Sept. 16, 2006 ~ Sad days
The phone rang innocently enough, but the news was far from benign. A dear friend's husband was in ICU on life support, and she was there alone. Could I come? I went. I stayed an hour or so, until family arrived and she could leave his side to go home and shower. She'd been with him all night.
He is diabetic, and for years has treated his illness with no respect. He laughed and ate what he wanted to, made jokes about his blood sugar. Now he is facing complications which I'm not sure he can overcome. Kidney failure, heart attacks, strokes, you name it. This last time was pretty bad. The ventilator, all the tubes. The panic in his eyes.
I have other diabetic friends, who also laugh about their illness and eat what they want. I wonder if they know what they are facing, down the line. I wonder if they think they're somehow immune, that it won't happen to them. What is it about food, certain food, that makes a person stick their head in the sand and say, "I don't care! I'll worry about it later!"
Today I saw "later." And I am sad.
When I was a child, my best friend's sister was diabetic. Sister was very emotionally troubled and often used her illness to get attention. Not eating properly, not monitoring her blood sugar or purposely not taking her insulin. That was my first glimpse of this particular disease. Sister wound up blind, in a nursing home, and in kidney failure. She got tired of being sick, exhausted from the dialysis, and decided to stop. She knew the consequences. She went home to die surrounded by her family, and two weeks later, she did. She was in her early twenties.
So it is hard for me to see people do this, this not taking care of themselves. This making a big joke of it. I almost can't watch. I almost can't stand it. I'm just sad.
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What else? It looks as if Son is going back to Iraq next month. I've already had to stop watching the news. News is sneaky, though. Today I was listening to nice, soothing classical music when they cut in to start talking about body counts and beheadings, and "click," that was the end of that program.
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We're still in a major drought. We water once a week but our yard is barely hanging on. It's not exactly what you'd call green, it's more like green-ish. The pasture, on the other hand, is brown with occasional touches of green, which are weeds.
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On a cheerier note, yesterday the florist arrived at work bearing a dozen white roses (my favorites).
"Who are those for?" I asked.
"You. Happy Birthday!"
"But, but... my birthday is next week! Next Friday!"
She wondered if they had made a mistake. I assured her that they had not, that Husband probably just wanted to surprise me. Which he certainly did.
Husband is such a sweetheart.
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