My Brother's Suicide Attempt

My brother tried to commit suicide over the weekend. I’ve debated writing about my brother’s issues for a while now. I’ve actually written about it twice, just to delete it. Let me back up a little and give you a bit of history…

My brother had the first of two brain aneurysms 6 years ago in March of 2001. He went to the doctor for severe headaches. Everyone assumed it was migraines, but the test results showed a bleeding aneurysm in his left frontal lobe. Luckily it was caught in time (before it killed him) and he had surgery to remove it. Afterwards, his biggest issue was the damage to his short term memory – the trauma to his brain permanently damaged his frontal lobe & he lost his short term memory. After a year of intensive therapy, he was not quite back to normal, but on his way and doing well on his own. Until the headaches came back two years later and our worst fears came true. He’d developed a second aneurysm. 11 hours of surgery corrected this one, but unfortunately he didn’t bounce back afterwards like after his first one. The doctors say he has scar tissue growing in his brain. There’s no way to get rid of it. If you surgically remove it, more will grow in its place. It’s causing brain damage, and it will continue to get worse as it grows. He also developed severe depression after the second surgery. He couldn’t handle the fact that he wasn’t 100% anymore, and he turned to liquor to ease the pain. He’d rather be drunk, wearing rose colored glasses and creating his own reality, than sober and facing the hard truth. After four years of intermittent hell it seems – in and out of hospitals, detox, rehab, apartments, and shelters – his brain damage has built to the point that he can’t live on his own anymore. On a good day, it’s as if he has early alzheimers. On a bad day, he’s completely delusional – hearing voices, seeing things that aren’t there, and just completely out of touch with reality. He’s been in the psych ward of the VA hospital for the past month or so. His mental state has deteriorated enough that he can’t be trusted to take care of himself – can’t keep up with meds and can’t handle every day activities. The docs wanted us to put him in a nursing home – alzheimers or memory care ward – but my mom just couldn’t handle that. She couldn’t handle putting her 37 year old son in a nursing home (and who could blame her?). So, we found an assisted living community for him. He’d have his own one bedroom apt, but he’d be monitored by medical staff who’d check on him 3 – 4 times a day.

They checked him out of the VA on Saturday and were taking him there to get all settled in when it happened. Some moron – employed as nursing staff at the VA – gave my brother a bottle of 50 Valium when he was discharged, even though his chart clearly states that ALL meds are to be given to my mother NOT my brother! He was clear-headed enough to know to hide them from my mom, so he stashed them in his underwear – but not before taking 40 pills. By the time they got to my mom’s house, he was passed out in the back of the minivan. They started panicking when they couldn’t wake him up and called 911 (luckily). Of course, at this point they had no idea what was going on – no one knew about the Valium. The EMT’s just knew he’d OD’d on SOMETHING and gave him meds to counter it. They found the Valium stash at the ER. He’s now in ICU at the hospital near us, sedated and on a vent.

This sucks…