8/23/07-new post

I’ve got a headache. I took some aleve, but that stuff doesn’t seem to work as well for me as other meds, but I think it’s all we have in the house, other than tylenol. The headache started awhile ago, I think brougth on by the way I was laying on my bed reading my Star Trek book, which I was able to finish.

My best friend Linda called me up tonight. She started off with an apology, because she “hadn’t told my best friend first” She tried to commit suicide last night. As she related the story, I didn’t see it so much as an attempt to end her life, but your standard “cry for help” Trust me…except for actually TRYING, I understand this much better than the average person would or could. Yesterday, she had called me, and since I’m not sure how much of this I’ve related in my diary, I’m going to start from the beginning. About two to three weeks ago, she had some surgery done on her underarm… I actually forget why. It would not heal, developed an infection, and she was just having TONS of trouble with it. So she kept going back to the dr, and he would treat it, repack it, and she would go home. This went on for maybe a week? I think. So they finally “dug a little deeper” so to speak, and found a tumor there, which they removed.
They sent the tumor in for analysis, thinking okay, doesn’t look like it’s spread, seems okay. However, it WASN’T ok. It WAS cancer… it had gotten into her lymph nodes, and SPREAD… like wildfire. Every day brought more bad news. And I do mean EVERY DAY. They had hope, the lab results always confirmed it was much worse than they thought. So they started giving her these shots..very painful ones at that…. ones that had to go into her hip BONE. The bone, mind you. Well, they did two of these shots, and she was just sick, and not getting any better… her blood count should be 30, is currently at 4.9. So after doing two of these shots, they then discovered that she had developed diabetes. Okay, the woman already has heart problems… cancer, now diabetes? Oh my God…. can life get any more unfair? So they couldn’t do any more shots because of the diabetes, and her blood sugar levels were just all over the place, down for the most part, not up. So she was told to stop taking the diabetes meds. In the meantime, they hoped that they’d gotten enough of the cancer that it might have been forced into remission. Well, it wasn’t, and that was her news yesterday. On top of all this, her husband has been distant, and staying at work late every night, instead of being at home with her, and that’s obviously getting to her, she’s been talking about it a LOT lately…well, we’ve been commisserating a little together, since Jerry has been quite the workaholic as well, hoping to get us out of this financial crisis…which I do NOT blame him for ( but I do resent that he doesn’t help out with the family or the house at all, not even paying the bills, which I hate paying, so they go unpaid til something gets shut off…literally.)
So last night she saw a bottle of pills, took them all with some dr pepper, and called her oldest son, and told him to make sure her youngest got through college. So he calls 911, and arrived home at the same time as the ambulance. Now, her husband was informed as well, but he stayed at work for another half an hour before heading out… to which she is very angry about. Now… I imagine he’s angry as well… I asked Jerry how HE would feel, and he said angry. Jerry and her husband are a lot alike, so I can imagine that would be his reaction as well. Her son is definitely angry with her. Okay… I can’t blame them. I can’t be angry with her… she’s been through too much, and I’ve personally been too suicidal myself to be angry with her… if I were to be angry with her, I’d have to be angry with myself for ever wanting that for myself… though wanting and doing ARE two different things, aren’t they?
I have, honestly, very little feeling about it all. I hate to see Linda suffer so. She’s kind of suffering from a major shut down of all systems, and one wonders, can she survive it? I do not think SHE feels she can. She wants to have hope, but what ray of light has she seen? It is as though God has it in for her. It’s like she got her son graduated, now it’s time to go? I don’t know… but we’ve kind of said between ourselves that it’s written that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, and Linda doesn’t feel that way at all… it does seem to be like He’s making an exception in her case…. there don’t seem to be any miracles to be had in this situation. She doesn’t feel ready to go. And yet, in a moment of desperation, she took a bottle of pills. So that is why I don’t think it was as much a suicide attempt as a cry for help… but still….. but still….
A part of me would want the same thing for myself… death. I wouldn’t want to be in that much pain, with my husband simply avoiding me, knowing I was probably just going to die in a few weeks… months at most… anyway. Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time with this one… I can relate to it just a little too well. I don’t know.

Anyway, there isn’t much I can do for her. She lives 45 minutes away, but it may as well be 2 hours. With Shabree in kindergarten and needing to be picked up at 11:20, I don’t have time in the morning to make a 45 minute trip to Stockton, just to have to turn around, what an hour later to come back? I’ll tell you what though, I was ready to go up there tonight, drag her out of her house and down to Lyon’s for a late night dinner/snack. Oh yes, I was. The only thing that stopped me was that her husband was coming home, and they were going to talk, which she greatly needed. Oh, you’re probably wondering what she’s doing home in the first place, since most places put people on a suicide watch…she managed to convince the attending physician that it would do more harm than good, and in looking over her chart, he believed her and discharged her. She says she won’t do it again. I’ve GOT to find a time to go up there, just me, and help her out in some little way. It drives me a little nuts that I can’t be there for her… Well, I can, over the phone, and I do my best. I felt a little bad… after our conversation yesterday, I was SUPPOSED to call her back, and I got involved in my book, and didn’t.

Hm…well, it’s 12:17, guess I’ll post.

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