Watching Someone You Love Slowly Destroy Themselves

There is one event in my life that I don't like to talk about, I avoid it and I think it's because I have been in denial for a long time now. I find I am more succinct and confident when I write, given my partial anonymity here on Steemit I think I am comfortable talking about it now.

The passing of my mother on October 11, 2013.

I come from a large family of six, I have five sisters all mostly two years apart in age and I am the oldest (and only boy, kind of). Few people have had harder lives than my parents both have, it really makes me wonder how they were able to cope for so long and support a family of six.

My parents met quite young, and while they were engaged they never got around to getting married because they couldn't afford it and well, kids came into the picture before they had the opportunity anyway.

From the beginning, their relationship was marred with despair and loss. My mother has a rare genetic mutation that makes it difficult for her to have a healthy boy, the percentage of having a healthy boy is relatively low at 25%. This cruel gene mutation doesn't prevent you carrying a boy to full-term, in-fact it's the opposite. Before I was born, my parents unsuccessfully had two boys called: Ashley and Aaron.

In both cases, my mother carried Ashley and Aaron to full-term and they died at birth. In the case of Aaron, he survived the longest (a couple of days) before my parents were tasked with turning off his life support. Can you imagine carrying life inside of you for 9 months only to have it taken away? My wife had a miscarriage at 8 weeks (we didn't even know the sex) and we cried for a few solid days afterwards.

I don't know if it was the loss that did it, but at some stage in her life, my mother began to drink. She would previously grab a drink if she was out somewhere socially (like most), but she started drinking at home every day and her poison of choice was cask wine (the kind that comes in a box).

If it wasn't the loss of two full-term babies shortly after birth, maybe it was my estranged brother who was taken by the state and put into custody at a young age. I have a brother called Joshua who is still alive but lives a complicated life suffering from some rare genetic disorder (the gene my mother carries), which has seen him in and out of the hospital his entire life.

At around age 2, the state took custody of Joshua and placed him into foster care. Hospital staff raised concerns that my parents who had already had five kids (including me) wouldn't be able to provide Joshua with the care he needed. My parents were at the hospital every single day, my dad actually lost his job because he would spend every moment he could up at the hospital with Joshua.

There was also a complication that vital medication he needed would run into the hundreds of thousands per year, a cost my parents wouldn't be able to afford. At the time, this medication wasn't subsidised by the Australian government either. And the cruel reality of the situation is, his foster carer wouldn't be able to afford it either, but she was entitled to subsidised medication for fostering him. Go figure.

Over the years my parents fought for custody of him again. My dad had started his own business and was doing quite well, he felt that they could afford to provide the care and medication he needed. But the foster carer blocked every attempt my parents ever made to get custody again, and they spent tens of thousands on lawyer fees until their lawyer said to them, "I don't think we can win this. We can keep fighting, but I don't think we can win"

Throughout all of this, my mother was still drinking her cask wine. She was only drinking it in the evenings, but she would get quite drunk and pass out at the kitchen table almost every night. To her credit, she still somehow functioned as a human being and cooked dinner most nights, driving us to school/picking us up. It wouldn't be until her death I would discover there is a term for this: high-functioning alcoholism.

If you're a high-functioning alcoholic, it means you drink excessively and yet somehow manage to maintain friendships, excel at your job/life and appear as a normal human being. The problem with high-functioning alcoholism is that while it might take years, it eventually catches up with you.

Growing up I knew my mother drank and I somewhat understood why she did it, but because she was a mostly functioning person, I never thought much about it all. It actually tears me apart knowing I watched my mother slowly kill herself over the course of my childhood and teenage years, and I never did anything about it.

When my mother fell pregnant later in life (in her 40's) with my 14-year-old sister, she drank throughout the entire pregnancy. But you want to know what it crazy? My mother was so thin, nobody even noticed she was pregnant and she never even found out herself until 6 months into the pregnancy. I believe this last pregnancy was what tipped her over the edge.

While my sister had no health issues and fortunately, the alcoholism didn't affect my sister, my mother suffered from some serious depression during the pregnancy and after. It's common to have post-natal depression, but my mother one night attempted to kill herself by running out onto the main road, my dad stopped her, fortunately. This was the only attempt she ever made (to my knowledge).

After the pregnancy, my mother was a different person. She was stubborn and refused to see a doctor, I remember my dad begging her to see someone and she wouldn't. My dad would threaten to have her committed to a mental hospital (but he would never do that). She would start drinking around lunchtime until the evening when she would pass out in her usual style, at the kitchen table or bench.

It would be a further nine years before her eventual passing in 2013 after giving birth in 2004. In the lead up to her death, the signs were there that her health was starting to take a turn for the worse. She refused to see a doctor, I started to get more insistent on her seeing a doctor.

It started out with her not being steady on her feet. She would walk and then you would hear her collapse and fall to the ground or fall and lean into a wall. At first, we all assumed she was just drunk, but it became apparent she was weak.

We wouldn't find out until after her death that she would call up my aunty (my dad's sister) and confess to her that she was afraid of dying, this was months before her passing. And when I heard that, it broke me and continues to break me. Knowing she was scared, suffering, and knew she was sick and didn't get treatment for it, there are no words. There are just no words.

A week before she passed away, she finally let me take her to see a doctor. After I explained how worried we all were, she caved in and allowed me to drive her. I don't know if I was more persuasive or if she knew she was dying, but it was too late to save her.

The doctor took her blood pressure, it was low and explained why she would fall over occasionally. He then hooked her up to an electrocardiogram machine (EKG) to measure her heart, and the doctor had a very panicked look on his face. I will never forget the look that he had, it was a serious concern.

He immediately printed out a referral and put it into a folder, he said to my mother, "You need to get to the hospital right now" it was so serious he was going to call an ambulance, but my mother insisted she wanted to go pack a bag first and I would drive her. I knew she was going to try and get out of going, but I was shaken by the doctor's reaction I wasn't going to let that happen.

Sure enough, we got back to the house and she tried avoiding the trip saying she was fine, she wasn't fine. It was only after I threatened to call her an ambulance she complied, she packed a bag and my dad ended up driving her to the hospital. When we got there, they read the referral and she was instantly rushed to the emergency ward.

The fact she was in the emergency ward under constant observation really weighed down on everyone, the gravity of her health and drinking problem had really hit everyone. In that kind of situation, you're experiencing adrenaline, panic, anxiety and guilt. Your mind starts racing with thoughts, you should have done something sooner, how could you let her get like this?

The first discovery they made was she was incredibly dehydrated. It turns out my mother was most likely in a very prolonged state of dehydration, to the point where it affected her blood pressure. The emergency doctor tending to her said, "this is the kind of dehydration you would expect to see in someone who has been lost out in the desert for a day or two with no access to water, it's quite serious"

They had her on continuous saline drips. But one of the problems they had was she was so dehydrated and malnourished, her veins had actually shrunk. I had never heard of this happening before, but apparently, your veins can shrink and this made it a very difficult task for them to do the IV lines.

Over the course of the three days, she was in the hospital, she was on continuous IV drips and not just one, she had 4 IV lines go into her body trying to hydrate her. One in each arm and they had one in each leg as well. I didn't even know this was possible or a thing, I assume it was all saline IV lines, possibly other things were being pumped into her.

After being in the emergency ward for 24 hours, they moved her to her own room. For the two days, she was in that room, I got a glimpse at my mothers former self. She was sober, she was incredibly aware and she seemed at peace, she was smiling and easy to conversate with.

I like to think in her final days, she was filled with the hope she would be okay and nothing the doctors said to us made us doubt that. She appeared to be getting better.

The damage to her liver was quite extensive, she had quite advanced cirrhosis of the liver (effectively her liver was dying). She seemed like she might recover, but the complications from the cirrhosis would have meant that her quality of life would seriously be impacted. It was also causing other issues with her body.

The night before she passed away my dad recalls a phone call he had with my mother and it seems to think she knew that maybe she was going to die. Do people who are about to die know it's going to happen, like a sixth sense or feeling? Because my dad said she was insistent that he come up in the morning and visit her. He also said when the call ended that she said something to him that she hadn't said in years.

I love you.

These were the final words that my father heard from my mother before a 3 am wake-up call from the hospital would all rise us from our beds and bring us to the hospital. She didn't make it until the morning to see my father.

I was in denial when the call came through. The hospital never said she passed away, all they said was there is an emergency and that everyone needs to get up to the hospital now. I would find this out when I arrived, that they were attempting to revive her when they made the call.

When I got to the hospital, the thought my mother was dead didn't even cross my mind. I came through the hospital doors and got to the counter, my aunt saw me (who was already there) and I said to her, "Is mum okay?" and I'll never forget what she said, "She's gone mate, she passed away" - still, the reality of the situation had yet to set in. I remember saying, "what" quite a few times.

And then when we got to the ward before I saw her they warned us that CPR is quite violent and not like what you see on TV. That teeth and bones are usually broken, bruising and various medical apparatus still present. Still, I was in denial.

Then I saw her. Fuck, this is a moment that will haunt me forever.

She laid there still with a plastic tube coming out of her mouth that is used when they're trying to incubate you using the bulb you squeeze air in and out of someone's lungs. Two of her front teeth were broken, her mouth was bleeding. They tried to warn us this is what CPR is usually like, but until you experience it for yourself, nothing can prepare you for that.

One of the nurses apologised for the state she was in, including the tube sticking out of her mouth. The protocol is when someone passes away and they were being resuscitated, that all equipment used is not to be removed in case there was incompetence from one or more staff requiring an investigation.

I was inconsolable. I can't remember the last time I had cried, let alone be upset by anything and this shattered me. I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was panicking, my chest was constricting and everyone else was balling their eyes out. I am crying as I type this, because to this day nothing has made me cry or upset me like that, five years on and it still hurts.

We were told we could spend as much time as we wanted with her. And we were also told the doctor who was present when she passed away would come and answer questions about what happened in an hour or so.

The doctor finally arrived and he explained her body started to shut down, it had given up. They said during a routine check, a nurse had noticed she was incoherent about 2:30 am and not really with it. She wasn't hooked up to any machines that monitored her condition or anything, perhaps her state was just as much a surprise to the doctors as it was to us.

As soon as they noticed the state she was in, they rushed her into the treatment area and realised she was dying. Her heart was giving up, her organs were shutting down. They said they worked on her for over 30 minutes before they made the call.

I think the detoxing from alcohol probably put a strain on her body that it couldn't handle. To my knowledge, they didn't give her anything to help ease her off alcohol, so I believe that this coupled with the dehydration and sad state of her liver was the contributing factor.

I did ask the doctor, but he replied that there was nothing they could have done to save her. Her body was in a bad state beyond repair, and her hospital visit was just poor timing. Her quality of life for a brief moment in time was better than it had been for years. In her final moments, she was more clear-headed than ever.

My then girlfriend (and now wife) then started to experience pain in her abdomen. I didn't know what was going on, but she had to sit down because the pain was so severe. They didn't have someone who could see her, and everyone was asking, "are you pregnant?" thinking the pain might be due to pregnancy.

I ended up taking her to the doctor nearby and the doctor suspected appendicitis, we got a referral to a different hospital because I refused to set foot back into the hospital my mother lay lifeless in.

When we got there, it turned out my wife had serious appendicitis (as in rupture was very possible) and an hour after arriving she was being prepped for surgery. She had to stay in the hospital for two days and the hospital wouldn't allow me to sleep there with her, so I headed home and was alone for two days.

My wife felt incredibly guilty, she knew I was hurting and couldn't be there for me. I understood I was still in shock anyway because I still hadn't accepted the fact my mother was dead and she wasn't coming back. I needed those two days to myself, I probably wouldn't have been a nice person to be around.

My father was then interviewed by the police. Given the circumstances, the police wanted to know how someone could get so bad and why nobody had tried to get her help. Fortunately, my dad had proof that he had made numerous attempts to get her help (many I didn't know about). He wasn't in trouble, they just wanted to make sure that she wasn't intentionally being enabled and died as a result.

My mother's death certificate cause of death reads chronic alcoholism. And I know I shouldn't, but when people ask how my mother died, I am too ashamed to say it was chronic alcoholism. I just say she died from health complications, but she died from her alcohol addiction. The shame isn't she slowly killed herself, the shame comes from the guilt that I feel like I could have done more to save her.

If you know someone with a drinking problem, maybe a parent, loved one or friend, don't give up on them. You might not be able to save them from themselves, it might be too late, but even trying to save them is better than being complicit.

I still feel guilt knowing my mother died from her drinking problem and maybe I could have done something about it. It has taken years and it's a slow process, but I am learning to accept that I wasn't the only one who tried saving her, ultimately it was her call to get help and we tried our best.

I know her death isn't my fault, but it doesn't make me feel any better saying that.

Image credit Pixabay.