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Carlos would have been 54 years old the 15th of this month. That makes him six years younger than me. It is sad to me that so many young people are leaving this earth before me. It also brings home the real fact of my own mortality. Carlos came to this facility about 6 months before I did. So Carlos is one of the “oldsters”. I have taken care of him since the day I entered the facility. And yes, the bond was very strong. I tell myself I won’t get so attached but over the years, while I have learned much, I have never been able to learn how NOT to get attached. Carlos was a drug addict and alcoholic. His kidneys had failed and he was a dialysis patient. He was loud and obnoxious at times. The last year he had been in and out of the hospital many times. He was a big man at one time. Probably weighed about 250 lbs, and was 6ft 4in tall… He used to go out occasionally and do “illegals” which always landed him back in the hospital…. We had many a “talk” about this… and many a night I refused to give him prescribed meds because he was so obviously high from whatever he had been taking outside the facility… but Carlos and I became friends… It is NOT my job to judge my people. Their history for me begins when they come to me… I am very able to do this and sometimes that’s what separates me from my fellow nurses…. After he died one nurse even said… “He did it to himself, so it’s hard to be sorry he’s gone.” I am sorry, and I was distressed that he is gone. Yes, maybe he did it to himself, but he was after all, still “my Carlos” and I fretted much about him these past few months. I KNEW he was on borrowed time… he has been for the last six months… In the end, he was on tube feeding, a wound vac, a specialty bed and needed lots of care… it bothers me that I was the only one who did this so willingly…. But then, I have spent almost 4 years with Carlos… and he thought I was wonderful…. And part of me didn’t want him to be disappointed in me… I watched the decline in him these last 6 months. Growing ever thinner and no amount of food or tube feeding was putting any weight on him. He was in the hospital and developed a pressure sore there and even the wound vac wasn’t healing it… all signs that his body was losing the fight…. There was a time when he used to be “up and around”. These were the times I sometimes had to be very blunt with him… The joke was “I was taking him to the woodshed”. HE knew what that meant and I knew what that meant…. We spent many times in that woodshed…. It never seemed to help much well, maybe for a little while but then he be off again…. He could be very loud and obnoxious. He never was to me but he was to many of the staff and sometimes the trips to the woodshed were because of his attitude… The last year he had finally given up on the illegal stuff (he was no longer able to be up and around on his own) and his health had deteriorated to the point that even he was now scared….
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