nearly 39 hours...
for those of you that may bet on such morbid things, it only took me around 39 hours to post my thoughts on mortality.
my brother that passed away yesterday morning around 6am was only 45 or 46 years old. granted, he didn't always live his life as best as he could, but he lived it as he chose. he did drugs, varying from cigarettes and pot up to much stronger things. how recently, and of what, he was doing any of them, i don't know. he's had a colostomy bag since about the time of, or right before, kev and i got married, so at least 7 - 8 years. i don't know the specifics of why he had it, but he had it. said colostomy bag and all it's ensuing operations and/or illnesses and/or complications, had kept my brother in and out of jobs for the past i don't know how long, not that his record for keeping a job was a great one to begin with, but, because of his colostomy bag he could get medicare or some such thing but he'd been working when he died and was only a month shy of getting any/all insurances offered by his job (i.e.: health and life insurance). apparently he'd had some issues 2 weeks before he died, such as bleeding from his rectum and weaknesses in both his legs in the hip to knee region. his girlfriend took him to the emergency room at alvarado hospital for his issues and they ran a CT scan on him and had started mentioning something about surgery for something but, according to his girlfriend, when alvarado found out who his surgeon was they instantly changed tactics. alvarado told him he had a potassium deficiency, gave him 2 antibiotics and a painkiller and sent him home. the night before he died he started complaining of the same weakness in his legs, to the point where he couldn't even stand on his own or even go to the restroom during the night, according to his girlfriend. by morning one of his arms had gone weak and limp and he couldn't pull himself up when they tried to wake him up for work. it was at that point, so i'm told, that he fell over backwards and became unresponsive (i'd said earlier that there'd been trauma, but jr cleared that up for me this afternoon). the call i received from the youngest of my 3 older brothers (i'm the youngest and the only girl) was around 5:30am monday morning. he told me i needed to get to grossmont hospital cause rainie (my oldest brother) had just been rushed by ambulance cause his heart had stopped. i'd been up since 2am watching the news about the fires after only an hour of sleep. luckily i was fully dressed so i hopped in my truck and flew to grossmont hospital. liz was already waiting in the emergency room, she'd tried to go to work that morning at 6am as per usual, but i didn't see any of the rest of my family. liz told me to go tell the check-in lady that i was rainie's sister so they could put me with the rest of my family. it should've dawned on me that something was very wrong when the check-in lady escorted me to a private room where my second oldest brother, buckey (nickname) and rainie's girlfriend, diana, were already waiting, the youngest of the 3, jr, wasn't there yet. not more then a minute after i sat down with them and they'd had somewhat of a chance to tell me what had happened did the doctor walk in and inform us that rainie hadn't made it. buckey simply asked 'there wasn't anything that could be done?' while diana asked 'but they got his heart restarted in the ambulance, didn't they?'. answer from the doctor to both questions...'no.' apparent cause of death was a massive heart attack. whatever caused his heart to stop killed the cardiac muscle cause the doctor said that the cardiac muscle was dead and that's why nothing could be done. buckey's face clouded over and diana and i burst into tears. i tried to go and comfort her and our tears had slightly subsided when jr walked-in and i told him. he and i clung to each other for a moment as i passed him so i could go out and find liz who i'd had go back to my truck to get my forgotten cell phone. jr and i made phone calls as the sun finally rose. by 7:30am we'd finally had a chance to see rainie's body, say our farewells, and take our leave of each other as we headed back to our respective homes. kev never joined liz and i at the hospital as we were worried about the fire possibly turning towards our apartment, so i'd told him to stay home. jr called me this afternoon to let me know that i needed to go to the mortuary so i could sign the paperwork to have rainie cremated. he didn't have a will or anything so the mortuary requires that all the immediate family must agree on how the body is to be handled. i'll be doing that tomorrow. from there, it's waiting on getting him back so that we can then decide on how and where to say our final farewells.
my thoughts on mortality, it's more fragile then we think. as i sat with bated breath watching the fires begin to rage across san diego, my brother, my nearly middle-aged brother, was dying. with the loss of my mother only a year and 2 months ago this was an extreme blow to our family. never did we think we'd lose another so soon. especially when all of us thought that our parents were too young to die. our father was only 53 when he passed away in 1998, 9 days shy of his 54th birthday. our mother was only 60 when she passed away last august, 4 months shy of her 61st birthday. and now the oldest of us kids, rainie, at i believe 45 or 46 years old, only 2 months after his last birthday. what a shame and a scary thought because the reality of the situation is that rainie was my biological father. the people i called mother & father, were his parents, my paternal grandparents. they adopted me when i was only 3 days old and raised me to know rainie as my oldest brother and his brother's, buckey & jr, my biological uncles, as just 2 more brothers. i didn't even know until i was 12 years old that rainie was anything more to me then just one of my big brothers, but by then it was too late for me to see him as anything differently. he'd been absent most of my life, only to begin reappearing, sporadically, when i was in kindergarten. my biological mother is in hawaii. i didn't even get to meet her in person until i was a freshman in high school. she's a great lady, but still not someone i can call mom. why scary you ask? because i'd really like to know what caused his heart attack or what not as i don't know any of his or my biological mother's medical histories. i need to know if what caused this was mere environment or a fluke of genetics. rainie i'm sure didn't know the scope of his family's medical history either as he was technically another man's son adopted by our 'dad' when our 'mom' married him. and as for some sort of family medical history from my biological mother's side, think again. she only found out just a few years back, maybe as many as 5 years back, that she too was adopted, so she has no idea about any of her family's medical history either. as for me, i'm worried it's a fluke of genetics cause just this past may i found out that my triglycerides were quite high and that i needed to bring them down by changing my diet. if what actually cuased rainie's cardiac0whatever was a fluke of genetics rather then the end consequence of his years of extra-curricular drug use, then i need to know. not that i haven't started to change my diet, but because it may be something i can't control with only a simple change in diet, and that's something i'd like to know sooner rather than later.
well, now that i've rambled on long enough about that i guess i'll wrap it up. if you're reading this, i'm sorry it's long...i just felt it needed to be told in its entirety.
my brother that passed away yesterday morning around 6am was only 45 or 46 years old. granted, he didn't always live his life as best as he could, but he lived it as he chose. he did drugs, varying from cigarettes and pot up to much stronger things. how recently, and of what, he was doing any of them, i don't know. he's had a colostomy bag since about the time of, or right before, kev and i got married, so at least 7 - 8 years. i don't know the specifics of why he had it, but he had it. said colostomy bag and all it's ensuing operations and/or illnesses and/or complications, had kept my brother in and out of jobs for the past i don't know how long, not that his record for keeping a job was a great one to begin with, but, because of his colostomy bag he could get medicare or some such thing but he'd been working when he died and was only a month shy of getting any/all insurances offered by his job (i.e.: health and life insurance). apparently he'd had some issues 2 weeks before he died, such as bleeding from his rectum and weaknesses in both his legs in the hip to knee region. his girlfriend took him to the emergency room at alvarado hospital for his issues and they ran a CT scan on him and had started mentioning something about surgery for something but, according to his girlfriend, when alvarado found out who his surgeon was they instantly changed tactics. alvarado told him he had a potassium deficiency, gave him 2 antibiotics and a painkiller and sent him home. the night before he died he started complaining of the same weakness in his legs, to the point where he couldn't even stand on his own or even go to the restroom during the night, according to his girlfriend. by morning one of his arms had gone weak and limp and he couldn't pull himself up when they tried to wake him up for work. it was at that point, so i'm told, that he fell over backwards and became unresponsive (i'd said earlier that there'd been trauma, but jr cleared that up for me this afternoon). the call i received from the youngest of my 3 older brothers (i'm the youngest and the only girl) was around 5:30am monday morning. he told me i needed to get to grossmont hospital cause rainie (my oldest brother) had just been rushed by ambulance cause his heart had stopped. i'd been up since 2am watching the news about the fires after only an hour of sleep. luckily i was fully dressed so i hopped in my truck and flew to grossmont hospital. liz was already waiting in the emergency room, she'd tried to go to work that morning at 6am as per usual, but i didn't see any of the rest of my family. liz told me to go tell the check-in lady that i was rainie's sister so they could put me with the rest of my family. it should've dawned on me that something was very wrong when the check-in lady escorted me to a private room where my second oldest brother, buckey (nickname) and rainie's girlfriend, diana, were already waiting, the youngest of the 3, jr, wasn't there yet. not more then a minute after i sat down with them and they'd had somewhat of a chance to tell me what had happened did the doctor walk in and inform us that rainie hadn't made it. buckey simply asked 'there wasn't anything that could be done?' while diana asked 'but they got his heart restarted in the ambulance, didn't they?'. answer from the doctor to both questions...'no.' apparent cause of death was a massive heart attack. whatever caused his heart to stop killed the cardiac muscle cause the doctor said that the cardiac muscle was dead and that's why nothing could be done. buckey's face clouded over and diana and i burst into tears. i tried to go and comfort her and our tears had slightly subsided when jr walked-in and i told him. he and i clung to each other for a moment as i passed him so i could go out and find liz who i'd had go back to my truck to get my forgotten cell phone. jr and i made phone calls as the sun finally rose. by 7:30am we'd finally had a chance to see rainie's body, say our farewells, and take our leave of each other as we headed back to our respective homes. kev never joined liz and i at the hospital as we were worried about the fire possibly turning towards our apartment, so i'd told him to stay home. jr called me this afternoon to let me know that i needed to go to the mortuary so i could sign the paperwork to have rainie cremated. he didn't have a will or anything so the mortuary requires that all the immediate family must agree on how the body is to be handled. i'll be doing that tomorrow. from there, it's waiting on getting him back so that we can then decide on how and where to say our final farewells.
my thoughts on mortality, it's more fragile then we think. as i sat with bated breath watching the fires begin to rage across san diego, my brother, my nearly middle-aged brother, was dying. with the loss of my mother only a year and 2 months ago this was an extreme blow to our family. never did we think we'd lose another so soon. especially when all of us thought that our parents were too young to die. our father was only 53 when he passed away in 1998, 9 days shy of his 54th birthday. our mother was only 60 when she passed away last august, 4 months shy of her 61st birthday. and now the oldest of us kids, rainie, at i believe 45 or 46 years old, only 2 months after his last birthday. what a shame and a scary thought because the reality of the situation is that rainie was my biological father. the people i called mother & father, were his parents, my paternal grandparents. they adopted me when i was only 3 days old and raised me to know rainie as my oldest brother and his brother's, buckey & jr, my biological uncles, as just 2 more brothers. i didn't even know until i was 12 years old that rainie was anything more to me then just one of my big brothers, but by then it was too late for me to see him as anything differently. he'd been absent most of my life, only to begin reappearing, sporadically, when i was in kindergarten. my biological mother is in hawaii. i didn't even get to meet her in person until i was a freshman in high school. she's a great lady, but still not someone i can call mom. why scary you ask? because i'd really like to know what caused his heart attack or what not as i don't know any of his or my biological mother's medical histories. i need to know if what caused this was mere environment or a fluke of genetics. rainie i'm sure didn't know the scope of his family's medical history either as he was technically another man's son adopted by our 'dad' when our 'mom' married him. and as for some sort of family medical history from my biological mother's side, think again. she only found out just a few years back, maybe as many as 5 years back, that she too was adopted, so she has no idea about any of her family's medical history either. as for me, i'm worried it's a fluke of genetics cause just this past may i found out that my triglycerides were quite high and that i needed to bring them down by changing my diet. if what actually cuased rainie's cardiac0whatever was a fluke of genetics rather then the end consequence of his years of extra-curricular drug use, then i need to know. not that i haven't started to change my diet, but because it may be something i can't control with only a simple change in diet, and that's something i'd like to know sooner rather than later.
well, now that i've rambled on long enough about that i guess i'll wrap it up. if you're reading this, i'm sorry it's long...i just felt it needed to be told in its entirety.