sutton041

There comes a time in most alcoholic’s journey when they get sick and it appears that the end is near. Questions come up about liver function, brain atrophy, and other such ailments. Usually the alcoholic is hospitalized and sometimes, comatose. Eventually, the question will come up that goes something like this, “Would you like to have hospice step in with his care?” What they are asking is do you want to prolong this life no matter what that life may be? Or, do you want to remove yourself from the life cycle and let nature take its course? It’s hard to say “Just let him/her die” no matter what the situation or who the alcoholic is in relationship to you. No one wants to feel that they’ve turned a blind eye and essentially killed a person as a result. Our basic instinct is to survive at all costs. Prolonging life is an inherent part of our being. To go against that can sometimes be impossible. I believe there are several questions that must be answered before making such a life-alteri...

I met Matt Paust way back in the 1980s when he was a reporter. Over the years, he has retired from the news biz and became an author of political satire novels. Matt has changed his direction to writing poetic rhetoric – poems of a sort. Sometimes when I read what he has written, his words strike a chord deep inside me. I feel he has found his words hidden away in some far corner of my heart or brain. The poem I’m posting today is a man talking about a woman but it could easily go the opposite way. For me, it explains how I feel how my life has gone with Riley. I’m sure many of you will relate. However, it’s like anything else, you will either like it or not. Seconds By Matt Paust You sit there, eyes on the floor where she just walked hell, you think, that's what it is, hell it's written on your face, you know, the hell she's made your life a hell, a living hell is what you're thinking The charm you thought she meant for you alone you found more commonplace than y...

I guess I’m just not good at killing people. I confess that I have, in the past, tried to ignore the pleas from Riley to “help him.” But when it comes right down to it – I just can’t do it. Riley has been in and out of hospice a lot over the past couple of years. But, I guess I’m also not a very good participant as the caregiver of someone in hospice. Or maybe, just maybe, hospice failed me. Early in January Riley lost his sense of where he was or who he was or when it was. He drifted into his imaginary world of submarines and destroyers where there is a constant battle with an imaginary enemy. This time the enemy was anyone he knew. His imaginary crew members were the only ones he trusted. All of this type of behavior usually points to a urinary tract infection. A round of Cipro was ordered but it had no effect at all. I kept asking for help from hospice, but they would only say that they didn’t know what was going on. They did say that whatever was happening had nothing to do with hi...

Riley had a saying that went something like “When you’re up to your arse in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your prime objective was to drain the swamp.” That’s exactly how I feel most of the time. With all the responsibilities of being Riley’s caretaker, sometimes I lose sight of my prime objective. I actually, I seldom can remember what is my prime objective. I seem to have many and they seem to change from day to day. Maybe my objectives are layered like a pyramid. We have received the official notification that Riley WILL NOT be entering the Veterans Hospital as a hospice patient. I don’t understand all the whys and wherefores except that his lab results are not showing any abnormalities in his liver function. Read more »

I often hear people telling me that I can’t possibly be a good caregiver for Riley because of all our past history. I’m told that it makes me hostile and that he would be better off in a nursing home. I don’t agree with any of that nonsense. I made a commitment to both my daughter and to Riley to “see this through” to the end. That’s what I intend to do. When Riley returned home after having been in a nursing home for a week so that I could get some respite, his health had greatly declined. I called the hospice office and told them I believed that Riley had a bladder infection and that I needed a prescription for something to treat it. It took more than two weeks for someone to come get a urine sample for testing. Then it took about five days for the lab to report that he did, in fact, have a urinary tract infection. We received the medication late the next afternoon. While we were waiting for the medication, Riley became increasingly sick. By the time I got the first dose into him, he...