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EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 14 |
Aug/Sept 1998 |
MY
MUM'S SUICIDE
My Mum took her own life about four
years ago when she fell out with my Dad. She didn't think she could
get anybody else, well she didn't want anyone else except my Dad.
They had been with each other since my Mum was 17 and my Dad was 15.
After 25 years of marriage she just wanted him back. She wrote him
letters saying come back or I am going to take tablets and all that
and my Dad thought she was just playing games. So he went all cool,
you know, the way it goes when your going with somebody, the minute
somebody wants you back they mainly don't come back, it was kind of
like that. It ended up that my Mum took a bottle of Paracetamol and
she was upstairs, my brother said my Mum's took pills, I asked if
she was alright and he said she was alright, she'd brought them all
back up. So we thought she was going to be alright so we just sat
downstairs, just going upstairs every now and then to make sure she
was alright. It wasn't until the next morning, she got up and she
was, I don't know, just away with it; she fell down the stairs and
that's when we knew the tablets must have done damage. We phoned an
ambulance and she went to hospital.
She was in hospital,
me and my little brother were there, by this time she had woke right
up and she was compus mentis, and she was saying you know this could
be serious, I have got a high Paracetamol level in my blood, and we
were saying, "you're alright, you're awake, your talking,
you'll be alright..." But in the end, my Mum went into a coma,
her liver failed or something, and she was on a priority list, and
after a number of days she got a liver transplant. It worked at
first; she was in intensive care in Edinburgh Infirmary, and she was
linked up to a machine just in case her liver failed, she would have
been alright because the machines would have taken over, any parts
in her body that weren't working, the machines would take over. It
ended up, after her transplant, she was alright and they thought she
was well enough to go down to a normal ward. They took her off all
the machines and she went down the stairs into an ordinary ward. She
relapsed and had lack of oxygen to her brain for about a minute, so
they put her back on the machines but by that time she was
brain-dead. We were all told that there was nothing more they could
do now, they wanted to switch the machines off. So we all went to
the hospital to see her when she was getting the machines switched
off and that was it they were switched off. All of this happened
because of the overdose.
Ever since my Mum died, my life
has been messed up and my family have split up. She was the keystone
to our family.
Liam from Aberdeen
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