My oldest AA friend Terence died recently. His girlfriend called me with the news at the weekend.. She lives out of London caring for her mother during the week, and had been trying to get in touch with him during the week and asked the Police to make a Welfare Call. The police had to break the door down and found Terence dead.
Terence was about ten years younger than me, had a couple more years’ sobriety, was an engineer in a local engineering firm when we first met, married a slightly crazy Irish girl in early sobriety and then they divorced, then took up with a girl in AA I’d been out with, who was also mildly crazy, and had a couple of children with her. They split up after about five years or so and she moved to Oxford, taking the children with her. I think I may have been the only person who knew what he was dealing with.
He was made redundant from the engineering firm because seniority - they could get someone cheaper - and re-trained as a psychiatric nurse specialising in addictions. I think he had about three healthy years working in the NHS and then some damn doctor told him he had Type 2 Diabetes and prescribed the foul drugs they push. Instead of doing what my doc did when my blood sugar was high, which was to terrify me into changing my diet and exercising more. So Terence started to put on weight, and got other complications, for which yet more drugs were needed, but only after endlessly delayed consultations. Then one afternoon he fell off the couch and two of his vertebrae crumbled. His girlfriend was visiting at the time, and called an ambulance.
And from there it got worse and worse. Delayed tests and operations. Painkillers. Endless infections written off as due to diabetes. More weight gain and bloating. Anti-depressants. Testosterone shots. Chemicals I thought only existed for school experiments. He could barely walk a mile without being exhausted. He had to stop working and spent days dealing with social security and NHS bureaucracy for pensions, benefits, sickness payments and the rest. That went on for about five years up to now. My timings may be off slightly.
I have no idea how he did it. Chronic pain, poor sleep, unable to exercise, infections of the ear, treatments that didn’t work, on and on and on. And yet he was fundamentally in good spirits, I think because he thought there was a chance something could be done.
Then this summer his brother-in-law died. His brother-in-law had been a mentor and guide to Terence when he was younger, and I think may have helped him deal with the drink and drugs. That hit Terence harder than he thought it would, he told me he was having trouble getting over it. Other family members - it was a big family - died and he was properly upset and bounced back in the proper time. This seemed to hit him a lot harder.
That and problems with an operation to reduce the size of his stomach - a version of a gastric bypass for non-medical types - which he hoped would make a big change for him. Except there was an issue with anaesthetics which lead to the operation being cancelled, and then the team didn’t follow-through on that so there were more delays.
After his brother-in-law died, in June Terence picked up a drink, because sleep, or emotions or something. The reasons normal people have a drink, to take the edge off. A few weeks ago he asked to get alcohol counselling through the NHS.
Then the weather changed, and in that heat I suspect he had real problems getting any sleep. Plus he got yet another infection so was on antibiotics. I suspect that he could’t sleep and took a drink or some extra pills or both. He had a ‘fuck it’ streak.
He got his diabetes diagnosis before I got my high blood-sugar diagnosis. That was why I was not going to let the doc pin that diagnosis on me. It seemed to me that doctors stop thinking once they write ‘Type 2 Diabetes’ on your card.
I’m going to miss him. He guided me through some of the traps and pitfalls of AA-the-real-life-community that I might not have seen. He was very realistic and not afraid to pass judgement when it was needed. But it’s a blessing for him. Since he was living in hell already, I guess that means he’s gone to heaven.
He’s not in pain anymore, and that’s what counts.
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