United in our Grief Forum.

I watched my best friend slowly wither away and die in the hospital.

A few years ago my friend was admitted into the hospital because he had a very bad fever and was unable to move due to his weight. While he was there they said that he had a staph infection in his foot and that they would have to remove a toe from there. He was fine with that and we thought things would work out.

But they didn't.

The infection ended up getting into the bone of his leg and they had no choice but to amputate it. They had him in ICU after that because of his response to being put under. I teamed up with a friend to drive his mother to and from the hospital as she couldn't drive and taking a cab every day was expensive. She ended up resenting me for it as I came to pick her up and she felt like I was trying to take her away from her son.

In addition to that, he has also had schizophrenia and when they put him on morphine for the pain after they took his leg it was like putting gas on a fire. He would see things, turn into a child, and think that the nurses were against him. I came in once to speak with him and he was trying to tell me that the nurses there were trying to convert him into a cult to which I found out he wasn't.

The last time I went to see him was with my brother because we heard they were taking him for hospice and that his time was short. The infection had gotten into his blood by then. We hanged out with him for a few hours, talked with him, made him laugh, told him things that were going on, etc. I suddenly felt the strong urge to go and my confused brother didn't understand why I was practically dragging him out of the hospital. A half hour after we'd taken off my friend had died there in the hospital.

I remember crying hysterically in the car that night, pulling over because it wasn't safe to drive. A few days later we got the official notice that he'd passed away.

Every day that goes by I still miss him. He was my best friend, someone I enjoyed spending time with, and an overall great person. The world is a sadder place without him in.

~Poeros~