A few seconds to end his life, a lifetime for his survivors
He had tried to end his life twice the week before. He agreed to go to the hospital. I told him he needs to tell them everything about how he feels. He did. I asked them whether they talk with the family, and they said they love to do that. They said they would keep him as long as necessary.
He called his sister each night, saying they were keeping him only until the end of the week, and he called the last night to say they were sending him home the next day, but he still felt the same. There was no family involvement, except they called me to come get him. I asked why when he said he still feels the same way? I was cut off and told that he was being manipulative. As a mother, you don’t want to hear your child actually wants to die, so you believe the “doctors.”
He was not getting out of bed except to go to his follow-up counseling appointments. I called his “counselor,” and that person said he had not met him yet and would keep what I told him in mind when he talks to him. There seemed to be no continuity in who does the “counseling.” He missed his appointment the following week, and when he went back the next week, he told them he couldn’t get out of bed the previous week (I read most of this in the hospital records afterward) and told them he was still awaiting his prescription refill.
They told him they were glad he made it that week but did not get him his medication. I did not know he had run out until afterward. Two weeks after his medication ran out, he ended his life. I asked the medical examiner to at least preserve his brain so researchers could see if his brain shows anything about why he felt as he did. They said they would keep it for me but did not.
I see that so little is known about these deep feelings, and I see that the patient knows that also and it becomes easier, I suppose, to just end the problem the only way they see. I guess calling the hotline seems useless when there is such a lack of understanding and knowledge, and I think all the bodies that are automatically taken to the medical examiner should be available to those trying to figure this out instead of the information being buried.
There is now a whole world of people out there who are living with this aftermath, the fallout of what probably took a few seconds but a lifetime for those left.
I wish he would have called the hotline. The number was in his wallet.