My Grandfather, My Younger Brother

My father just called me. I think I posted how my grandfather had three heart attacks and a stroke last summer. I know I've posted about his melanoma. Well after his heart attacks and strokes last summer, apparently they decided to do nothing about the melanoma. On Monday, my father told me that my grandfather went to the doctors as his legs weren't working and he was getting worse, and they "discovered" that his legs were covered with the tumors from the melanoma. The oncologist decided not to do anything about it because he's lived long enough.

So now my father just called and said that the priest was coming to administer last rites and he's apparently unconscious. It's going to take me around four hours to get up there, as I have to take three separate buses.

Last weekend my younger brother, John, who's a paranoid schizophrenic with bi-polar disorder, decided to self-medicate as he had stopped taking his medications. He felt a need to "become one with nature" and get away from the people who were chasing him. He got butt-ass-naked and ran through a field of thorns. There wasn't a square inch on his body that wasn't covered in scratches or cuts. He lost his mobile phone, his wallet, and his glasses.

My sister and I had planned a visit to see mom and John, and to help John deal with custody/visitation/child support issues regarding his 10-month old daughter, Cherokee. His ex-gf (Cherokee's mother) isn't letting John see his daughter, and is running up unnecessary hospital bills.

So when we got there, John had just come home from his little excursion in nature, mom was a wreck, and I had to spend nearly three hours trying to figure out what to do with him. Eventually, after speaking with mobile crisis teams, I called 911 and had him taken to hospital. I went with him, and speak around six hours waiting for a nurse to tell me I had to leave, but I had to speak with her about his condition. He's done this sort of thing before ... the last time he did it he jumped off the roof of the apartment building where he was living, because the "ninjas were chasing [him]." They didn't even begin tending to his medical issues (e.g., removing thorns that were embedded into his skin, etc.),

So long story short, the next day we go to the hospital to find out what they're doing with him. He's still in the psych ER, and they're still tending to his medical issues. After waiting 2-3 hours, I finally get to talk to a mobile crisis counsellor who, apparently, makes the decisions about patients in the psych ER at the hospitals in Hartford, CT (where John and Mom live). He tells me he'll admit him to the psych unit of the hospital to medication stabilization and, even after describing past events to him, he told me that they won't hold him beyond that. So basically, John will stabilize on his meds in a week or two and he'll be released so he can not take his meds and do the same shit all over again. CT sure has a fucked up way of dealing with mental health.

I need to get up to Rye Brook so I can say goodbye to gramps and yell at him for allowing my father's brother, Keith, to treat me as he did and make me homeless for 2.5 years.

I could sure use a valium right now....