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that cursed me with an interesting life . . .
Shortly after most offices opened on the west coast this morning I got a call.
"Hello, I'm looking for Kevin, uhm," then she bobbled my last name.
I identified myself prepared to tell her I wasn't interested, when she asked if I was related to, then she named my brother.
Not sure where to go from there, and not having heard from him in a couple months I said I was. She then asked me if he was competent.
"Uhm, err, uhh, what do you mean?"
"Can he make decisions for himself?"
"Bad ones usually, but yes."
"Oh, uhm, are you his next of kin?"
"Depends on how you define it, he has two ex-wives who most likely don't count, an 18 year old daughter in her second semester of college, our mother, and a few other siblings. Is he okay."
silence.
"Is he alive?"
"Oh yes, he is alive. He's just kind of confused."
We then had a long talk about what that meant. He is in the hospital, he isn't coherent. He's having a hard time answering basic questions.
****.
I get his room number, call mom and let her know there is a problem and I'll get back to her later, but have all his ID paperwork handy for later.
I go down to the hospital, find my brother, he's down at least 20 pounds, but all the body parts are there. I do a long series of questions, he can't answer most of them. I ask him if he knows where he is.
"The Hospital"
Which hospital?
"I don't know?"
I tell him where he is
"Okay"
Then I ask again,
"I don't know."
I repeat this with a lot of other questions, give him the answer then ask him the question. He has no short term memory.
I go out and ask the nurse what kind of meds he is on. "an anti-convulsant, he's had the DTs and he's just gotten well enough we could take the restraints off. Then all of the sudden the HIPPA road block goes up. Getting any of the information starts to be like pulling teeth.
I leave, not answering a lot of questions they were asking when they refused to answer my questions. He wasn't going anywhere.
I go over to his house. Filthy, moldy stuff in the kitchen, empty vodka bottles. No empty beer bottles, he's a huge beer drinker, only touches the hard stuff during fits of depression. I go talk to the next door neighbor, yeah, he's been trying to get my brother to cut down on the vodka, go back to the beer. He tells me my brother has been going through Vodka like water. He knows getting the idiot to stop drinking completely is beyond his ability, so he offers beer as a medium point. He means well, he just isn't any good at talking my brother out of doing what he wants to do.
I pick up a couple bills I'll probably end up paying anyway and go looking for his old beat up Mercedes, he told me he had hit a curb near where he lives and asked me to get the neighbor to bring it back to his place. This turns out to be a fruitless task, I don't find out why until later.
I went back to the Hospital and finally find a cooperative nurse who will give me some information, Yes, he's been here since Sunday, he was brought in as the result of a 911 call, police sent him here in an ambulance. It all starts to click. The man with no income had bought a car, driven drunk, crashed the car, received his sixth or seventh DUI and gone to the hospital. I go back to his room and talk to him, still no short term memory, I haven't nailed it down but it seems to be at least the last six months wiped, and he isn't able to focus on anything except "I want to go home."
Can't send you home, its not safe, you're still pretty far out of it. They will be sending you to a skilled nursing facility, then hopefully into rehab.
"Tell them I'm going home with you."
Nope, I'm not lying to them, I'm not taking you in, I want you to be in a safe skilled nursing facility until they find out how badly and how permanently damaged you are.
"Blank look"
Dude, you've truly screwed yourself over this time, you aren't coherent, you can't answer questions.
"Blank, but slightly puzzled look."
How long have you been here?
"Three weeks."
Five days, really, just five days. Where is your car?
"Around the corner."
Around the corner from where?
"Around the corner."
"From here, from the hospital?"
"No, around the corner from my house, go tell Miguel to get it before it is towed."
"Okay, we'll get it if we can find it, where are your keys?
"I don't know" (probably the best answer he's given so far. We never find the keys.)
"I have to go sign up for DUI classes, I can't be here."
"Medical necessity, they will understand, the important thing right now is for you to stay here or somewhere else people can take care of you and get better."
"I'll get in trouble if I don't go sign up for DUI classes, and I need to go pay my bills."
(Not said but seriously thought: Using what for money jackass, you get your small monthly benefit for booze and haven't paid you bills in months.)
To me, it looks like some serious brain damage, fried by 30 plus years of alcohol abuse and sped up recently by the Vodka, plus any impact from the accident. Mr I never did Meth is already down a mouthful of teeth and looks ten years older then me, he's a year and a half younger.
Had to relay that to my mother, who is now figuring when she can get up here to take care of him, I tried to tell her she didn't have the skills, she's not listening (she's 81 and stubborn and has very selective hearing.)
Later on I talked to my sister, she didn't gloat, which was what I expected, but was trying to figure out how to get mom calmed down.
No clue as to what happens next.
Just want to hulk out, turn green and go smash stuff.
Thanks for listening. I'll fix the punctuation tomorrow.
(The car has almost certainly been towed to impound, it isn't worth enough with the damaged front wheel for me to go bail it out.)
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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin
"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones
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. I hope you are able to find a rehab for him and he chooses to stop drinking. It's a hard thing to get them to change.
