I’ll call him Z, 'cause, well, that’s what I call him.
Really sweet guy, fifty-somethingish. On those extremely rare occasions when I’m asked if there’s anyone in particular I want to be on a crew with, he’s always my first choice. 'Course, he doesn’t believe it when the pit boss tells him this…
Well, a couple of weeks ago he started having pain in his gut. He told me that he hadn’t passed gas in three or four days. Well, yesterday, I found out gas wasn’t the only thing he wasn’t passing. For, like two weeks.
Me and a couple of other dealers have been nudzhing him to go see a doctor, but he won’t do it. He says he doesn’t care if he ends up in a coma or dead, what will the doctor do, fix him up so he can come back to work at a job he hates?
I don’t know what to do. I’m thinking about talking to the boss, and maybe talking to the H.R. director, by the way, and maybe trying to do an intervention type thing, but I just don’t know if they’d go for it.
Thea, I what a good friend you make! Your co-worker is lucky.
That said, once a person is an adult and is not incapacitated by a disfunctional or intoxicated brain, there is not much that we can do toward making that person do something against her or his will.
On the other hand, I think that a human life is more important than social rules and I would do anything that I could to convince him to see a doctor. I would even rat him out to the boss and risk losing his friendship. Have you considered bribery? Or possibly making a bet about what the problem is?
Your friend may be having other problems too – since he advocates dying rather than seeing a doctor. It sounds like he is desperate.
Sometimes we do the best that we can and then we have to let go.
I hope that good health soon returns to your friend. But the day it does, you may want to keep your distance.
Do something! A guy I work with had a problem that seems superficially similar to your friends, and the pain of the trapped gas in his intestine eventually caused him to have a heart attack. IANAD, and I am repeating this second hand, and I guess you don’t really need to be told that it’s very important that he see a doctor, but . . . it’s very important that he see a doctor!
If he’s really serious about preferring death to going back to work, well, that’s a whole 'nother thing.
Does he have any family that you could appeal to? Any friends outside of work?
Podkayne, none that I know of. We really don’t socialize outside the workplace, and I think most of the people he’s really tight with are either coworkers or former coworkers, and I think most of his family lives in New England. I know the pit boss is aware of the potential seriousness of the situation, and his illness is the subject of quite a bit of talk around the pit. I think he knows we’re all worried about him, but he just doesn’t care enough about himself to do anything about his health. No, he’s not an alcoholic or a druggie, but he is a heavy smoker (and this on top of the pack a day of secondhand smoke we all suck in on the game). Also, he eats the worst imaginable diet- really high fat, lots of red meat, I think mashed potatoes are about the only vegetable he eats.
Mostly, I think he’s just prematurely old and worn out- happens to a lot of people in this business, and craps dealers are the worst- they tend to get involved in drugs and heavy drinking (dealing a jammed-up craps game is a phenomenal rush, I think that when the adrenaline wears off, they want to maintain the high), and when they’re older, they eventually slow down or stop with the drugs and the drinking, but the damage is already done to their bodies and minds, and they do tend to burn out.
I’m thinking if a few dealers who are reasonably tight with Z, plus maybe the pit boss all gang up on him, maybe we can talk some sense into him.
On the other hand, he may just go to his grave pissed off at us.
One of the boxmen told me about it while we were standing by the time clock waiting for it to be time to punch in. I just said, “Oh, my God…”, and he said, “Well, he wouldn’t go see a doctor.” Then I ran into one of the other craps dealers, and he told me Z had died. I said, “Yeah, I know.” and he said, “Well, he wouldn’t go see a doctor.” Then I got to the pit, signed in, and the pit boss, told me…
I don’t know whether to be sad or pissed off. I’m generally leaning toward pissed off. Z didn’t have to die. If he would have gone to see a doctor, taken better care of his body…
Do you consider yourself Christian? I seem to have noticed that self-described Christians often have an innate abhorance of the idea of accepting death and/or suicide.
What a shock that must have been. Does anyone know what happened? Obviously something was wrong, but fatal?
And I agree with JavaMaven1, “just for giggles”, happyheathen, there’s nothing in the OP (or anywhere else in the topic for that matter) that would make your comments remotely relevant or appropriate.
'sokay, I think I undetstand where the heathenish one is coming from.
Actually, I’m a practicing Byzantine Catholic. Don’t really have so much a problem with the actual death, when it’s time, you go- BTW, I think Catholics, and in particular Eastern Rite Catholics (and I will lump the Orthodox into this category, because, hey, we still love them" have a bit easier time handling death than our Protestant bretheren because the Catholic Chruch has more, um, mechanisms in place to help the faithful deal- masses/liturgies for the dead, and in the Eastern church, there are memorial prayers during the first year and decent intervals. Really helps with the grief.
But yeah, I do have a real problem with the suicide part of it. Z knew we were all worried about him, and he still wouldn’t take care of himself. I feel like he didn’t care enough about us (well, me in particular, yeah, I’m kind of selfish that way) to take care of himself and stick around.
I’m going to call my priest today and ask about having a liturgy said for him. He was of Polish extraction, which means that he was very likely a baptized Catholic, and even if he wasn’t, Fr. Francis is fond of saying that God has people outside the Church, and not all the people in the Church are God’s. Also, sometimes I get the feeling that he thinks that anyone who inspired Love and Togetherness is Catholic by default, or at least that they belonged to God. He gave a parishoner’s father, who was a seriously lapsed Mormon, a Catholic funeral on the grounds that if he was so accepting of his son’s conversion, and was also a very sweet guy, he was Catholic.
I can understand anger and depression driving a person to this end.
Tough to put in perspective but be consoled that you are a good people and did what you could. Most would not have cared. You did. Be glad you are who you are.
