Holidays

Thanksgiving went well at the rehab center.  And it also went well here in Colorado.

On Black Friday I went to the Subaru dealer and ended up buying a 2018 Subaru CrossTrek (in Sunshine Orange) -- my mid-to-late-life-crisis car.  It is on order and if I'm lucky it will be here by Dec. 20th, in time to drive to St. Louis.  I can't remember the last time I had a jazzy car, so this is exciting.  Here's what it will look like:

I think Detox is over

Well, when the 96 hours was over, they said he needed more time, so I think he's still in detox and may get released to a regular room tomorrow.  He seems to be doing really well.  Tricia has been to see him and my sister has been there, too.  They are planning to have Thanksgiving dinner with him in the Center's cafeteria -- if it is allowed.  I'm not going -- I'll stay here in Colorado with my babies.

He's lost a ton of weight (maybe about 35 pounds) and needed some new clothes.  He says he is determined to make this work.  And his wife has been very supportive, which has meant a lot to him.

I had an appointment today with my cardiologist to "interrogate" the pacemaker and all is good in that department.  Still 5-1/2 years left on the battery.

When I had that bout of walking pneumonia I was coughing constantly and wondered if all that chest "movement" would affect the wires of the pacemaker so I asked the cardiologist today and he said that after a year and a half, those wires weren't going anywhere.  Good to know.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!!

Rehab Revisited

Yesterday morning, after spending the night with his wife giving him heck and after my sister telling him she couldn't do this any more, he agreed to go into rehab.

No one wanted to let that window of opportunity go by, so my sister dropped everything and picked him up and drove him the 200 miles to St. Louis.  Obviously, it wasn't all as easy as this single sentence indicates, but the end result is that he agreed to go.

They got to the rehab center in St. Louis around 6:00 or 7:00 and then the intake process took about 4 hours.

So he is now in rehab!!!!!  He has to be kept isolated for 96 hours and then he can get and make phone calls.

The Center indicated that it would probably be a 30-day stay, but I sure hope they keep him longer than that.  The last 30-day stay (at a different rehab center) didn't "take" -- but then, he didn't really put his heart into the last one and he seems to be more motivated this time.

So that's the short version of today's story.  If you pray, please include him in your prayers. And at any rate, keep him in your thoughts.

Detox

I've really lost track of the last few days.  But the bottom line is that this morning his wife called me and handed my brother the phone.  He was mumbling so bad I couldn't understand him.  So we hung up.  His wife called back and said, "He agreed to go to detox -- here, talk to your brother."

So she handed him the phone again and he mumbled but he did say he would go to detox.  I asked his wife if she would take him and she said yes.  So he said he would put his jeans on.

So she took him to the Ozark Medical Center and then called my sister and said, "You need to get over here, I have other things to do."  ????!!!!!!!! (good grief).  So my sister rushed to the hospital (which I think was about 35 miles).  If my brother's wife couldn't see this thing through, she shouldn't have gotten it started.

So at the ER, they ran tests and since they couldn't find any sort of illness they said they couldn't keep him, they were going to release him.  We spent 4 or 5 hours trying to find a rehab center that would take him and it turns out that they won't accept him unless he signs himself in and he absolutely refuses to do that.

The lady at the rehab center told us that alcoholics usually won't go into rehab voluntarily until they hit rock bottom and no longer have any lifelines.  My sister has been checking in on him several times a day and doing things for him, etc., and we were told that needed to stop.  He needs to know that he is on his own.

This is going to be really tough, not checking on him and not knowing if he is dead or alive, but I think we have all agreed that it has to be that way.  So she will be bringing him back from the hospital tonight (unless by some miracle he agrees to be taken to the rehab center in St. Louis).

Emotional.  Stay tuned for the next episode.

Update

My brother agreed to let himself be  taken to hospital today to detox -- again.  And he has sort of agreed to go into rehab.  As you can imagine, there's a lot of stuff going on leading up to this, but I'll let that go for now.  We are holding our breaths.  More later.

My brother

Well, my brother made it through one week of work and then this week he went to work drunk and they fired him.  This made him angry and he feels like he is being singled out and mistreated, etc.

His wife -- who by now is understandably unbelievably frazzled and confused, etc. -- has kept trying to rebuild their relationship but it just hasn't worked.  She still says she is moving out of the house, but I guess that could go either way.  She probably needs to take some time and organize her thoughts about her own future.

We are going to try to get COBRA insurance for him so he at least will have coverage in the coming months for those inevitable times when he passes out and/or falls.  We want to help him but I think we've reached the point where there is not much else we can do.  He refuses rehab.  In spite of my sister stocking his refrigerator with food that he likes (and also providing some Boost), he has pretty much stopped eating and has lost about 30 pounds in the past month or so.

He did agree to see a therapist and that appointment is set for next Friday, but I wouldn't put any bets on him actually letting us take him when the time comes.

I'm still reeling from all of this.  Why didn't we see this coming?  He and his wife visited me for a few days in Denver a year ago and there was absolutely no sign of any drinking.  It is mind boggling.