Not to be a Downer

Well, the inevitable happened. Mr. R finally died.

He was about sixty-five or seventy and had uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension for years. He's always been unable or unwilling to come in and have us check on him.

Until he started having strokes and the small heart attack. Then, he was interesting in follow-up.  Unfortunately, he was already paralyzed on his left side. Several pressure ulcers developed on his feet and over the last twelve months or so, we had to cut off both legs above the knee. He returned with a large pressure sore over his sacrum. He stopped eating by himself and refused food and medicine while I had him in the hospital in the fall.

I urged his wife to let him go ("on to glory" as my older partner says regularly), but she insisted on a feeding tube. So that was placed. It bought us another three months. I finally got him out of the hospital in September (after a long battle with his insurance plan who didn't want to pay for a two hundred pound legless stroke victim with dementia and diabetes who wouldn't roll over on his own for his 100 pound wife to take care of him to be able to go to a nursing home).

I don't think he suffered much honestly because the truly interactive part of his brain left about two years ago. I would see glimmers of intelligence in the last six months, but mostly I think he checked out in August.

I need a beer.