him at the doorstep of a hospital like carry-on luggage the day he had the surgery to remove his kidney. I was not allowed in for surgery or for the entire week he was there. Getting nurses or doctors to give me updates or any type of information was like pulling teeth and rarely happened. I was not allowed in to advocate or care for my husband. And frankly I think a lot of doctors and nurses preferred it that way.
In April 2021 I was hospitalized with sepsis and the start of organ failure. All because a scratch had become infected, morphed into staph and then into sepsis. What should have and normally would have been a simple appointment and antibiotics was anything but. When I feared it was a staph infection, I could not get any doctor's office to see me and even urgent cares in my area (an hour from our rural home) didn't want to let patients in. I literally sat at home having staph turn into sepsis and was slowly dying. I kept telling my husband I won't go to the ER because I was so weak, I couldn't stand and barely talk, and I was terrified to be dumped at the door like I had to with him and then be alone, weak and helpless inside by myself. Thankfully, when he took me to the ER he basically forced his way in and they acquiesced. I was told by the ER doctor that admitted me, that if I had not come in when I did, I would have been dead within 48 hours. And while I am laying there after hearing that you know what their biggest concern was? Not the sepsis ravaging my body and organs and the 103.5 fever I had, but shoving a damn qtip up my nose to test for covid and to quiz me if I was vaccinated. I am not and will not ever take the magic potion. I was lucky enough that they agreed my husband could come in to see me in the ICU every evening for an hour during the 7 days I spent in the hospital but that was it.
I will never excuse, forgive or forget how the medical profession shirked and hid from their duties and hid behind "covid" policy and rules to do so. And to be honest, healthcare had been on a downward slide already and this just hastened the descent into mediocrity, neglect of patient care and loss of patient trust. How many people died that didn't have to because of these policies? How many people were forced to die alone and afraid because of these policies? How many people live daily now with guilt and anger that they could not see or touch their dying family member? How many are still being punished, impacted and abused thanks to these policies?
How very awful!
Just....it would have been nice if actual doctors could have located their Ethics Balls 3 years ago when all this was happening *because even then they knew it was wrong*, instead of waiting until now when the dust has more or less settled and it’s suddenly safe to be critical of “things that were well-intentioned but ultimately turned out to be less than helpful.”
No. They knew it was wrong then. They had an ethical duty to speak up. And if they’re unwilling to apologize for failing in that duty, then I’m uninterested in 2020 (ha!) hindsight.
Yes! You just perfectly expressed what I was thinking.
I could put a long diatribe about how many of us questioned the policies that have negatively affected us as a country and as humans but it would pale in comparison to how you personalized it Ben. Thanks for sharing a personal moment. It will serve you well as a physician going forward.
My husband retired in November 2021 and he was a very strong man.
He was losing kidney function in May of 2022, and the doctor wanted to give him an implant, so that he could do dialysis at home.
He tested positive for Covid but had no symptoms, and so he needed to go to the hospital for hemodialysis.
My husband was in the hospital from May 29-June 20th, 2022 for 22 days before he died 6-21-2022-10 months ago.
They would only let us be with him from 10am until 6pm every day...and only two people at a time.
We had to check in and out with the front desk and wear a name tag.
I wasn't able to talk to the doctors, who did their rounds early in the morning and it was awful.
I felt that I wasn't able to properly advocate for him.
He went in to have Hemodialysis; ended up having two stents put in for a 22 year old bypass; coded and was intubated for 3 days; then extubated.
By that time he couldn't get up any more, and he was put in a life vest and sent to a Skilled Nursing Facility, the evening of the 20th, where he died that night.
I know that the doctors and nurses did so much for him, but I felt so helpless as far as being able to make it better for him.
I don’t have any answers…but we need to be with our loved ones as they are sick and/or dying.
I am so very sorry. And even more sorry that the medical professionals in this country have treated patients and their advocates i.e. family members so unnecessarily poorly through all of this.
this got me in the feels on so many levels
Sir William Osler said, “The good physician treats the disease, but the great physician treats the patient that has disease.”
I think a lot about Covid now that we are in the debriefing stage. This observation by Sir William Osler sums up why we failed in this instance. We treated the disease instead of the patients. And this is why so many of our policies seemed inhumane at the time, and even more inhumane in retrospect. Public health is often removed from the individual patient, and necessarily so since it covers populations. We physicians on the ground should have been braver, myself included.
My father-in-law was hospitalized with Covid in August 2020. He was being treated in a hospital where I have privileges, but even I was not allowed into the Covid unit. My mother-in-law, who also had Covid before him, and was recovered, was never allowed to his bedside, and he died without her. They had been married for nearly 60 years.
I was able to convince the Intensivist to let me in when he started to fail in the ICU, and it was clear that he would likely not make it. And even with that I was sneaking in. He told me to keep a low profile. Because there were no visitors there were also no names on the doors, and as I traveled around the big circle of 40 ICU beds, the horror of seeing every one of those rooms with the patient completely alone and without loved ones appeared apocalyptic. I could only imagine the fear and despair that every one of those souls must have been feeling. As I arrived at my father-in-law‘s room, I sat down at the nursing station, and tears started rolling down my face before I even went in to comfort my father-in-law. The kind nurse sitting next to me at the station noticed my distress, and she stated,”I see this is your first time in the Covid unit.” Unable to really speak. I nodded, and we sat together in silence for a time before I went in to be with my father-in-law to hold his hand, and to tell him that I was there, and I loved him.
Practicing medicine for 30 years I am no stranger to the intensive care unit. I have held many hands of my patients in their last days. It took every ounce of will and the understanding that I might not be able to come back in to resist going in to every one of those 40 rooms and hold those hands that day. It would have taken me all night, but I would have. However, I knew that there was a real possibility of not only getting myself in trouble, but also the Intensivist that allowed me to come in.
Instead, I laid awake all night thinking the things that you just wrote about so eloquently. You are 100% on target with your musings about evidence-based medicine, humanity, and public policy/responsibility. You are an Oslerian!
I am encouraged that there is a future with you as a healer in it.
Thank you so much for your words!
When I came down with covid in September 21, I told my husband under no circumstances, should he take me to the hospital in town. I have friends who work there as nurses and doctors and I know they did their best to be family to patients there during the miserable times of covid. It was hard for them too, and to me they really were heroes for being there. But to isolate people who are sick enough to be near death is so cruel I can barely think about it. No, it didn't prevent the spread of covid.
I'm so sorry for the loss of your Grandfather. My heart skipped a beat when you mentioned being by the side of a loved one when they died. I missed my father's and I still feel like a failure. We lived in the same city. I was scheduled to visit him the following day. Evidently, the facility he was living in called and called and called me. They called my husband too. They called our house phone (we had one back then). They called our cell phones. We each had one. I don't know what happened. My husband doesn't know what happened. We never heard ANY of the calls. How is that possible? The ringers were on. They were In the same room. Did God somehow put His hand over our ears for a reason? What kind of reason would that be? We were awakened at about 4am by a family member who drove 40 minutes across town to inform us that my dad had died and the nurses had been trying to call us for hours. When we checked our phones, sure enough, there were the missed calls. There were the voicemails I will never understand what happened. But it did. And I feel unbelievably awful for it. My father died, not alone, but without me, his only blood relative. And I hate that. There are so many "why's?"; one day I know I will get the answers. But for now I can just say that I am grateful for you, that your grandfather had his family with him at the end of his life. And I'm praying that mine had angels by his Sending you a hug.
You did your best and your father knows it now! I was blessed to be with my father at his death but not with my mother, I missed her by a few hours, and that will always make me feel desolate. But again, she knows, and God knows. Your Dad knows how much you love him.