A Slow Sort of Bad

A Slow Sort of Bad

This is a true story that is occurring in my life right now.

It is hard to be 17, emotions, hormones and life out of control and understanding. It is hard to accept a new man in your mother’s life, her new man that is taking your place especially considering he is just a few years older than you. It is hard to accept the new baby, the perfect little family where there is no place for you. It is hard to be the almost adult child of a woman just barely in her 30s, in fact only 33 years old. Then add that this new man, who controls your life, your movements, your meals, your enjoyments, everything. What is a young man to do? He runs away and finds solace in escape.

It is not like it was the first time he did a line of meth, or drank to excess. He had been doing drugs for a while now, but this time was different. The pain was too much and the need for emptiness too great. The acidic burn in his nose, followed by that horrible draining down the back of his throat burning as it goes down and then the extreme cramping in the stomach, but what comes next is so worth it, absolutely nothing. No feelings, no pain, no emptiness in the depths of his soul, he just stops caring about anyone and anything. He is not sure that he really meant to do that much with complete strangers, was he trying to kill himself? In his the depths of his heart he is really not sure.

He laid there in his drug-induced coma, in his own filth among strangers initially and then all alone for hours. He did not die, but almost everyday since he wished he had, it was June 4, 2006 when they found him, and no one is sure how long he laid there. Long enough to go into complete kidney failure, long enough that the lack of circulation to his left buttocks and portions of his thigh died. They rushed him to the hospital where they tried to get his kidneys to function again, but an impossible task because the dying flesh was releasing toxics into his system that prevented the kidneys for working.

Surgery after surgery was needed to remove the dead sections of flesh, followed by infections that required more removal of the dead flesh all the while receiving dialysis. The whole time the amount of pain medication closely monitored because he is a drug addict, and all the while not being able to receive any liquids, dying of thirst. Finally the dead flesh was removed and the infection under control and the kidneys started working again. Finally it was time for the skin graphs, taken from his other side.

It is now October 5, 2006; yesterday he was finally moved to a transition area of the hospital. Where he can gain some strength to start physical therapy. First they are going to get him to sit up in a chair for an hour a day. The plan is then to move to a wheel chair and finally crutches before the sending him home. He does not know where home is anymore, and he does not want to get out of bed and there are times that he is not sure he ever wants to walk again. In the depths of his heart he is really not sure if he wants to live. It has been a slow sort of bad all summer, and the end of the bad is impossible to see from his hospital bed.