Health

For my brother Alan

Earthbound78 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:13:26 GMT

Inmate 1133147. To the corrections department of Iowa he was just another number. At the age of 19 he was given a 30 year sentence, immediately wiping out any chance of a normal life with one fell swoop. The case was rushed, his court appointed lawyer didn't do the research and judge wanted to make an example of him. In addition, reacting mainly out of shock and anger I helped testify against him; wrongly thinking that prison was right for him. He didn't last very long, but long enough to wallow in solitary confinement for almost five years straight.

On August 24th 2004 he committed suicide by overdosing on his anti depressants. I still remember the call in the morning shortly after the guards discovered him. I was half asleep and let it ring the first few times thinking it was a bill collector. When I finally picked it up it was my mom and she was hysterical, just shouting "Alan's dead" over and over again. I've wished I could take back that morning more times than I can remember, and wonder about what I was dreaming about as my brother lay dying in his prison bed. I've dealt with so much guilt, felt as if I should have been the one who died and so have developed a social anxiety disorder; partially out of feeling I should imprison myself for what happened to him. In addition, I dealt with the guilt of testifying against him and wondering in vain if I hadn't and instead told them about his previous suicide attempts and general mental instability; if he would have had a different outcome.

For the first few weeks I would wake up thinking he was still alive and then for a year or two I'd see his face in a crowd thinking he had escaped and fooled everyone. We were very close, and so when he was incarcerated it was like he died. I wasn't able to visit most of the time and when he was out in general population for short periods of time he'd get put back in by the time I got around to visiting. The whole time I was thinking I would get him out somehow, get enough money or attention to get him a lawyer and put in a mental hospital where he belonged. If anyone deserved a second glance at his sentence, it was him. He had been on all kind of heavy prescriptions since he was a child. It started with Ritalin and that's where I think started his problems. He had attempted suicide many times before twice which I thwarted previously.

One occasion and the one I think about the most was with a gun, I had to wrestle the gun away from him and pin him to the ground for several minutes while I waited for police to arrive.

When Alan died I became a member of what I like to call "The Suicide club". I noticed the way people reacted when I tried to bring him up, and the complete silence by family members and friends immediately after his death. I can't remember many people that contacted me afterwards or even after mentioning it various times on my myspace or facebook. Inmate suicides seem to get the least attention, mainly because the majority of the public believe you are there for a reason and killing yourself is probably the best course of action. Suicide is just one of those taboo topics, people don't like to talk about death in general let alone suicide.

It's been six years and I'm still emotionally raw as ever at times, but slowly coming to terms with the fact I'm never going to see him again. I'm one of those people that believes when a door is closed another one is opened though and since he died I've had two sons. My first son I named after him, he was born less than a year after he passed, on September 2nd; and then another son on August 1st 2007. At times it's hard because I know how much he would have loved his nephews, and I know he never got the chance to really ever fall in love or have kids himself. He loved cooking and was aspiring to be a sous chef after a stint working in the kitchen of a local country club. Growing up in a low income family he never had the opportunity to travel very often, he didn't get to see much of the US let alone the world sadly. I've decided when and if I am able to travel out of the country myself I plan on scattering a bit of his ashes every place I go.

RIP Alan Marshall L.

My Big Little Brother, Matthew

SaraP — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 09:15:26 GMT

Matthew was sent home early from work on July 29, 2008. He was having trouble working since he, at work, sustained an awful acid burn on both his feet some days earlier. (Despite his intelligence, he didn’t consider worker’s comp. Mom said when she called me on my birthday that it had something to do with his being afraid he wouldn’t make his usual amount.) He checked in with his mentor whom noted the unusually good mood he had been in as of late. Being a father was the only thing Matt had ever consistently wanted in his life; anybody observing him could tell how happy he was to be a dad. He placed a call to Mom and continued home.

Somewhere between the mentor’s office and his house, Matt received a text message from his fiancee, T------, telling him that while he was at work she had packed up and left him with their daughter, E--------. I’m not sure whether he made it home or not, but he went to our mom’s house.

When Mom answered the door, he asked to borrow her Makarov PM to go shooting in the desert with his best friend, J--. Not being an idiot, she flatly refused, sensing that something was amiss. Matt tried to gain entry into the house, but she stopped him. Matt gave up and drove to J--’s house.

J-- answered the door and Matt told him that our dad was waiting in his Mustang to go shooting in the desert together and asked to borrow a handgun. Now, I don’t know why J-- believed him. J-- knows Dad; anybody knowing Dad for more than three hours can tell you (a) Dad’s really lazy, (b) he hates guns, and (c) he hates going into the desert for ANYTHING in the Summer. J-- relinquished his gun and wanted to join Matt and Dad on the fictitious shoot. He went to get a shirt on, but when he returned to the door, Matt was already gone.

Sometime after Matt left Mom’s house and not long after he disappeared with J--’s gun, T------ wrote a text message to Mom telling her, “Don’t let Matt do anything stupid!” Upon further inquiry, she informed him how and when she had dumped Matt. Soon after, Mom received a frantic call from J-- about her missing son and his missing gun. Mom sent Matt a message asking what he was doing; he revealed that he was going to kill himself. Mom immediately called Matt, wrote him text messages and the like before she spoke to him. (I am not sure whether he answered or called her back.) Over the course of about five conversations, she had managed to discover where he was headed: a dry lake bed between Henderson and Boulder City, just off the turn to head to Needles, CA. (This is where Dad had attempted to teach Matt and I to drive years earlier.) She also got him to promise to call her back every time except the last when he told her, sobbingly, “I can’t promise you that, Mom.” He also asked her to tell everybody that he loved us.

J*******, our younger sister, had already called the police and Mom sped down the site along with J******* and her business partner, R--. She described seeing police cars whizz by. When she got there, a cruiser had beaten her to it and she was restricted from going near Matt’s car. Other cruisers, SWAT vehicles, and ambulances arrived until Mom’s party could barely see a thing.

The officers tried to negotiate with Matt to give himself up. According to the detective working on the case, they thought they had convinced him to quit after all. As he described it, Matt looked into the rear view mirror, then the side mirror, maybe was surprised by seeing someone moving closer and he pulled the trigger.

Nobody in Mom’s car could see or hear what had happened, but all the officers stood up at once. Mom thought it was all over and that she could scold Matt for all the stress he’d caused. J******* claimed to have seen Matt walk out of the car. Unfortunately, they were both mistaken. Matt’s limp-but-still-breathing body was pulled from the Mustang, placed on a gurney, and wheeled to the ambulance where rescue teams worked tirelessly to save my brother. Flight for Life arrived a few minutes after and rushed him to University Medical Center. Everybody in Mom’s car was trying to call other family members, but connections were hard to come by. By the time they reached the UMC parking lot, Mom reached me and told me what was happening. They had no clue that it was as bad as they could possibly have feared.

After he was cleaned up and connected to a wide array of life-sustaining machinery, they were allowed to see him. He was utterly unrecognizable, with the exception of his tattoos; his face was intact but terribly swollen. He hadn’t enough blood left to run the standard battery of tests, so fluid was taken from his liver for it. A couple of hours later, J******* called me, screaming in anguish and consumed in tears, that the doctor informed them that the bullet had gone right though his brain and only 1 in 99 ever survive the trauma. I echoed J*******.

After I hadn’t heard any news for nearly eight hours, so I figured that perhaps Matt was going to pull through. I thought I’d get the chance to go there myself to kick his disfigured-but-alive butt. I called Dad after midnight to be apprised of the situation. Dad said that they had been waiting hours for a brain scan to be run on Matt; that they needed to see whether there was any brain activity or blood flow to the brain left. Dad wasn’t hopeful; they had disconnected the ventilator earlier in order to run some test or other and he had gone into cardiac arrest and had to be defibrillated back to “life”. The results came back very late, at about 2:30 AM. Of course, they were all negative. They withdrew life support and held him as he died. He was utterly gone at 3:00 AM, but in Clark County, only the coroner can pronounce a death. The coroner’s office is, like everything there, understaffed. He was pronounced dead at 4:10 AM.

The coroner kept Matt’s body until Monday, when representatives of the crematorium where he used to work came to pick it up. Mom gave me the option to see the lifeless, mangled body of my little brother. Apparently, not only was he disfigured beyond easy recognition, but now he was also black and blue all over. I had mulled over this decision for days and, though I desperately wanted to see him again, decided not to. Whenever someone dies, all I can ever see when I think of them is just that lifeless form which was last presented to me. I couldn’t bear it. The last time I saw him was in June, and he was smiling. He rarely ever looked me in the face when he smiled, but bashfully looked down first, then up, taking a drag from the cigarette in-hand, were there one ready. Now that’s how I’ll always see him. Bashfully smiling, promising to see me again. Liar.

My brother, my Berto.

mydogbunny — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 05:57:55 GMT

He was hilarious, an incredible singer, a filmmaker, a doctor, an amazing tennis player, a wonderful photographer, and my first friend. I miss him.

memory lane, missing you both

lz1 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 04:12:20 GMT

Just some memory lane pictures I scanned of me and my siblings, some from way back, and some closer to the time we lost Marla, and then David. They are the siblings I was speaking of in the suicide awareness story.

Maxwell Stevenson

JJCatSteve — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:43:21 GMT

Maxwell was the perfect big brother. He was protective, intelligent, respected and humble. He was the guy everyone wanted to emulate: the high school jock with brains, charisma and love for all people despite personal differences.

For having lived only 31 years, Max had accomplished and experienced so much. He played college football at Stanford University and played in 3 Bowl games. He published a book of poetry. With his great love for music, he was able to tour and record a CD with a university a capella group. He was a regular guy with extraordinary gifts and priceless life experiences.

I say these things because I miss bragging about my big brother. He died February 12, 2009, a little over a year after our father died. In our eyes, Dad was the keystone of our family. His wisdom, his jokes, his presence and his support was like no other and we didn't take it for granted. Very few are blessed with such a father. Our father died December 22, 2007 in our back yard of a heart attack. I was not there, but my mother tells me Max worked feverishly to revive our father until the paramedics arrived. I can't even imagine how my brother felt trying to save his idol and being unsuccessful despite his effort and will.

Over the next year, Max became Dad to me. He would ask me how my car was running, if I needed money, etcetera (typical Dad questions!). My mother and I were not aware of the fact, but he had stopped taking his medication a few months after our father died. Honestly, he was more like the brother I knew over the next 12 months than he had been since he had been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder 6 years ago. For 1 full year, I had my brother back and it was wonderful.

The one-year anniversary of our father's death seemed to go as well as expected, but in January he started to spiral out of control. Max had never been in trouble with the law, but his delusions got the best of him and he was arrested and hospitalized. For a brief time, he remained with my mother, but on February 12th, he was found in the backyard near where our father died.

I lost my best friend and my biggest advocate, but I know he is at peace now. I can't say I was a "radical" in my thoughts about suicide prior to my brother's death, but I can say that my perspective has changed. It hurts me to know people can be in so much pain that it feels like death can be their only relief. It also pains me that an illness can cause people to do things that threaten their lives, all without the person realizing it. My love and prayers are with everyone who struggles with mental illness and with those who have lost loved ones to suicide.

Who he left behind

kelmg0203 — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 01:26:25 GMT

My father was a kind man. I don't remember him ever raising his voice to me. He always spoke with kindness and empathy. As a child I had no clue of the pain he hid. Behind the life we had built of stability and what my sister and I had assumed was a fairly normal suburban upbringing, there were things that were not discussed in our home.

For most of us, we go about our lives dealing fairly well with stress from jobs, being parents, relationships and other things that fill our days. For the rest of us that don't deal well with it comes a black cloud and a storm that never ends.

I don't remember when his came but I know it all began to unravel at once. His job, he and my mother's marriage and shortly thereafter, the life he had known and lived in for so long. I think often of when he made the choice to take his own life. Was it made in a matter of minutes, months, years? Knowing my father it had been planned strategically like a well crafted document. I didn't know which decision would be worse, something that snapped in an instant or one that was mulled over for months.

My father chose one of the least messy methods of suicide, carbon monoxide poisoning. He woke up one day and put his car in the garage and sucked the poison into his lungs. I was fourteen at the time and my sister was nineteen. Just children who couldn't wrap our heads around this thing that had just shattered our lives. Words will never be able to describe that feeling.

It will be eighteen years on December 2nd and for some reason the pain is fresh this year. Perhaps it's because though our lives have progressed, they have done so without him. Weddings, births, deaths have all been absent of his presence. You see, as a child, you assume the one constant in your life is the love of your parents and when one of them chooses to take it away for what seems like forever, it's a wound that never completely heals. It's like a cut that has scabbed over, but if it's irritated enough by something, it will reopen and is once again exposed to the elements.

As much as my sister and mother and I have found closure as much as one can find such a thing under these circumstances, we will all have a piece of heart that is missing. It is hard enough to lose someone period, but when they choose it themselves, you have so many unanswered questions that you live the rest of your life knowing you will never get the anwers to. This is what makes closure so difficult.

I thank God for my life every day and the people in it. I cherish the gifts I am given, one of them being my father's death. Without his dying the way he did I don't know if I would look at the world the same way I do now. I try to see the things in it that he couldn't. I wish he could have found a way but I think we have been left here to find a better way to see things than he ever could. Lord knows we will teach our children every day that life is worth living even when it's hard as hell to go on.

Wherever he is now, I hope his soul is at peace. That's all I want for him. That's what I want for all of us, and to live our life knowing that we, as suicide survivors are not the sum total of the horrible things that happen to us, but are better for having gone through it. I think suicide survivors are more than just survivors, we're warriors!

I decided to put a picture of myself with my family because I wanted to represent hope and the outcome you can have after a loved one commits suicide. You can thrive, you can be healthy and you can be happy again....it's just takes time.

Words are not enough......

mrbpac — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:24:25 GMT

His mental illness took him a long time ago. He took control of his pain, we are left to bear ours.

My love, Wade Kimball, Jr.

debnc76 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:17:51 GMT

Wade Kimball (1/29/69 - 11/30/08)

Wade was the most caring, compassionate and loving man I'd ever met. He was my soulmate. His passion was helping people in need. He taught me all about unconditional love, respect & giving of oneself to help others.

Through Wade, I found my purpose and that is helping others who have gone through the loss of someone to suicide. It is not an easy road and we will never be the same.

So now my motto is this:

"Be kinder than necessary because EVERYONE you meet is fighting some kind of battle"

Dale Myers, Jr

Dalesmom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:05:55 GMT

Dale Myers, Jr. 03/07/90 - 07/25/08. Dale was my first born child and he was my only son. He has 2 sisters that are now 16 and 17. We miss him so much! Dale was found in his home shot on July 21, 2008. Dale died by suicide July 25, 2008 after lying in a coma for 4 days. My son was always a very giving person. The last thing he was able to give was donating his organs. He saved six lives with his organs. One was a one year old baby and another was a 24 year old man. I am so proud of my son and always will be.

Retroviral link to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Logan29412 — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:54:50 GMT

Dr. Gupta,

A significant report on October 8th, 2009 came out in regards to a possible retroviral link to chronic fatigue syndrome (http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/CFSxmrv) and possibly (hopefully) fibromyalgia. What is your take on this discovery? I can find nothing about this on CNN.com. I've suffered from fibromyalgia for years and have been treated as though I am a mental patient rather than someone who is suffering from a "legitimate" disease. Millions of us need help now.

Logan

In loving memory of Chuck

forchuck — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:15:06 GMT

Chuck was a physician, astronaut, Navy Captain. None of those accomplishments could save him from the thoughts that were ravaging him. He was a beloved father, partner, uncle, son, brother, cousin, friend, etc. He took his life on July 23, 2006. We miss him dearly.

H1N1 and Flu Season Preparation

jimprosser — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:53:20 GMT

Emergency Response and Preparedness Director Brett Williams explains Direct Relief's efforts to prepare U.S. safety-net clinics and health centers for increased patient loads associated with H1N1 and the seasonal flu. Learn more at www.DirectRelief.org.