FAMILY UPDATE.
So last night I get a call from my mom . . . her younger brother, my Uncle Tony, was rushed to the hospital in very serious condition. It turns out that his liver has failed, and possibly his kidneys as well. Right now, he's in a medically-induced coma while they wait to see if his kidneys start functioning again.
Transplants are not an option; they don't hand out replacement organs to alcoholics, evidently.
Apparently nobody realized how much he's been drinking. I guess he was just that good at hiding it . . . and really, unless you see someone in a frequent state of obvious inebriation, or smell liquor on the person, you're not going to put together the mood swings and the memory loss as being alcohol-related.
Uncle Tony has never been, from what I could see, the classic fall-down drunk like Uncle Mike was, before he sobered up. I always thought that he drank a lot, but then again, I have a bit of a skewed perspective on just what consititutes "too much". And everyone on that side of the family drinks more than what I think they should. I guess Uncle Tony was the kind of alcoholic who was a steady, constant drinker, rather than drinking to the point of drunkenness.
Kristin asked me if Grandpop drank a lot, before he died, that both my uncles turned out to be alcoholics.
I can't really remember that he did. Liquor always flowed very freely, from what I recall, but I was a kid and not really paying attention to that kind of thing. It wasn't until late in high school that Uncle Mike's drinking got really out of control, and Aunt Nancy threw him out of their house when I was maybe a year or two into college. College was really when I started becoming more alcohol-aware, myself, and at least part of that awareness had to do with Uncle Mike's problems.
Prior to that, I don't really remember specifics. Everybody drank at family get-togethers, just like everybody smoked. It's just how things were at any social occasion. I remember being maybe five or six years old, when Uncle Richie threw Aunt Anne in the pool at a summer barbecue. I remember how everyone laughed uproariously. I was a little freaked out, probably because I was pretty shy as a kid. What I didn't find out until many years later was that the incident occurred because everyone was completely wasted, and that it was pretty commonplace.
My dad always had a couple of beers when he came home from work, when I was a kid. When he quit the Navy Yard, he pretty much stopped drinking, too. There was always a lot of alcohol around the house, probably because Dad believed in being able to offer a guest any kind of drink they might request, but it didn't get much use until my brother started getting into it. And of course we all know how *that* ended.
I'm just rambling, I guess. Seems like there's a lot of addictive behavior on both sides of the family.
Makes me worry, a little bit, about myself.
Anyway, I'm lucky in a way, because I wasn't terribly close to Uncle Tony . . . maybe because he and Mom got along kind of the way me and my brother always did-- which is to say that we existed in a state of more-or-less cordial hostility from the time that we were old enough to know what the words meant. And I was the only girl cousin for years, and shy to boot, so I didn't even feel like I could talk to the boys until the last ten years or so, once we were all older and had, I guess, more in common.
It's funny that Mom has said on a number of occasions that she and Uncle Tony were never close, but he's still her brother and I can tell that she's having a difficult time of it. I know I'd be upset if my brother were in the same situation, and we haven't even spoken to each other since 1999.
*sigh*
I dunno. It's all a big mess.
Transplants are not an option; they don't hand out replacement organs to alcoholics, evidently.
Apparently nobody realized how much he's been drinking. I guess he was just that good at hiding it . . . and really, unless you see someone in a frequent state of obvious inebriation, or smell liquor on the person, you're not going to put together the mood swings and the memory loss as being alcohol-related.
Uncle Tony has never been, from what I could see, the classic fall-down drunk like Uncle Mike was, before he sobered up. I always thought that he drank a lot, but then again, I have a bit of a skewed perspective on just what consititutes "too much". And everyone on that side of the family drinks more than what I think they should. I guess Uncle Tony was the kind of alcoholic who was a steady, constant drinker, rather than drinking to the point of drunkenness.
Kristin asked me if Grandpop drank a lot, before he died, that both my uncles turned out to be alcoholics.
I can't really remember that he did. Liquor always flowed very freely, from what I recall, but I was a kid and not really paying attention to that kind of thing. It wasn't until late in high school that Uncle Mike's drinking got really out of control, and Aunt Nancy threw him out of their house when I was maybe a year or two into college. College was really when I started becoming more alcohol-aware, myself, and at least part of that awareness had to do with Uncle Mike's problems.
Prior to that, I don't really remember specifics. Everybody drank at family get-togethers, just like everybody smoked. It's just how things were at any social occasion. I remember being maybe five or six years old, when Uncle Richie threw Aunt Anne in the pool at a summer barbecue. I remember how everyone laughed uproariously. I was a little freaked out, probably because I was pretty shy as a kid. What I didn't find out until many years later was that the incident occurred because everyone was completely wasted, and that it was pretty commonplace.
My dad always had a couple of beers when he came home from work, when I was a kid. When he quit the Navy Yard, he pretty much stopped drinking, too. There was always a lot of alcohol around the house, probably because Dad believed in being able to offer a guest any kind of drink they might request, but it didn't get much use until my brother started getting into it. And of course we all know how *that* ended.
I'm just rambling, I guess. Seems like there's a lot of addictive behavior on both sides of the family.
Makes me worry, a little bit, about myself.
Anyway, I'm lucky in a way, because I wasn't terribly close to Uncle Tony . . . maybe because he and Mom got along kind of the way me and my brother always did-- which is to say that we existed in a state of more-or-less cordial hostility from the time that we were old enough to know what the words meant. And I was the only girl cousin for years, and shy to boot, so I didn't even feel like I could talk to the boys until the last ten years or so, once we were all older and had, I guess, more in common.
It's funny that Mom has said on a number of occasions that she and Uncle Tony were never close, but he's still her brother and I can tell that she's having a difficult time of it. I know I'd be upset if my brother were in the same situation, and we haven't even spoken to each other since 1999.
*sigh*
I dunno. It's all a big mess.