Absconding With The Patient

15 August 2021

Story #1031

R. Linda:

I hope you are sitting down because this be a doozy of a story, and it all is true. Me Mam has a brother she adores and worries over often. When he was young, he was a young buck with handsome looks and a mischievous streak but a kind and gentle soul. He went into the military as a naval seaman and came back a little altered in personality. Mam said the military hardened him some, but he was still the brother she knew and loved.

As life went on, he married a lass who was not up to snuff in their parents' opinion, but this lass was made of stronger stuff. They were in love, and so they married anyway, me Mam being the only one out of the family to attend the wedding. Because Mam liked the wife, there were occasional conflicts with the matriarch of the family, but it did not lessen the relationship between sisters-in-law; it only strengthened it. 

Until one day, Mam's brother had a catastrophic aneurysm that took from him his ability to have control of his left side. By this time, he was an artist and left-handed. It took months of rehab for him to speak and walk again, and he was able to transfer some of his artistic talent to his right hand. He stayed very optimistic and was always happy with a joke at the ready and this made him all the more endearing to those around him. Where many would complain and bemoan their life situation, he did not, he did his best because his family was everything to him.

Mam thinks something happened to him in the military, he didn't tell any of us. The friend he went in the service with came back completely altered in personality and ended up in a mental ward. So Mam has her suspicions. His wife went way beyond what most wives would to stick with her stricken husband and support and love him through the nightmare that most would give up on.

So as the years passed we all settled into our lives with occasional visits, cards, and gifts as family is wont to do. 

Not long ago, as you know, I took a header and did a number on me face from the fall. I got a phone call a week later from me auntie who informed me that me uncle had also taken a fall (the day after mine) and she came home to find him unconscious in a pool of blood on the floor. She had no clue how long he had lain there, but called the casualty services and they came and took him to hospital. 

She said he did not recognise anyone and was way beyond what he was when he had the aneurysm surgery many years ago. This was not good news and I had to break it to Mam. This upset her and she naturally called Auntie back but got no reply. Tonya went on Facebook, wrote to the daughter, and asked after her dad. She wrote back that it was a terrible fall, and they were not hopeful her Da would regain memory or be able to process what was going on around him.

This was indeed terrible news followed up by weeks of silence. No one heard a word in the family and not from want of trying. Finally, Mam got a call from Auntie who was in tears, telling her things were not good. He was alert, but the bleeding on the brain had complicated matters and he had just recovered from cancer and had lost too much weight. The prognosis was that he needed to be put in hospice because, all combined, he wasn't doing well.

Auntie suggested FaceTime for Mam, and her brother, and Mam got all set. However, Auntie couldn't figure out FaceTime or whatever she had on her phone and texted instead a photo of the terminal patient. Mam took pause because the picture was of her very thin brother outside in a chair smoking a cigarette! This alarmed me Mam, who asked about the cigarette and was told the doctors said it was ok because it was not a nicotine cigarette, but still! She said since he had little time he could do what he wanted, but Mam was staring at that photo thinking for a dying man he looked perfect except for the weight loss from the cancer.

Perplexed, she walked away from the "meeting" puzzled beyond all reason, with loads of questions that she had asked and got no reply. This weekend, she was telling Ben about this odd situation, when she got another text with a photo from Auntie of Mam's brother sitting in a car all seat belted in. The expression on his face was sheepish, to say the least. He knew he shouldn't be in that car. Underneath the photo was the caption, "We kidnapped him!" 

Well, imagine Mam's reaction to that. It was, "You did WHAT? Where are you taking him? And what's going on?"

Nothing came back. Mam showed the text to Ben, asking him if it was her losing her mind or her sister-in-law had gone off the deep end. 

"Does he not appear fine to you?" She asked Ben.

"As far as I can see he does," was the reply, "are you sure he is that ill?"

"I be suspicious something be up," Mam said.

"On the other picture, should he be smoking at all?" Ben asked as she also got the first photo up for him to see.

"I wouldn't think so, and I wonder if the cancer be more the problem than the fall." She said. "He has follow-up treatments coming and his wife cancelled them because he doesn't want to go through any more of that, and that's why I be wondering."

When Tonya heard this, she returned to the daughter and asked what was happening. It seems she and her Mam went to visit and were told visiting hours were over and they couldn't come in. Upset by this, they went to the local apothecary and bought a wheelchair. They drove back to the facility, which turned out not to be a hospice, but a rehab centre, snuck in and removed him to the car where they belted him in and took off for the daughter's home. So when nurse found he was missing the Guardia would probably go to Auntie's residence, not the daughter's. Sly they be. 

Both thought this was funny, and he was glad to be "home." She further said they would find another REHAB place for him. Hum, hospice? Rehab? There is a big difference between what these two places are about. What's wrong with them? If he was on medication and now went cold turkey off of it, how is that affecting him? Medical places communicate with each other, and if another rehab centre knows that he was taken without discharge paperwork, they aren't going to want to take him in. 

Mam asked me, "If someone you loved was dying would you "kidnap" them and joyride to a relative's house?"

No, we don't know the entire situation (I don't think anyway), so who knows? So we'll be living in a state of confusion. Something isn't right here, but why would we be told uncle was on death's door (yet he doesn't look like he is), and clearly he's doing ok so far, so what's the true story here? And why were we told he was going to have to enter a hospice and instead, we find he entered rehab? We are all at a high level of perplexity after days of sadness and tears. So here begins the beginning of a living nightmare, methinks, for me, Mam, to the kidnappers, they seem to have gotten a moment of glee out of their deviousness. But you and I know, if things go pear-shaped, that joy won't last, it will be "What have we done?" Or maybe not, instead they may find a way of reasoning their behaviour as we gave him a last good time. It is confusing because one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

Gabe

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