Cruise Director
07-20-2004, 01:05 AM
I haven't had a beer in 30 months. That's a long time. I don't really think I had a problem, I never had a D.U.I., never blacked out, never woke up somewhere I didn't know I was. But I WAS good at it. I revelled in the sport of social beer drinking. I never really drank at home but I could knock down 3 or 4 pitchers of beer by myself a few times per week at the local watering hole. I was not A, but THE social butterfly.
So why would I give that up? Well, I'll tell you. Most of my friends outside of the computer are stumped to this day as to why I walked out of a bar in January of 2002 and haven't had a drink since. I have told a few that I am really close to and I may have told you folks here at the Tribe. But for the most part I have enjoyed the rumors and chatter of the sewing circle that is the bar life. I have heard I have a disease (probably the liver) that I got religeous and that I did it for the health reasons. The last, I can say, would have been the best as I have enjoyed the weight I have dropped but it isn't the real reason why I gave up the title of beer drinking king.
There is a knock on my door at 3:30 in the morning. My girlfriend wakes me up and I go to see who is there. Probably a buddy needing a place to crash for the night. Turns out it's my step-mom. She has the frazzled look of someone who has been to the edge of reality and is trying to swim back to center stream. A thousand thoughts race through my sleepy mind when she tells me "it's your sister. There's been an accident." Candace is now by my side and is first to respond," Is she okay?" "No, she's not. We need to go to the hospital now." Luckily I lived less than a block from the trauma center where my sister lay dying.
My dad and a security guard have to restrain me because I need to see my sister.
I need to see her NOW.
I cannot go in to the room as she is still critical and surrounded by many, many medical people.
My dad is weeping. I have never seen my dad cry before.
My nieces are huddled in a chair together, holding each other and trying to sleep in the blessed ignorance of the fact that their mother could leave them at any time.
Candace is sitting in the chair next to me telling me that my sister will be okay. I love her and hate her for the presumption.
Over the next six hours we see lot's of doctors and nurses. They use terms like "touch and go","massive trauma","comfortably sedated","critical injuries","uncontrolled hemorraging." All we can do is wait.
And wait.
And wait.
About 9 hours later a doctor comes out and tells us she is stable but comatose. Due to the severity of her injuries she has been placed in to a medically induced coma.
She has ruptured her lung. Her spleen has been removed. Her gall bladder is gone. She has fractured her skull in 4 places. Her hip is shattered, along with her knee, ankle and quite a few bones in her foot. She has a compound fracture in three places in her leg. There is internal bleeding from a few places and massive bruising to most of her internal organs. There is swelling in her brain so severe that the chances of brain damage are high. The lacerations to her face and body are too numerous to count.
It's three days before they wake my sister up. Those three days are still a blur. Restless sleep, massive hunger with no inclination or desire to eat. I can't stand the sight of the family and visitors weeping around me. My tears are gone by now, replaced by a numb feeling. An endless barrage of family, friends and co-workers stream through the hospital. If one more person gives me their "deepest sympathies" or condolences I will scream. My neices caught on a few days ago that something is severly wrong with their mother and wonder why they cannot see her. She is beginning the surgeries that will save her life. They harvest a new hip and a few bones from a cadaver in hopes that she may walk again. They insert shunts and drains to eliminate the swelling in her head and around her body from the internal injuries. They leave the knee, ankle and foot for later surgeries when she becomes more stable. She has stitches in her face that make her look horrific. There is still dried blood and glass in her hair. Why can't they wash her hair? She mumbles. She still cannot speak for two more days.
She fully awakens on the fifth day after the accident. She is hurting and disoriented. The swelling in her brain creates what I can only describe as a "cartoonland" around her. She will talk to you and then to the invisible person over your shoulder. One minute she is answering the doctor's questions and the next she is filing paperwork in her office. This continues for the better part of two weeks.
She is strapped to the bed. She is in a secure unit where the doors are held tightly closed by magnetics. Suicide attempts. crazies and people who will harm others are in this section. I ponder which one my sister is. Why won't they uncuff her? When she wakes up she is disoriented and rips at the tubes still emerging from her lungs and her body. Panic. Sheer terror and panic. At least they have washed her hair.
I guess I should explain how she got there. It started with headaches, some sleepless nights and a prescription drug called Ambien. My non-drinking, non-smoking, church-going, non-cussing, goodie-two-shoes sister got hooked on painkillers that she was "borrowing" from co-workers to treat her headaches. The pain killers had a speed affect on her and she countered with the Ambien, a sleeping drug. As her body built up tolerance she took more. She was going to different doctors to obtain multiple prescriptions of both the painkillers and the Ambien. We found over 20 medication bottles between her car, her house, her purse and her desk at work. She was high as a kite one morning, swerved accross a four lane highway and hit a pick-up truck head on. Her speed is estimated at around 60 miles per hour. The truck was doing slightly less. The man in the truck walked away from the accident while my sister almost walked away from life.
My sister was in the hospital for almost 5 weeks. Her actions almost made me an "only child" and would have left my neices without a mother. I will never forgive her for this.
Since her accident she is dealing with pain that will never stop. She limps pretty good and is still having surgeries to correct the broken mess that was her leg and foot. The doctors tell her that a new hip is only good for about thirty years so she has that surgery to look forward to again. With the ongoing pain, she has gone through more addiction and two stays in rehab. She finally got a DUI about a year after her accident. That's a whole different chapter that I don't have the strength to tell right now.
Her last trip through rehab was 30 months ago. When the family intervened about the drug use she brought up my drinking. Rather than tell her how "responsible" I was when I was smashed I agreed with her. I made the committment to her that if she stayed clean and sober, I would do it right along side her.
Some days I miss beer. I really do love the taste and how good it goes down on a hot day or with a good meal.
I know it was worth it.
So why would I give that up? Well, I'll tell you. Most of my friends outside of the computer are stumped to this day as to why I walked out of a bar in January of 2002 and haven't had a drink since. I have told a few that I am really close to and I may have told you folks here at the Tribe. But for the most part I have enjoyed the rumors and chatter of the sewing circle that is the bar life. I have heard I have a disease (probably the liver) that I got religeous and that I did it for the health reasons. The last, I can say, would have been the best as I have enjoyed the weight I have dropped but it isn't the real reason why I gave up the title of beer drinking king.
There is a knock on my door at 3:30 in the morning. My girlfriend wakes me up and I go to see who is there. Probably a buddy needing a place to crash for the night. Turns out it's my step-mom. She has the frazzled look of someone who has been to the edge of reality and is trying to swim back to center stream. A thousand thoughts race through my sleepy mind when she tells me "it's your sister. There's been an accident." Candace is now by my side and is first to respond," Is she okay?" "No, she's not. We need to go to the hospital now." Luckily I lived less than a block from the trauma center where my sister lay dying.
My dad and a security guard have to restrain me because I need to see my sister.
I need to see her NOW.
I cannot go in to the room as she is still critical and surrounded by many, many medical people.
My dad is weeping. I have never seen my dad cry before.
My nieces are huddled in a chair together, holding each other and trying to sleep in the blessed ignorance of the fact that their mother could leave them at any time.
Candace is sitting in the chair next to me telling me that my sister will be okay. I love her and hate her for the presumption.
Over the next six hours we see lot's of doctors and nurses. They use terms like "touch and go","massive trauma","comfortably sedated","critical injuries","uncontrolled hemorraging." All we can do is wait.
And wait.
And wait.
About 9 hours later a doctor comes out and tells us she is stable but comatose. Due to the severity of her injuries she has been placed in to a medically induced coma.
She has ruptured her lung. Her spleen has been removed. Her gall bladder is gone. She has fractured her skull in 4 places. Her hip is shattered, along with her knee, ankle and quite a few bones in her foot. She has a compound fracture in three places in her leg. There is internal bleeding from a few places and massive bruising to most of her internal organs. There is swelling in her brain so severe that the chances of brain damage are high. The lacerations to her face and body are too numerous to count.
It's three days before they wake my sister up. Those three days are still a blur. Restless sleep, massive hunger with no inclination or desire to eat. I can't stand the sight of the family and visitors weeping around me. My tears are gone by now, replaced by a numb feeling. An endless barrage of family, friends and co-workers stream through the hospital. If one more person gives me their "deepest sympathies" or condolences I will scream. My neices caught on a few days ago that something is severly wrong with their mother and wonder why they cannot see her. She is beginning the surgeries that will save her life. They harvest a new hip and a few bones from a cadaver in hopes that she may walk again. They insert shunts and drains to eliminate the swelling in her head and around her body from the internal injuries. They leave the knee, ankle and foot for later surgeries when she becomes more stable. She has stitches in her face that make her look horrific. There is still dried blood and glass in her hair. Why can't they wash her hair? She mumbles. She still cannot speak for two more days.
She fully awakens on the fifth day after the accident. She is hurting and disoriented. The swelling in her brain creates what I can only describe as a "cartoonland" around her. She will talk to you and then to the invisible person over your shoulder. One minute she is answering the doctor's questions and the next she is filing paperwork in her office. This continues for the better part of two weeks.
She is strapped to the bed. She is in a secure unit where the doors are held tightly closed by magnetics. Suicide attempts. crazies and people who will harm others are in this section. I ponder which one my sister is. Why won't they uncuff her? When she wakes up she is disoriented and rips at the tubes still emerging from her lungs and her body. Panic. Sheer terror and panic. At least they have washed her hair.
I guess I should explain how she got there. It started with headaches, some sleepless nights and a prescription drug called Ambien. My non-drinking, non-smoking, church-going, non-cussing, goodie-two-shoes sister got hooked on painkillers that she was "borrowing" from co-workers to treat her headaches. The pain killers had a speed affect on her and she countered with the Ambien, a sleeping drug. As her body built up tolerance she took more. She was going to different doctors to obtain multiple prescriptions of both the painkillers and the Ambien. We found over 20 medication bottles between her car, her house, her purse and her desk at work. She was high as a kite one morning, swerved accross a four lane highway and hit a pick-up truck head on. Her speed is estimated at around 60 miles per hour. The truck was doing slightly less. The man in the truck walked away from the accident while my sister almost walked away from life.
My sister was in the hospital for almost 5 weeks. Her actions almost made me an "only child" and would have left my neices without a mother. I will never forgive her for this.
Since her accident she is dealing with pain that will never stop. She limps pretty good and is still having surgeries to correct the broken mess that was her leg and foot. The doctors tell her that a new hip is only good for about thirty years so she has that surgery to look forward to again. With the ongoing pain, she has gone through more addiction and two stays in rehab. She finally got a DUI about a year after her accident. That's a whole different chapter that I don't have the strength to tell right now.
Her last trip through rehab was 30 months ago. When the family intervened about the drug use she brought up my drinking. Rather than tell her how "responsible" I was when I was smashed I agreed with her. I made the committment to her that if she stayed clean and sober, I would do it right along side her.
Some days I miss beer. I really do love the taste and how good it goes down on a hot day or with a good meal.
I know it was worth it.