If he wants company via this thread, he has it.

People shouldn't die alone.

I say this with the full and depressing understanding of what it means within the context of this thread. It has been established that there is nothing we can do to help him, because he has chosen his fate. It's his life and his choice and he knows what his choice means.

Even if we weren't helping others here come to terms with their own burdens (which we are, and that is a wonderful thing, truly), this thread will remain open and rh can post to it as he wishes, just as long as his posts are coherent. No one here is being forced to open this thread and we'll not turn our back on someone in rh's predicament.

Also, I want to add that we should be careful about thinking ourselves something special for what we've done and what we've tried to do in this thread. Given the typical detached nature of much of social interaction on the internet, what we've seen in this thread is the exception rather than the norm of online interaction, but, offering the milk of human kindness is something which we should be able to take for granted in this life, though, of course, that is not always the case, and that's putting it mildly. What we've done is what we should do, so let's be careful about self-flattery.

Lastly, no one has said anything wrong in this thread. The cynicism is understandable, Smudges's frustration at his rebuked efforts to help is understandable, and the kindness and generous offers of assistance are most certainly understandable.

So, don't second-guess yourselves about any of this.

It doesn't strike me as cynicism... More like "straight talk"/"tough love".

Cutting through the bullshit to the reality.

The cynicism is my own. The straight talk- file that under "kindness".

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
If he wants company via this thread, he has it.

People shouldn't die alone.

<<snip>>

Thank you so much for your compassion, Para. It is truly heartwarming, especially in these days and times!

On a side note, I got a great night's sleep withOUT any help from alcohol! I'm now 3 days sober and it feels great. And the best part is that I don't even want any; no cravings, no nothing!!!

quote:

Originally posted by bronicabill:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
If he wants company via this thread, he has it.

People shouldn't die alone.

<<snip>>

Thank you so much for your compassion, Para. It is truly heartwarming, especially in these days and times!

On a side note, I got a great night's sleep withOUT any help from alcohol! I'm now 3 days sober and it feels great. And the best part is that I don't even want any; no cravings, no nothing!!!

Three days is a big deal. Remember one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time.

If you feel that you need to drink please remember the phone number I posted earlier.

There’s an old saying about the dragon outside doing push-ups, waiting to return.

There are literally millions of people have walked the same path, around the entire globe, available to you.

quote:

Originally posted by bronicabill:

I got a great night's sleep withOUT any help from alcohol! I'm now 3 days sober and it feels great. And the best part is that I don't even want any; no cravings, no nothing!!!

That is GREAT! Keep it up, one day at a time.

Stay strong s brothers.

quote:

Originally posted by bronicabill:

On a side note, I got a great night's sleep withOUT any help from alcohol! I'm now 3 days sober and it feels great. And the best part is that I don't even want any; no cravings, no nothing!!!

This ^^^^^^ is fantastic!! NOW you have started, and please don't stop. If you really want to stop.....then you can. If you need help, then get it, but don't give in to the alcohol. It is not an answer for you.

rh,

I only got into the 3rd page of this thread before posting this, so I may not be totally up-to-date on the situation.

Long story short, I'm one of the guys that gets woken up at 2am to rush to the hospital to stop the bleeding when someone's varices bursts and they have minutes to live. Suffocating on your own blood is a shitty way to go, trust me.

I know some here think you're suicidal or a bit off your rocker (bringing up your past post).

Personally, I don't think you're crazy or suicidal. I'm making a big assumption here, but it seems the "ramblings" may be symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy — meaning your liver is fucked to the point where it is not removing toxins (ammonia) from your blood, thus making you confused and lethargic, but unable to sleep, etc.

Please get yourself to a hospital ASAP, all of the debate over sobering up or needing alcohol, etc. can wait.

This is one of those threads that pops up here from time to time when people make some exceptional offers to others that may be complete strangers.
There are a number since I've been here that have benefited from that helping hand and it's a wonderful thing to watch.
Hopefully rh could be one, he seems like somebody that has a lot to contribute if he can get past this, but maybe not.
Hopefully things like this will be an inspiration to others regardless of the outcome of this one.

quote:

Originally posted by WingedMedic:
Personally, I don't think you're crazy or suicidal. I'm making a big assumption here, but it seems the "ramblings" may be symptoms of hepatic encephalopathy — meaning your liver is fucked to the point where it is not removing toxins (ammonia) from your blood, thus making you confused and lethargic, but unable to sleep, etc.

Please get yourself to a hospital ASAP, all of the debate over sobering up or needing alcohol, etc. can wait.

It's possible that it's HE. I'm not a doctor, but I have dealt with HE. It started for me about a year ago. I had a hernia repair surgery and they told me to take in as much protein as I could in order to heal since I heal much slower with a ruined liver. For those who don't know, when you digest protein, one of the byproducts of it being broken down is ammonia. Ammonia is really bad stuff to have in the blood stream, but your liver removes it and you excrete it. When you have advanced cirrhosis, this doesn't happen and ammonia builds up in the bloodstream, and radically effects the brain and nervous system. Within a few days, I started repeating myself without knowing I was doing so, forgetting entire conversations, going from laughing myself silly to crying and back to laughing in a minute or so or less, completely forgetting how to type, and unable to recall how to spell really simple three to five letter words. Coordination in my arms and hands went out the window. I would slur words and run them together, or pronounce half a word and be unable to finish it. It felt like I was losing my mind, and when it wasn't quite that extreme, I couldn't get my mind to make my body work. Lactulose controlled it pretty well, but if you know what it does, you know what it means when I say I had no quality of life from it. Xifaxin does me not quite as effectively, but nowhere near as bad side effects. I can type without having to concentrate on how simple words are spelled and without having to look for letters on the keyboard now. This was impossible for me a year ago.

Why I didn't immediately jump to the conclusion that he's suffering from HE is because he actually seems relatively lucid on the phone compared to what it was like talking to my father before he died last year. The rambling I mention is more that he goes on and on about some rather paranoid ideation - common for end stage alcoholics. Everyone's out to get him: Obamacare, the natives there who hate white people, his doctors who won't help him, his family who left him stranded in the mountains and moved back to Texas, etc. Classic alcoholism stuff in that everything that's not going right for him is someone else's fault. The mobility issues seem tied to diabetes. He says he's getting black spots on the toes of the foot he can't feel anymore. I told him to go to the hospital because gangrene and sepsis is also a bad way to die. He wouldn't have it. No, he wasn't foggy the way I was, he seems outright deluded. Again, I could be wrong as I'm not a doctor, but I don't think it's HE. I think he's got some mental issues, combined with diabetes and the end stages of alcoholism and liver disease. I'm very familiar with living with and through those last three things. Probably some here would say all of it and probably not be wrong.

In any event, I urged him to get to a hospital. I've repeatedly urged him to seek medical care of any sort. He could walk into Fairfax (the local nuthatch), they'd screen him and send him to UW Hospital. He could walk into Lakeside Recovery and they'd do the same. He could walk into UW and they'd stabilize him and then send him to Fairfax. He won't do any of those things. He's flatly adamant that the only thing he needs is insulin so he can keep his blood sugar in check while he drinks at home alone. What you've missed in the succeeding seven pages is a hamster wheel of all of us having that part of the conversation, and him giving all manner of inane excuses as to why he can't pick up the phone and call for help. Oh, and over the phone, he told me he knows the paramedics by name and knows exactly what they're going to tell him, so there's no point. I don't think I dropped that little golden nugget in here yet.

He's got a terminal illness with cirrhosis, two compounding conditions with the diabetes and alcoholism, and if he doesn't have cardiac issues as well, I'd be astounded. What's going to happen is he's going to die there from any one of those things. We're just keeping him company until that happens.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
...

I just finished reading through the rest of the thread, and after reading more of his posts (especially the recent ones), I think you've made a fair assessment of the situation (sadly). I think we know the direction this is headed, and it's a damn shame.

rh, if you read this... just know your life was meant to be better than this. People have been extremely generous and offered to help — but you're the only one who can man up and get the ball rolling.

Alcoholism and Alzeimers are both terrible.
Alzeimers is out of your control, Alcohol is not.
Please stop deriding this man for his addiction.
If he doesn't want help, that's on him.
But please just show Compassion. Been there done
that. God loves us all.

No. If that’s your take what’s going on here, you’re beyond mistaken. I take your comments directed at me. If you think you’re standing up for a poor addict being picked on, I’d like to invite you to consider that it’s an addict who’s been that far down the road with much the same health issues who’s doing it. If you aren’t, and you haven’t been, then it’s noble to try to step between us if you think that’s what you see, but foolish.

I’d rather not confuse what’s going on here: Alzheimer’s has nothing to do with what’s going on in this thread, and addiction has nothing to do with choice. Some cannot get sober. It may be the case that rh is one of them. However, there’s people reading this thread who desperately need to, and have never uttered a peep about it on this forum. They may not even be registered forum members, and they may not read this for months or years. At this point, I’m not longer challenging rh, I’m challenging them. Rh will probably have to die from this, and that may be a foregone conclusion already. If so, you can choose to comfort him and that’s your right. Having been saved from exactly what he’s going to die from by what I can only call God’s grace, I need to, have to call out the warped thinking, the addiction speaking through his keyboard at every turn. If it saves one quiet, anonymous reader’s life to see two sides of the same coin having a discussion here, then I am obliged to do that. Because some did that for me, and if they hadn’t, my wife would be a widow, and my son would grow up with a broken heart, wondering why his father didn’t love him enough to get clean and actually be present with him for once in his life and stay for a while. The odds of someone else having that same struggle, reading these words now, they’re greater than you can imagine.

So no, I will continue arguing with them with rh as their proxy until he’s had enough, or Para tells me we’re done here.

Dang Smudge, you're a really good guy. You hadn't really gotten on my radar on the forum before your thread with the picture of your father. It was such a nice picture of you two. It prompted me to post some encouragement to you but I see now how pedestrian my advice was. You're on a way higher level than me with this topic. You write really well. I'm glad you're here for the people who will benefit from your experience.

Thanks, but I don’t deserve accolades.

What I did was akin to repeatedly holding my hand on the stove because before it hurt, for the briefest instant it felt good and made feel ok about life. I felt like the only thing I could do about anything was touch the stove, the only thing I could control was whether I touched the stove or not and for how long, the answer to all my problems was to touch the stove. I kept doing this until all the skin and muscle was cooked off my hand, all I had left was a shriveled, blackened stump and a nice doctor lady looked at me about like you would look at someone who had done such a thing, and said “hey, uh… you didn’t stop when you thought you could and now your hand is gone and you may lose your arm.” So now I’m running around shouting “HEY GUYS!! THE STOVE IS HOT!!!!

Let’s be careful about telling a guy like that anything other than “we’re glad you figured it out.”

Yeah there’s a lot more work after putting the bottle down. You have to work on your soul.

This thread is absolutely amazing. Thank you all.