Just Shocking

Had some terrible, terrible news today.

A friend (and admittedly I haven't spoken to them in over a year) has been struck down with something awful. He didn't show up to work and so his work place rang his sister to see if she knew where he was. She couldn't get hold of him either and so rang the police. When the police turned up at his flat, they found him unconscious on the floor so they called the ambulance and he was rushed into hospital.

From the info I know so far, they think he has had some kind of brain lesion, and the early scans show that it's about 5 cm long. My friend is still unconscious, sedated and in the High Dependency Unit on a ventilator.

What is so horrible about this is that he was one of the most health conscious people I know, he's also only 28. I can't believe something like this would happen to someone so young and apparently so healthy. Life just isn't fair.

I've manged to trace down what hospital and what ward he is in and have planned to meet another friend on Saturday to go see how he's doing - I've no idea what to expect. You see the problem is that he may well get over the lesion, but who knows what the side affects will be - you just can never tell with this sort of medical problem.

What makes it worse is that I've let our friendship lapse over the last year or so and now of course all the "what if's, and should haves" come into play. I know realistically that very little I could have done over the last year would have an affect on what has happened today but it still doesn't make it right. I should have been a better friend. Isn't it horrifying that it's only when things go bad you are forced to re-assess your historic actions.

I tell you another thing though, it also makes you face up to your own mortality. Life is far to short, and indeed fragile to be fucking around with it.

Posted by Abi on the March 16, 2006 8:30 PM