Bad Knees Blog - take 15: Heartbreak

I had planned on writing a light hearted blog entry on the specialty devices for the elderly and infirm sold on retro TV. I had also considered a low-key entry on our quest to find relief for our pain. Then something happened, and I'm not feeling so flippant.

I was at work yesterday and saw a friend coming down the hallway. I greeted him with the usual, "How are things." That's when he broke down in tears. Now I've known this guy for most of the nearly twenty years I've been in Buffalo. He's smart as hell, and he's a tough man - street smart, and tempered by a hard life. Years ago, his sister, a hard core drug addict, disappeared and my buddy took her son to raise as his own. He did. He'd tell me about his son's grades, ball games, and the ups and downs of raising a boy. It was mostly ups. He was a good kid, and my friend and his wife were devoted parents.

Then, a few years ago the boy, now a young man, went in for surgery. The first go round was so badly botched that they had to operate again, and complications mounted. The doctors did what most would do to alleviate his pain. They prescribed liberal doses of oxycodone and other drugs over a long recovery. Who knows how it would have turned out if the operation had succeeded the first time and recovery had been short? Maybe he would have used the meds for a week then moved on without problems. Maybe he was vulnerable because of his family history. Whatever the explanation, he fell into addiction and, like so many others, turned to the cheaper, readily available heroin that's on the market here and everywhere else.

He struggled with the addiction for five years, going in and out of rehab, trying to get his life back, and my friend was with him every step of the way, doing what he could to support his boy's fight. A few weeks ago my buddy was beside himself. His son had overdosed, but they had gotten to him in time. Now he was in rehab, on the mend, and determined to do it this time. My friend told me, "I think he can do it this time." He was cautiously hopeful.

That hope ended last Saturday when my friend found his son dead. He told me that he should have been able to prevent this. If only he had done something more. That's what we say when tragedy strikes, isn't it? But the reality is that we can't save anyone but ourselves, and sometimes we can't even do that. This growing opiate scourge isn't easy to understand, and it will be even harder to solve. My friend's boy wasn't a bad person, and his addiction wasn't a crime. He was a victim of something insidious in our culture that we don't understand. Who do we blame? I don't know. I do know it doesn't help to fill prisons with people like my friend's boy, and I know we need an answer desperately.

For now, my friend and his wife have to heal, at least as much as they can. All I know is that my heart breaks for them and for the lost young man they loved.