Doctors killed my friend

[Mean_Mr.Mustard]

@Gatopescado

Doctors will do whatever they can to guarantee their next house/yacht/vacation home payment, as long as insurance is paying the tab…

Sorry, but I can’t let this pass. This is such an ignorant statement. I work very closely with a fairly large group of dedicated physicians who care deeply about their patients and have done remarkable things for them for no pay and zero recognition. Lumping all doctors together as you did is unfair, imbecilic, and irresponsible.

Anyway…

So sorry, Sleestak, for this burden you are carrying. Sometimes life keeps hammering and hammering away at you. You are to be admired. Do the Go Fund Me thing, and let us know when it’s up and running.

Wishing you all the best.
mmm

[FloatyGimpy]

@sleestak

His other dog, Toby, has had medical issues his whole life and we cannot afford to keep him. I am going to see if there is someone who will take him but it is unlikely. We cannot take care of Toby. If we could, we would, but it just isn’t possible. Toby has a problem where is sphincter muscles in his butt don’t work. He barks and turds shoot out. He also has a lot of digestive problems which lead to some real issues, and messes (Imagine a dog with no anal sphincter muscles with severe diarrhea. Well, don’t 'cause it is really, really gross) . Between the two, it is a ton of work to keep him healthy and the areas he is in clean.

Please don’t try to find “someone to take him”. If the dog is in that bad shape, just have the poor thing euthanized. He’s already losing his person, don’t kick him out of his home to become someone else’s problem who may also not want to deal with diarrhea everywhere and passes him on to someone else, who passes him on to someone else…

[Translucent_Daydream]

Your friend is very lucky to have you. I’m sorry this is happening to you.

[Sunny_Daze]

All I have to send you is best wishes and it feels so inadequate. {{{hugs}}}

If it comes to it, please ask the mods about posting a Go Fund Me, so you can honor Jim’s wishes about his remains.

[sleestak]

Jim can no longer say his own name. He doesn’t know who he is but his still wants to come home to see his puppies. It is almost unbearably sad.

Some of his old buddies made it out. One tried telling the nurse Jim gave him medical power of attorney. The nurse asked for it and he didn’t have it, 'cause Jim didn’t do that.

There are two sets of his friends coming out, some from NY and some from California. The NY folks are being pushy and wanting to take over things. The Cali guys are pushing back. I am at home with the boys and my wife is at the hospital. Some people tend to want to jump into things, make judgements on things they really don’t understand and then try to act all moral, sorta like FloatyGimpy (please do not comment again, I don’t need to hear from people like you when you don’t know my intentions or ideas. Don’t assume I would foist Toby off on someone without them fully understanding the situation and being able and willing to handle it). My wife is getting splattered with the shit and I cannot be there because I have to take care of the twins.

Jim told us his wishes. We lived with him for the past decade. He is family, even though the law doesn’t recognize that. His buddies? They talked to him maybe once a month on the phone.

I don’t understand why people have to be such shitheads during times like these. Jim is dying. Make that the focus, not who gets what. Don’t walk in and try to make decisions for Jim when that isn’t what he wanted.

My wife and I decided we are going to lock all Jims stuff up, go through it and make a list. We will give the list to his friends and let them choose on a first come, first serve basis. Though, there really isn’t much to give away. The state, or if the state finds some long lost relative, will get his cars and whatever is left in the bank accounts. Don’t really care about that though it would have been nice for those things to go to whomever Jim wanted them to go to.

On the good side, a bunch of our friends came over last night to watch the boys while I went through papers. They even helped clean up, managing the house fell waaaay back on the priority list and their help was awesome.

I hope Jim’s body lets go soon. The part of Jim that made him Jim, the part that made him a good man, a good friend and someone I am honored to have known, is gone.

I also hope that I can give my wife the comfort she needs. Jim was like a father to her. In fact she called him Papa Jim and that is what we were teaching our boys to call him.

Slee

[kambuckta]

Ah Slee, what a shitty thing to have to go through. Wishing Jim a quick passing, and that you and Mrs Slee have a bit of peace ahead.

kam

[pdhenry]

Shit this makes me sad.

May I point out one (obvious) lesson for the rest of us? Make a will. Sign the sucker. Give your spouse or other trusted relative medical POA, now, while you’re healthy and capable of making decisions.

Not to hijack the thread with my own story, but after my mom died I subtly pressured my dad to have a will (he was ~90) since my grandmother (his mom) died without a will and one piece of advice he had for me out of that was to have a will. He landed in the hospital with a bladder infection between seeing the lawyer and signing the will (the lawyer brought the paperwork to him in the hospital) and ended up not going home. I ended up with durable POA as well as being his medical surrogate and having the surety of signed documentation giving me the ability to manage his finances as well as direction on how to settle his estate made his last four months a tiny bit more bearable.

[DesertDog]

@sleestak

Jim told us his wishes. We lived with him for the past decade. He is family, even though the law doesn’t recognize that. His buddies? They talked to him maybe once a month on the phone.

I don’t understand why people have to be such shitheads during times like these. Jim is dying. Make that the focus, not who gets what. Don’t walk in and try to make decisions for Jim when that isn’t what he wanted.

Sounds like you need to apply the Crisis Ring Theory with a vengeance.

When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you’re going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support. If it isn’t, don’t say it. Don’t, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”

This especially applies to meddlers from out of town. Hugs to you, slee’.

[nearwildheaven]

Any updates on this story? Still thinking of you.

[sleestak]

So Jim died on 4/4, at 11:11 am.

He will be missed deeply. Going through his stuff we found some romance novels where he was the male model on the cover. And some of his ads for the strip show he toured with. He was a stud. He also appeared in two t.v. shows, Silk Stockings and Renegade. Plus he was an extra on Top Gun, the bar scene.

We tried to go to court before he died to get an ex parte petition for guardianship done. The judge and his staff went out of their way to make this impossible. We spoke with the legal aid staff at the courthouse about the process and did what they said. They said it should be straightforward. We did the paperwork, then more paperwork, 5 trips in total then the Judges assistant scheduled the hearing for the 12th even though we explained he wasn’t going to live that long. I contacted the state senator and she got me in touch with a lawyer who suggested the ex parte document with an emergency request to cancel the hearing on the 12th and have the ex parte document approved. The assistant, in a move Kafka would love, insisted that the emergency request to cancel the hearing on the 12 would be, taaaa daaaa, heard on the 12th. The attorney was quite shocked by this. Oh, and the Judges assistant was a total bitch. So a new goal is to do my best to ensure the judge isn’t reelected. Step one, call the local investigative reporter. Got a response and he is pretty interested in the absolutely insane process.

Luckily for us, the nurses apparently bent the rules a bit and we had the body released to the funeral home without the state getting involved and stopped a doctor from putting Jim on life support.

Today I took his two dogs to the vet and had them put to sleep. I held each one, told them they would be with Him soon and cried like mad. It has been a bad fucking day. Last night one of the twins woke up at like 1 a.m. I went in to get him so he wouldn’t wake his brother and tripped on the way out. The baby gate was shut, I raised my right arm, the one holding Duck (Donalds nickname) and landed on the bar. Managed to get about a 3 inch gash on my arm. If I hadn’t got my arm up…

At the vets, I told them Toby didn’t like other dogs. They said to bring him in. Chaos ensued. At lunch the Duck managed to get the insulin needle that was loaded for his brother and stuck himself. My wife freaked and I took Duck to the urgent care who said to monitor him. So we have been jacking the him up on sugar and testing his blood. That incident had my wife in full on freak out mode, understandably. We are both emotionally wrecked and tired. We are usually so careful, verging on paranoid, about the insulin.

Oh, and we got a letter for the hearing on the 12th. I am going to call the bitch at the courthouse in Monday and cancel. It is going to be hard to not lay into the bitch, I am fucking pissed.

Watching Jim slowly lose his mind as the cancer destroyed his brain has made me do some serious thinking. One of the things I decided was that I need to cut out negative things in my life. One of those things is the 'Dope. The bullshit to enlightenment ratio is just way out of wack. Too many people more interested in insulting those they disagree with instead of trying to understand what the other side actually thinks and why they think that way. Too many people who believe that they are morally superior to those that have different views. So much so that they cannot believe any other viewpoint can be held honestly, that those who disagree are automatically racists, or sexist, or hate the poor,etc. Not all Dopers are this way, but enough that the honest folks tend to get drowned out. For the record, I put this on the mods. They could change it, but they won’t.

So, after 14 or 15 years, I am outta here.

I miss my friend deeply. He was a good man. His passing made me realize that I want to better than I am.

There are a couple posters i want to stay in contact with, I will send PMs. If anyone wants to keep in touch, PM me.

Eric

[nearwildheaven]

Whether you see this or not, I’ll just say that you will be missed if you leave this site. Do what’s right in your life and that of your family.

[Sunny_Daze]

I am sorry to hear about your friend. The last few days sound terrible. My condolences and I hope you have better times to come.

[Beckdawrek]

I have to say you have had a rough go. Good luck, I hope things calm down for you and your family. Peace.

[WordMan]

PM sent. Best of luck as you focus on what’s important.

[puzzlegal]

Best wishes. What an awful ordeal.