Leaking

 I woke up at 5:30am because Gretchen has decided it’s time to eat.  The rest of my cats used to be good at waiting for my alarm, but Gretchen is a bad role model and once she starts demanding food, the others join in.  It was pouring outside, raining cats and more cats, as we say in my feline-centric household.  When I went into the other bedroom to fill Gretchen’s dish, the leak I noticed recently was a steady drip. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about it, there’s no way I can come up with money for a roofer. If I could get up there, I could put a tarp over it at least but I can’t.  Mary, the elderly Irish butch next door, used to walk from her roof onto mine but by now she must be 80, seems deaf and another neighbor just told me that she could not have been the person who buzz cut my front yard and left bits of greenery all over the walkway because she has pneumonia.  I decided not to think about the roof right now. 

Before I could go back to sleep, there was the gentle chime of an arriving message - my friend saying he has woken up early today, the first day of his long-awaited new job. Answering him, I notice an earlier message from the Very Sick client. He’s not usually much of a writer, and rarely posts anything personal online, so I am surprised to find that it’s a post he has written about a childhood experience that he views as a turning point in his life. I already knew the rough outlines of the story, that he had been sexually assaulted as a child in foster care and then painfully disappointed when his family showed up but then left without taking him home with them.  Reading it, the details got filled in and I winced at both the image of what his child self went through and my own knowledge from my group home days of how common sexual abuse is throughout the foster care system.

He wrote:

“I like to tell you a story about me, from a youngster to a grown man and the outcome of what everything that happened in the past in the middle and now has taken effect on me in severe ways, both mentally and physically. Some of you know me and some of you really know me.  Some of you grew up with me, so some of y'all are able to back the  majority of this. You just aren't watching cause we were all kids. We were all just having fun, okay. And I hold none of you accountable for anything that has happened to me back then. I'll just skip most of it and go ahead to that last date. I had in Bronx Dale projects. 

I had a best friend named Kevin and his father and his uncle and his uncles’s son, I forget his name. oh I remember now - Robbie. They were friends from upstairs in the project building that I used to live in. My mother and my uncle, Fred took it upon themselves to have me institutionalized. I must have been around 8 or 9 years old. when I got there immediately I was put on medication that no 9-year-old  should ever consume. these medications were too strong for a 9-year-old. They were more for an adult, and there was no reason why I had to take those pills, but I was forced to.

The group home that I got to late that night was called Geller house 77 Chicago Avenue. I believe it was around Thanksgiving time. It had to be, yeah, I went home for that moment  to celebrate Thanksgiving, but was immediately bought back, and I don't know how many I love you's I heard during the course of my visit and upon my return. 

When I got acquainted and school started in the building, we didn't go to public schools. There was a school inside the institution that we attended.  later that night of one of my first weeks there, it was something called WrestleMania on TV.  I believe it was every Friday and the staff would let us stay up late up to 12 o'clock and everything seemed to be going okay. I mean, I really was naive and young and didn't know a lot about what was going on around me. Yet these 2 gentlemen named Maurice and Matthew took advantage of me that night. They made me think they were my best friends 'cause I was very sad. I did not understand why I couldn't go home and they took advantage of that.  And They said it's gonna be okay, little brother. Those are their exact words. 

Well, we got our hands on our own Cool aid, or maybe they did. I don't vaguely remember cause I wasn't making Kool aid, I was just sad and depressed. So I really wasn't moving around much through the facility. I would normally just sit in my room and you know, draw or something to keep my mind on the happy side. 

Come the time to watch the show, Maurice and Matthew approached me in my room and said yo you always in your room bro, why don't you come outside with us in the TV room? We got like mad popcorn and I made a special juice.  I had recently consumed my  Psychiatric medication, Haldol  And Risperidal. Plus they cheeked their psychotropic medication and put it in the kool aid, crushed up into powder form. So we were drinking cups of this medication but I really didn't taste the difference because they must have sweetened it. Somehow to cover up the medication taste in the kool aid, I'm not making a joke here. This is very serious, this really happened to me at 9 years old.  In the Geller house back a long time ago. Eventually, things got fuzzy.

I must have fell asleep but fell out, and I woke up in the morning in my room. That's the only thing I know, but when I woke up everyone had this look of concern.  I was always being asked, am I OK? you sure? are you good d*** Lil bro ? I even got a couple of heads said, nods, like, you know, people shaking heads at me as if they are in complete surprise that I even survived a situation that I did not know of.  Or that took place. eventually the word got around to the caseworkers and the supervisors, the kids knew. the other kids they knew, and a lot of the females found out and disclosed to me what happened.  And one female gave me the great grizzly details of what happened to me and I understood a little bit, but I was again, I was too young to understand I didn't know what they were talking about. So I got a test on myself. It was called a rape test.  If they had to, they didn't tell me everything. Because of the sensitivity of it and my age, they just gave me this test and I just went along with it, because maybe you know it was good for me. I was never stupid. It was always smart, just young and Naive. 

next thing you know, my uncle, my uncles, my father And my mother, they were all up there and it was unusual because, they work and my mother hardly ever came to visit me. in fact, it was said that she was happy I was out of her life, but then I seen them.  And then they had a meeting with the people that ran the place. everyone else left but my father stayed and he came with a lawyer to talk to me.  my mother was being told by my uncle not to sign any paper because I had a lawsuit.

my father wanted to take custody of me.  And my mother would not let them give me to my father. So them, my uncle, Fred and I don't know who else they were all in LINE to cover up the story, those 2 gentlemen got erased as though they never had been there.  their records were erased.The situation was erased. they got rid of the boys somehow so none of the Proof existed.

My mother is very money hungry. And the case never went through, because she did not sign the paper, releasing parental rights of me to my father and there was no proof that that ever happened and everyone went on their very merry way. Going forward as a man, I asked my uncle, why did they do that? And if he wanted to start a lawsuit, and he said, I don't remember what you're talking about. when he said that, I knew he was so involved in that and that hurt me a lot. 

So now here I am, with kidney disease, kidney failure laying in the hospital now, the way I get around is in a wheelchair.  I am wheelchair-bound. I'm usually home with nobody immediately there to take care of me or help me. And when I ask them to come at least to check-up on me, the excuse I get all the time is about gas and how much gasoline cost as to a reason why they cannot make it to see me. 

So if you want an excuse as to why I've been acting, the way I am, and the things  I've done. I should have looked for another way. There was no excuse behind my behavior but I was made, I didn't want this for myself. I wanted to be successful. I wanted things that I deserved and was trying to work towards.  this explains why. 

My mother  used to take my SSI check and send me to covenant house and then kick me out. This is the cold truth and I will be told that I am crazy. I am bugging out, but they don't want me to expose this. I'm only saying this is because I'm in a hospital now, and I do not think I'm going to make it out this time and I wanted everybody to know the truth.  

These people are fake every last one of them. And God sees evil and will judge evil. I promise you. I give permission for this to be reposted.  This is really me, J. O. Born 12 26 1987 in Edenwald projects, Jacobi hospital, 4:41 AM in the morning. This is only for authentication purposes.  God bless you and yours.And I hope that none of you have to go through this or have children that have to go through this. learn from what I am telling you , people are f***** u*.”

There is something about this post that worries me beyond the painful details. It’s such an uncharacteristic  post that it feels kind of like a last stand, a legacy, putting his truth out in the world once and for all.  I wrote back to him, telling him how brave I think he is for writing this and also how important it is not just for him but for all the kids who experience abuse in the system.

Later on, in my office, the latest young resident working with him called. He told me the client has bacteremia, bacteria in his blood, most likely from his dialysis access  but that he's not septic. He doesn’t say "yet" but he doesn’t need to. He was telling me they need the client to take antibiotics and let them change the line but he’s not doing either.

I mentioned the post and the doctor said the client shared it with the hospital staff too. I tell him I am concerned about its aura of finality and he says he feels like the client is passively suicidal. Then he asks me if I think they should take suicide precautions, like 24 hr observation. I tell him I don’t think the client is going to actively do anything dangerous, but that I also don’t think he is very concerned about the prospect of dying. He asks me if I can think of anything they can do and I tell him that if there is any way they can give the client some sense of control of his own life and body, by giving him choices etc that might help and he agrees to try it.

As his health care proxy, I know we are approaching the point where he will become incapacitated and I will have to make decisions for him again. I think I know what he would want, but I want to have a very honest conversation with him to be sure. It’s a pretty intense thing to discuss, but I want to make sure he understands the reality of where he’s headed and that I am prepared to speak for him when he can’t.