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Originally Posted by Axiom_e
I lost it. I sent her back to the hospital and then sent her back to her family. I believe I made the best decision for myself, but I think back ocassionally and feel like I should have done something else.
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Anyone who has ever had to "write-off" someone near and dear feels like this.
I had a friend (since 1986) with a medical condition and an eating disorder. The condition was non-insulin-responsive diabetes and the eating disorder was that he ate multiple portions of everything. I thought I was being a good friend by encouraging when he lost weight (down to 345 in 1996) and providing sympathy when he ballooned up.
He spent Memorial Day 2003 in the hospital due to a fall, he was 605 lbs at the time and had shrunk from 6' to 5' 9" due to the weight he was carrying. After a long talk with 2 MD and 2 psychiatrists, he finally decided on a gastric bypass. two months after the operation he was down to 535, exercising as best he could, drinking his water, and eating very small portions on a 3-hour schedule. It looks like he was actually going to survive to see 40.
On August 12th 2003 he went on a food bender. The gastric fastener ripped. The contents of his stomach (acids and all) poured out into his abdomen. He kept eating. He eventually got up to go to the bathroom and collapsed on the restaurant floor. They had to transport by ambulance to a trauma center in Tulsa (2 hours from Fort Smith AR) since he alone would have overloaded the helicopter. In the ambulance on the way up they had to open his abdomen and suction out the food and excess fluid or else he would have died in transport.
He suffered acid burns in his abdomen from gastic fluids. While recovering from that he suffered a MARSA infection in his abdomen. He had to file for bankruptcy from his hospital bed. He had to sell almost everything he had to help pay for his treatments and to gain indigent-patient status to continue treatment. I drove back-and-forth from Tulsa to Fort Smith acting on his behalf for over a year since no one in his family seemed to be mentally capable of handling his affaits. For Xmas 2004, we got him brought back to Fort Smith to a long-term care facility.
Back in February I walked in on him watching the Food Network. I had the facility monitor what channels his TV was on when they looked in on him. It was the Food Network about two-thirds of the time. I knew then that he was never going to recover, if he left he'd be back in the hospital or dead in a couple of months. I stopped going there, renounced the power-of-attorney, disconnected my phone, and took the first job transfer out of Fort Smith.
I wish I would have stopped sooner. I wish I hadn't wasted almost 2 years of my life on him. And I still wish I could have done more.
I'm glad to see you left when you first noticed the situation was hopeless.