How Tylenol Killed Grandma—and Triggered My Interest in Health

This is the last photo I have of me with Grandma Abbott. It was taken on my ninth birthday in early May, 2001. She died less than three months later.

This summer has flown by so fast that July 30 came and went without me even noticing. I didn’t remember until weeks later that it was the twenty-fifth anniversary of when Grandma Abbott died. Soon it will be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which happened just six weeks after Grandma’s death. Both events profoundly impacted me as a child. And when I look back, I can date my interest in health to that tragic year of 2001.

I loved Grandma, of course. What nine-year-old doesn’t love going over to Grandma’s house and getting spoiled? Grandpa died of colon cancer two weeks before I was born, so from my earliest memories it was just Grandma. We went to Grandma’s house at least once a week, often on Sundays after church. But as much as I loved Grandma, I didn’t always like the food she gave us.

It was at Grandma’s house that I was first introduced to those strange objects known as “snack cakes.” They sure didn’t taste like the yummy homemade cakes my mom made. When I was seven, I started reading the ingredient list to try to figure out what was in them, and that’s when I saw the word “paraffin.” Wait a minute—that’s what they make candles out of! You’re not supposed to eat candles. Why are they putting non-food ingredients in something you’re supposed to eat? I looked at snack cakes with suspicion from that day on.

Almost all of my childhood experiences with ultra-processed food were with Grandma. She’s the only one who took us to McDonald’s and bought us chicken nuggets. Again, I wondered what was in them and the too-sweet “honey” sauce we dipped them in. They didn’t taste like chicken, that’s for sure. My favorite part of the meal was, of course, the toy. Unless it was a Teeny Beanie Baby, in which case Grandma or my aunt would take it and put it in a glass cabinet.

It may sound horrible, but I never wanted to be like Grandma. Sure, she was nice and friendly and laughed a lot. But I never wanted to have her health problems. She was mildly obese, had diabetes, and, by the spring of 2001, her skin tone was a sickly yellow. The doctors diagnosed her with cirrhosis of the liver and told her she was going to die unless she had a liver transplant. By early summer she was too sick to live alone, so she moved in with my family. Every day I watched her get sicker and more yellow, holding out futile hope for that transplant.

My parents didn’t try to “shield” us kids from what was happening. I knew Grandma was dying. And I knew why. They explained to me that cirrhosis of the liver is usually caused by drinking too much alcohol. But Grandma never drank. In her case, the culprit was over-the-counter Tylenol, which she took almost every day for headaches. Along with statins prescribed by her doctor (which caused her diabetes), too much Tylenol destroyed her liver. She was too sick to have a transplant, and she died on July 30, 2001, at age sixty-one.

After Grandma died, my mom threw out all the Tylenol in the house and we never, ever, ever, bought any again. We never went to McDonald’s. We never bought snack cakes. When we were cleaning up Grandma’s house, my aunt brought a box of Ding Dongs, and for some morbid reason I started playing a game with my cousin where it was okay to eat a Ding Dong, but if you ate a Dong Ding, you would die. I guess it was my nine-year-old way of processing trauma.

I knew snack cakes weren’t the direct cause of Grandma’s death, but I knew they contributed to her obesity and diabetes. And I never wanted to end up like Grandma. So I became a food or drug marketer’s worst nightmare—I associated ultra-processed foods and over-the-counter drugs with death. Those traumatic months in 2001 left me with a lifelong interest in the connection between nutrition and health.

So please don’t ever offer me a Ding Dong. I’ll have to politely refuse.