So I found out my brother died yesterday. He actually died over a week ago but I only found him yesterday. See he was supposed to call my mom to keep her from worrying about him every Thursday. He has Type 1 diabetes and lives alone 10 or so miles away from me and 800 or so from her. Mind you he's a grownup - 39 years old. He moved out here to Denver so that he could be closer to a great diabetes center, get insurance and all that. He had been living in Mo where there are NO jobs and NO means of getting insurance and NO good diabetes care. He moved out here, got himself into a couple of studies that supplied him with test strips, needles, insulin - the works. All for free. His job was to TEST HIS loving GLUCOSE 4 or 5 times every single day. He did not do that unfortunately and now he's quite dead.
So yesterday my mom asked me to run down and check on him because he's missed two calls. I'm at home with the kids so I pack them up and drive down there fully expecting to find him playing video games or at work or something. The first thing I notice is that his car is there - OK, it's a nice day so he should be working but maybe he had a short day or something(he worked construction). I go to his door and I can hear the TV or something so I knock. No answer. OK, thinks I, he's asleep or jacking off or something - knock again loudly. At this point I'm thinking that having the kids with me is a bad idea - one is 3 1/2 and one is 11 months in a car seat. poo poo. OK, I have a key.
I point my little girl to other things of interest in the hall and unlock the door. There's a chain but I can see inside. He's not watching TV or on the computer or in the bed - it's a studio so you can see almost the whole apartment. Whoops - there he is. Naked on his back on the floor behind the chair. I utilized my loudest voice to try to get his nude attention to no avail. poo poo. This is exactly the worst possible scenario. My decision is whether to kick the security chain free and let my little girl into a small room with her possibly dead uncle or not. I choose not. Then I knock on the neighbors door since I have no cell phone.
Bitch refuses to open the door.
I move on down the hall to the next apartment and knock there - good news, a very nice person opens the door and we dial us up some 911. 10 minutes later a cop arrives followed by an ambulance and a fire truck of all things. I take the kids back to the car and wait. The news is that he ain't sleeping. He's dead as a rock. I'm keeping it together at this point because he had lovely control of his diabetes. Always had. My mom had found him in a coma twice in the past when he lived near her and got him to the ER in both cases. The reason he was calling mom was so that we would know he was alive. Well in this case we determined that he was not.
I run the kids back home. All the while, during the drive, my daughter is asking me if the ambulance people will make uncle Jeff all better so that she can hug him. This makes it hard to drive because it makes tears come ou of my eyes when she does that. It's so sweet. I managed to get a good steam of angry up to counteract the sadness because how loving DARE he die and leave my kids with no uncle Jeff. loving goddamnit. He had FREE SUPPLIES TO TAKE CARE OF HIMSELF why the gently caress is he dead, naked, on the floor of his lovely apartment with cops taking pictures of him?
I have to go back now because the coroner is called and I have to sign off on things and poo poo since I found him. My wife and I return and the apartment is open and full of people. We talk to people outside because I am SO not going in there with my naked dead brother. That would be very distracting. The coroner assistant reports out in a bit that they found his glucose monitor and the last time he'd checked himself was the NINTH goddamnit. Today is the 25th. She says that he left his window open so the room hadn't gotten over 70 in the last few weeks so he was probably laying there for over a week. She recorded his glucose monitoring records and said that a few weeks back he'd had a week of 5 checks a day and then nothing for days. His glucose was ALL over the map for that time too. She's calling it death due to hypoglycemia but they're running an autopsy anyway to check for drugs and alcohol. He wasn't on drugs but he did binge occasionally.
Naked and dead on the cold floor for a week. From my perspective he's either an angry ghost or a pile of rotting organic matter. I don't see any ghosts and if he WERE a ghost he would probably have haunted us already so that we could find his body and clean up the mess. But no. He's just dead.
So my wife and I are given the keys and everyone else goes home. We root around in the now naked dead body free apartment and find some handguns and a few hundred in cash. I also find that the computer is running. Since I set it up for him I put myself in there as admin so I log in as me. Check task manager and what do I find do you think? Yup; Civ4. All his login had running was Civ4.
The most likely explanation is that he fell asleep in bed, wake up feeling like poo poo from the hypoglycemia, tried to make himself feel better by getting up, collapsed on the floor, went into a diabetic coma and died. It was probably not the Civ4 game. He did love him some Civ4 though so the alternate is that he was playing Civ4 in the nude in a cold apartment. Probably drinking too which you are NOT supposed to do in excess with type 1. I choose to blame Civ4 even though it's not likely that it's too blame. gently caress you Civ4! Murdergame rear end in a top hat.
Anyway the lesson here is that if you have type 1 diabetes; CHECK YOUR loving GLUCOSE SEVERAL TIMES PER DAY. Also don't drink. And get some loving friends. Be social if you live alone because your brother who lives 10 miles away is NOT 100% responsible for your rear end. You could also try keeping some cake icing right next to your bed because if you have type 1 and you wake up at night feeling like poo poo, it's a WHOLE lot easier to recover from the high you get from a quick squirt of icing on your tongue then it is to recover from DIEING when you pass out. I know that a diabetic experiencing a low can be irrational, sluggish and confused but come on dude. You have to take care of yourself. You have to maintain on your own. Or not and then you'll survive on luck and then you'll die when it runs out.
TL;DR gently caress CIV4
