For my community service I decided to help my grandfather, Andrew McKenna, as he had a stroke on the 31st of October at roughly 8:30 A.M. as my cousin came by to collect him for work. When she arrived, he was sitting in the living room on the couch, in his suit, and unresponsive. I first saw my grandad (Poppy) the day after his stroke. There were only two people allowed in to see him at the time so I went in with my mum. I had never seen anything like it. He couldn't talk, walk, and he could barely keep focus on anything. After around 30 minutes, I went down to get my brother, Jack. The only way I could prepare him for how he was about to see our grandad was by saying Poppy was like a new born baby. I was extremely anxious because I was due to leave to a French boarding school two days after his stroke. I didn't want to leave him because he was the equivalent of a a father to me when I was young. My mom was often away at work and at the time I didn't know where or who my dad was, but he was always there. I went to see him whenever I could. Each time I saw minor improvements which helped ease the pain, no matter how small the improvements. During my time in France, I called every night to check up on him and there were sometimes tiny improvements, like being able to say one or two words which helped me relax a small bit. I arrived home on the 8th of December and went straight to see him. He was at home by this stage so he was less agitated. The next day, my family and I went out to dinner. When we came home, we dropped by to see how he was doing. We went in and realized the he had another small stroke known as a TIA. We thought he was gone. We kept on calling out his name and trying to wake him up, but nothing worked. He was completely limp. We called the priest for "last rites." He was unconscious for three hours, and then his eyelids began to flicker, and slowly life came back into him. After around half an hour he was sitting up and laughing as before, but he seemed to be less agitated. That Monday, my mum went up and asked if my community service could be to look after my grandad, and they said it could. It's extremely difficult. He can't form a sentence so he says two to three words correctly. Then the rest is just mumbles so we have to try and figure out what he is saying or take a guess as to what he's saying. We spend close to fours hours a day minding him. It's rare that he stays sitting and watching T.V. Every two to three minutes he's up to go to the kitchen, out for a walk around the garden, gone to the toilet, or opening the door to see if my grandmother(nanny) is home. Whenever we talk to anybody it has to be close to a whisper because he gets headaches very easily, and his headaches lead to him becoming agitated. Too much agitation to his now fragile brain can cause another TIA. The amount of work put into minding him varies from day to day. Some days he's tired and calm so it's easy, but the days when he's anxious, irritated, or energetic are very difficult. On average, I would go on two to three walks around garden, make three to four pots of tea, and stay sitting for five minutes at a time. Somebody has to be with him at all times. The nurse said "because of the blood thinners, if he falls and gets a cut, he can bleed out and the cut will not heal because the blood will not clot the cut properly." I don't know why it had to happen to him of all people. He has done nothing but help people throughout his life. I can only hope that he survives this and will be able to regain his ability to speak. He has been the father figure to me throughout my life, whenever my mum needed time away, she would leave jack and me with him because she knew nobody knew us better than him and nanny, or whenever things got tough in school or at home, we could always have a bed at their house and would get a full Irish the next morning, and we would come home after and feel so much better. I can only imagine the way he is feeling right now and hope that no one has to endure his pain or the pain everyone else in the family feels.