Tuesday, February 9, 2010

venting update

OK this might be a long post. it is about my baby brother. i know i have my boundaries and i do not tolerate a lot of his insanity, but sometimes when i talk to him i gotta get it off my chest and if i tell him what i think it would probably break his heart. i mean because there is only so much i can listen to before i say, OK that is a LIE.

my brother has had a really hard life and during the time he was a child some very bad things happened to him. and because of those bad things he was sent away because nobody could manage him. he would not tell his family what was wrong we would just come home and the living room furniture would be cut to shreds, one time when he was around 10 years old i came home and he was hanging himself from the staircase. obviously i cut him down and freaked out. so mom put him in a hospital, where more bad things happened. a big part of his problem is the depth he will go to just to lie about something. you never know when or if he is ever telling the truth. my therapist says that our brains store information in such a way that when something traumatic happens we use a self defense mechanism of storing that information so it can't hurt us. in cases like mine with PTSD when a situation happens that reminds me of the past my brain functions as if I am back there in the dangerous time of my life and it is fight or flee because i have not processed the things in my life that were bad so they continue to have a hold on me.

for my brother it is different. he comes up with such unbelievable lies that it is just astounding. and he wants attention and he always wants someone to take care of him. i don't know if he feels my parents didn't give him enough attention or take care of him as he thought they should, god knows they were far from ideal parents. but it is like he thinks he is entitled to some i don't know he just feels like the world owes him. he even told me today that if he dies he wants me to file a wrongful death lawsuit against the government!! seriously and i had no coffee yet.

let me back up a bit, my brother has been in and out of institutions since the incident on the stairs. as a juvenile he started a couple of fires in the house, one on the roof and one in the garage, he tried swallowing a bottle of aspirin and just chased out the sitters that lived in our homes. he was kicked out of every public school in town for his violent behaviors and of course has spent time in prison. today he is HIV positive and has a heart condition, they want to perform heart surgery but he has no insurance also he has an issue with blood clots so they give him coumodin(don't know if i spelled it right) for thinning his blood so he doesn't get a blood clot and die. this last part these facts that i know i only know because i grilled his doctor last October.

it was last October when i told him to either go off and die or start taking care of himself because i couldn't watch him do this crap to himself any more. he drinks on his medication and he blacks out. now he got arrested for one of these black outs last year and has still not taken care of that. so my brother once again is on the lamb from the law.

now when i say he lies, i mean he is absolutely delusional and he fakes symptoms just to get medications or because somewhere in his mind he believes he needs attention even if that is medical attention. the medication he gets now is through the Ryan White foundation. they only supply medicine for HIV.all the medicine my brother gets is donated. my concerns are that he does not need some of the medication he takes.

when we were young and i walked into the living room after he had slashed the couches up he sat there with the kitchen knife in his hand and i said "junior what did you do?" and he looked at me and looks back and forth and goes "HUH" and acted like he didn't know what happened and actually asked me what happened!! so he goes off to the nut house and tells them he hears voices in his head and doesn't remember what happened. so they give him magic pills to not hear voices in your head. then when he got angry they would pump him up with Thorazine to calm him down and he would nod off. now i am no expert hell i ain't even Dr. Phil but I KNOW if you give someone anti- psychotics who doesn't need the medicine, that kind of fucks with their brain. now this was back in the early 80's and doctors have since learned to look for signs of lying. but damage done. now how do i know he lied about the couches, well my friends let me tell you before my mother died we were all together one night having a laugh and talking about the past, i don't remember exactly how it came up but junior was talking about all the injustices of his life and i said "Oh hell JR you still never apologized to mom for cutting up her couches." and this was something he was supposed to have no memory of right? wrong!! he goes "Well i would have never cut them up if mom hadn't of accused me of doing something my sister did!" i said AH-HA!! i knew it you remembered all along.

today my brother is on medication for seizures, i don't know if he has seizures he is just on medication for them, he is on diabetes medication, insulin, now i ask you do doctors really diagnose diabetes if you come into a new doctor and just ask for a prescription refill because you lost your old one and need insulin? i ask this because i do not think my brother is diabetic. he was over for Christmas remember at dinner he ate a HUGE meal with turkey and trimmings and pies, pies galore and fudge and goodies cause sister goes all out like that!! anyway he checked his sugar a little while later and they were 114. and he goes oh god i am high!! bullshit that is normal i tell you normal sugars are between 100-120 an hour after eating!!!! and he is taking insulin!! so is he trying to kill himself? i don't know. i just don't know now i tell you he is on methadone for pain, supposedly he has fibromialgia. now this is a very real affliction and i have a friend with this disease i just know it is hard to diagnose it is something they are still doing research on and it is very painful if you have it. does my brother have it? i don't know i know that because he has no insurance he can get methadone for free from the Ryan White Foundation. one time i took him to pick up meds and it was a bottle of 60 lortabs!! 60, i didn't even know they prescribed that many at one time!!

so by now you should realize he is an addict even if he does not. his latest venture was about 2 months ago he was in the hospital they were worried about his enlarged prostate, remember boys i had you all go get checked out last September?!? well they did a cancer screening but had to actually biopsy his prostate because his white cells are always high because of his HIV, they cannot just do a normal blood screening like on you or I. well since then he left the hospital with a catheter and told me that he had to keep a cath bag, yuck yes it is what you think, hooked up because he couldn't pee on his own, yes i said pee. and supposedly if he takes out the catheter he will be in renal failure. something does not sound right with that. i mean help me understand this if you take out a catheter from down there you can't pee well what then is the difference with it, you can't pee either way? the thing is he is mad because he cannot afford the supplies and he has had the same catheter inside him for 2 months!! today he said he is going to a specialist to see if he has cancer on his kidney because there is a lump there!!

i said i thought they screened you and he said it was for the prostate and it is like so much insanity and i want to care but i don't know if there is really anything wrong with him!! so he says he won't do chemo if it is cancer, like what that is supposed to scare me? because he cannot pay for it, DUH!! he hasn't had a job in years afraid if he got one they would continue to deny his disability. which they continue to deny. maybe the lump is a sore because he kept the damn catheter in too friggin long, i told him to take it out and he said he couldn't because he would go into renal failure. and he couldn't afford the supplies to change them and i said then you need to go to the doctor and ask for a different solution because this one does not work.

you all know i don't talk much about this simply because i don't let his chaos rent space in my head. but when he goes on about how the doctors have done him wrong and social security needs to pay him it just makes me want to pull that big old denial blanket off and tell him to grow up and get a job like everybody else in the free world!! now he says he can't work in his condition. he lives at other peoples homes and does not pay rent ever. the worst part is he relies on the kindness of others to do for him what he is completely unwilling to do for himself and that is take care of himself. now what gets me is this, my brother is like a very powerful drug to me and i can only take him in very small doses. why, because when he starts telling blatant lies about life i just want to tell him he is wrong. now when he tried to tell me that my mother died because of renal failure i was very gentle and loving and honest and told him my mother died of stage four small cell lung cancer.

he then tried to make up this story about how my mother was a special case and the only reason she died was because they did not know who to give her chemo and dialysis at the same time. my mother was very special to me but not to the medical profession. to them she was just another case and that is not to say they did anything wrong that is just a fact. they did what they could and they gave us a little more time with her. back to my brother..

so my honey says if he needs a couch to sleep on for the night he would be welcomed here, i said no. he is on methadone and i don't want him here. i keep him at a distance because i cannot co-sign his lies. my honey asks me why can't i just let him be who he is, i can and he is over there way over there with who ever he is living with. no i know he is trying to get us to spend time together but my brother is the same insane person he has always been. my older sister at least knows her boundaries and is learning to take care of herself, still far from perfect but she is trying. and as long as she continues to try to put her life in a better situation i have no issue with her coming over and working on homework.

i don't know i must sound like a cold hearted bitch but i just have a real hard time believing there is something wrong with my brother. i don't even know if the doctors really told him not to take the catheter out. maybe they wanted him to have it in and then take it out to see what happens but i couldn't imagine telling him to keep this thing in or his kidneys would fail. my mother had renal failure and never did they ever send her home with a catheter in her you know what!! he asked my sister to pay for the supplies for them and well he didn't even ask he told her he couldn't afford them and she said she was sorry and didn't know what she could do and he said it didn't matter he would just keep it in, then went on facebook and proclaimed to never trust family again because his sister wouldn't help him. like my god, that is another drama story.

she sent me the text messages on his blackberry, yes he has a blackberry someone bought it for him and was paying that bill too!! i told him to have them pay for the medical supplies instead of the phone and he said he couldn't do that honestly i think he stole the phone but he has changed his story on how he got it twice now so what ever. sorry this post was so long, my brother just got to me today complaining about his life, which he is 100 percent responsible for but refuses to take responsibility for his own actions. todays thought;
"God grant me the Serenity, To Accept the Things I cannot Change, The Courage to Change the Things I can and The Wisdom to Know The Difference."

11 comments:

Susan at Stony River said...

I agree with you, about letting him stay. Yes it would be the generous thing to do, but only for your brother -- meanwhile you've also got your kids and yourself to look out for, and it wouldn't be fair to all you to bring his drama into the house.

Your poor brother's a mess, and my heart goes out to both of you. I have one in my family too, where the lies and constant drama and psycho-inducing medications and fantasy-life just made me want to tear my hair out. It was the hardest thing in the world to walk away, but she's got her own grown kids to help her out and I've got my own problems; I was nodding when I read how others will say 'cold-hearted bitch', but we have to do what we know deep down to be the right thing.
God bless your brother and care for him.
God bless YOU and your kids and recovery and future, too!
Hang in there.
LOL Now get some coffee!

Unknown said...

I can only share my hugs with you and my experience. My husband is bipolar and medicated. If he goes off his med, refuses to do what his doc says, and goes off his own way, I do not have the training or medical experience to take care of him. My responsibility to him is to either commit him (as a wife in NC, I can do this) or let go, love him, pray for him and take care of myself. I have committed him, he got better. It wasn't easy but I made that choice. Bipolar disorder is a much milder form of MI than schizophrenia or other diagnoses so I know I would be extremely overwhelmed and unable to help someone with active addiction on top of MI. I have to know my limits..I can love and pray. Sometimes that is all I can do.

Hugs...

namaste

Andrea said...

Praying GOD will give you wisdom, strength, guidance, and understanding and continue to help you make wise decision about yourself and your brother.
Hugs,
andrea

Brother Frankie said...

i am sorry for what you are going thru.

i will pray. you are handling it better than i would, r have as i have been thru similar, but i have never been in your shoes.

be blessed
Brother frankie

Ms Hen's said...

Your poor brother..

but you are not cold hearted.

I don't think it is wise to have him stay over on your couch. You have your girls to raise.. and a marriage to keep sane.

All marriages are going to be more hard with a brother in law taking methodone on your couch.

Don't encourage him to stay at your place.. (well just my two cents);.. you are not cold.. you are being a good wife; mom; .. and need to have your family kept sane and living serenely.

Your poor brother. My heart goes out; whether he is lying or not.. it is still sad that he is doing this or not doing it.. and all that medication that he might not need..whew..

Hugs.

You are wise not to let this take up too much space even if it is sad. Hugs to him too.

kristi said...

Oh my god. For real, are we sisters? Well, my brother Kyle recently came to visit us. He has been in Oklahoma for less than a month and has a blackberry and an apartment and NO JOB. My Mom makes excuses for him saying, " He can't find anything due to the weather." OMG. REALLY??
And he was in a wreck years ago and my mom says he is "not right" and needs to be on disability.

He seems pretty "right" to me because hell, he is getting fed and a roof over his head and a phone but no job!

And he smokes dope daily.
It pisses me off.

steveroni said...

Hey, Clean and Crazy: Before you ask--yep, I read the WHOLE THING. I did not have a brother like that, My BROTHER did! (Me.) Well, not exactly like yours.

What IS important here is for you to keep what sanity you have acquired (can you acquire sanity? What about INsanity? Oh, well --grin!)... and it seems like you're doing that. God will take care of bro, He always does, one way or the other!

Thanks for your nice comment. I have been posting a bit on The Second Road "http://www.thesecondroad.org/" it is quite laid back from the fast pace I created for myself on blogspot...but yep, I'll be posting again soon, and hope you'll be there to read sometimes.
Love and PEACE!

Micaela said...

Sis,
I have been saying for over 20 years that JR is a HYPOCHONDRIAC... that means he fakes just the symptoms which are necessary to get what he needs... attention. I knew JR wasn't sick (well maybe in the head but not physically) and now he's preying on anyone who will listen. He has ALWAYS been a master manipulator. Yes he is an addict and he was NEVER starved for attention. He and our older sister got all that they needed and then some from our bio-parents which is why the rest of us have had to go looking elsewhere for people to be parents to us. I got lucky, aunt Lizzie loves me because I was supposed to be hers. If dad hadn't been selfish I would have been. Oh well, I got over it. Just like I got over having JR for a brother. I don't know what happened to him when he was little, but I know what he did to me, and how dad let him get away with it. After I told mom after Vince was born, she was upset and then totally acted like I had never said anything about and STILL let him come live with us. It is why I left Kansas. I still have a lot of hurt over having to grow up in that family, but I'm working through it. Tell Wes to ask me what JR did and see if he still wants him to live there with his little girls. I love you, but you have to step back from JR. He's never going to change, and he's never going to grow up, he will only continue on this path and I predict he'll be gone before he turns 35. Sometimes you just gotta walk away and NOT look back.

Micaela said...

P.S. Here's another serenity prayer for ya... "God grant me the Serenity, To Accept the Things I cannot Change, The Courage to Change the Things I can and The Wisdom to Know Where To Hide The Bodies."

Lou said...

It is a difficult thing to be
compassionate, and still keep your boundaries. I have some of this with Andrew, I know he has mental issues and needs to take meds. On the other hand, there is a lot he can do by himself, and I need to encourage that.

Try and step back, this is really getting to you. He has taken care of himself for a long time, he can continue to do so. Detach a little...

Tall Kay said...

Trust that God has a plan for your brother too. Trying to make sense of the insanity, just gets us more confused.

Detach with love, know your boundaries, pray for a miracle. You are doing a kind thing just to listen to him. I love your honest rants, and I hope you found some peace in getting it out. Sending you a big hug!