I’ve mentioned a very long term friend of mine who happens to be a woman a few times on these boards; our friendship has lasted many years. For the past twenty-two of those years, she has had a long-term loving relationship with a man. So far as I know, they were faithful and committed to each other but they chose not to marry. He has been a heavy drinker for most of those years but three years ago, he injured his back and has been taking what she described as a “heavy duty painkiller” but I don’t know any more than that. And, for the past few years, he had been taking Xanax, but I don’t know the dose. A week or so ago, the drinking, the pain pills and/or the Xanax ganged up on him; he suffered a stroke and was lying on the floor of his house for at least four days, while she and her grandson visited Orlando. She had the misfortune of fining him when she returned. Long story short, he had very limited brain activity and his parents chose to turn off the life support equipment. My friend held this guy’s hand almost non-stop for the three days it took him to die. She is consumed with guilt because she took her grandson to Orlando; I would do anything to spare her a further moment of pain. I’ve loved her for more than half my life.
I dodged the drug/alcohol bullet myself and he could have dodged it as well, if he had only listened, not only to me but to others. Such a senseless death with so much pain resulting. I’ve seldom felt as helpless as I have for the last three days.
I felt this should not go without a response, LouisB. Please accept my sympathy for your friend’s loss, and for the emotional burden it places on you to be there for her.
That looks really clinical to me, for some reason, but I hope you understand that I mean it in a supportive way. I’m sending positive vibes in your direction.
My sympathies. It’s a tough time she’s going through, but she’s lucky to have a friend like you to help her through it, and to remind her that it isn’t her fault.
careful with that. The leading cause of death is being alive and you haven’t said anything to indicate that this man’s stroke was caused directly by alcohol and medication.
My father (who was a smoker, at times very heavy) died of lung cancer - a lung cancer which his oncologists hadn’t seen before and that, when they figured out what kind it was and looked it up, had been shown in studies to be related to asbestos (Dad had worked in brand-new and even still-in-construction buildings back when asbestos wasn’t known to be carcinogenic) but not to smoking. When my nephew (2yo at the time and born 7 years after Dad’s death) one day said that “Grandpa Jaime died cos he smoked,” Mom almost ripped SiL-the-doctor’s head off right there.