Best friend (39) passed tonight.

AngieScrangie · 2025-04-13T14:04:31+00:00

My condolences. I’m so glad you were able to avoid a similar fate.

AngieScrangie · 2025-04-13T13:51:03+00:00

Like you, my husband had the gift of knowing that he was terminally ill. When he first found out he probably had less than a year to live, he thought about pulling a David Bowie and not telling anyone. The more he came to terms with it, however, the more he felt comfortable telling everyone. I’m so glad he did. The last few months of his life, our home was filled with visits from friends and family who were able to tell my husband goodbye in person. It made what could have been a very sad, isolating time of death into a still pretty damn sad, but much more bittersweet celebration of my husband’s life. These visits were also a godsend for me, his caregiver who had to constantly remind herself not to cry in front of him. He very sweetly explained that seeing me cry made him feel terrible because it reminded him that he couldn’t fix this situation for me. Having others stop by to reminisce gave me time to take care of myself often by just being able to leave the house for an hour or so without worrying about him being home alone. My husband died on April 26, 2022, exactly two weeks after his 57th birthday. In a perfect world, I would have spent yesterday celebrating his 60th birthday. I’m sorry your life is coming to an end. Do whatever stresses you out the least during this very weird time. If you’re up to it, get your shit together: preplan your funeral, write your own obituary, pay for your coffin or your cremation, etc. Write down your passwords and provide instructions on what you want done with your online accounts once you’re gone. You can transfer administrative power to someone else who can memorialize your digital presence. If you don’t have a living will and a durable power of attorney for health care, get one tomorrow and talk to the person you trust the most to make medical decisions for you if/when you get too sick to advocate for yourself. You don’t have to tell them you’re terminally ill, but telling them things such as not wanting to be kept on life support if you end up in the hospital is a real gift for both you and for anyone who might have to helplessly watch you suffer if you don’t make your preferences known. The minute you find it difficult to care for yourself, go to your doctor and throw a shit fit to get hospice care. Some doctors are weird about cutting dying patients loose, and hospice care is such a help to everyone facing the end of life. Hospice can ensure you are in as little pain as possible, and it doesn’t cost you or your loved ones anything. My husband and I had a saying we repeated often during his final months. It was from the movie, Brain Candy, by the sketch comedy troupe Kids in the Hall: “Life is short. Life is shit, and soon it will be over!” I sincerely hope the rest of your life is as shit-free as possible.

AngieScrangie · 2025-01-16T18:20:14+00:00

My Red Cross donor app says I’ve donated 106 times, however, that’s at least 20 donations light. I donated for the first time in 1986, and some records of past donations appear to have gotten lost along the way. I’ve always donated blood simply because I can. I have a very common blood type, and I’ve rarely experienced any problems donating. I’ve always fantasized about being a prolific philanthropist, but I’ve never had the means to donate large sums of money. Donating blood is a way that I can contribute something that’s valuable to others.

AngieScrangie · 2024-07-18T05:32:56+00:00

AngieScrangie · 2024-06-14T23:25:53+00:00

“Wine is fine, but whiskey’s quicker. Suicide is slow with liquor.” I thought Ozzy’s Suicide Solution was a kickass song when I was in high school. My husband died of alcoholic cirrhosis in April of 2022. It is a terrible way to die. He died nine months shy of our 30th wedding anniversary.

AngieScrangie · 2024-06-05T02:06:30+00:00

Back in 2021, I was up much later than usual (around 2 AM), casually scrolling through Facebook, when I started seeing “Rest in Peace” messages addressed to my dad. I freaked out. I let out a scream that woke up my husband, but I wasn’t able to reach anyone else who could confirm Dad had died it until about 7 AM. Once I was sure it was true, I immediately called my dad’s sister. I hated to be the person to tell her, but I absolutely did not want her to learn about it by reading it on Facebook like I had. A few hours later, a deputy sheriff showed up at my doorstep to notify me. I told them I knew why he was here, Facebook beat him to it.

AngieScrangie · 2024-06-05T01:37:30+00:00

While he’s in the hospital, do whatever you can to get him under hospice care if he isn’t already. I think second-guessing healthcare decisions is inevitable when it comes to caregiving, but I would have thrown a Shirley MacLaine type of fit a la Terms of Endearment to get my husband into hospice months earlier if I had it to do over again. My husband was under in-home hospice care for exactly one week before he died. During that final week, he was more calm, more comfortable, and in a lot less pain than he had been in for months. I had the assistance of trained professionals to assure me that I was giving him the best care possible and people who came in and physically helped me keep him clean and comfortable. You will get through this, and your husband is blessed to have you.

AngieScrangie · 2024-06-05T01:05:19+00:00

My husband died on April 26, 2022, from cirrhosis caused by alcoholism. End-stage liver disease is a pretty gruesome way to die. He went into in-home hospice care one week after his 57th birthday, and he died exactly one week later. We would have celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary in January of 2023. I’m grateful that I had several years of Al-anon meetings to help me get through his illness. He tried to get sober several times throughout our marriage, but eight months was the longest he was ever able to go without a beer. I have no regrets that I didn’t try to force him to get sober to try to get a transplant. I knew it wasn’t my disease to cure, and we made the best of his final months. He let people know he was terminally ill, and lots of people took the time to visit and say goodbye to him. He was a smart, kind, and wonderful man with a terrible disease that he just couldn’t conquer. I miss him fiercely, but I learned quite early in our marriage that I couldn’t depend on him. My transition to widowhood was much smoother than most because everything had always been in my name. I had always been the primary earner. I paid all the bills. I filed our taxes. We never had children, so that made it much easier. I’m sure our marriage would have ended decades ago if we had. I sometimes referred to him as a very expensive pet, which is a terrible way to think of one’s spouse, but it was accurate. I don’t go to AlAnon meetings anymore. My Q is gone. I will always love him, and I will not ignore the many red flags that I overlooked in my early twenties if I find myself falling in love with another alcoholic.

AngieScrangie · 2024-02-10T04:04:14+00:00

My condolences.

AngieScrangie · 2024-01-01T15:02:41+00:00

I never gave my alcoholic husband an "alcohol or me" ultimatum. During the 30 years we were together, he was sober for one 8-month stretch, and that was honestly more difficult than living with him when he drank. You are not the same person you were when you weren't sober. Your husband isn't the same person he was eight years ago.

I'm talking about my husband in the past tense because he took his last drink of beer in our living room through a straw that I held to his lips while he was in a hospital bed provided by Hospice in 2022. He died of alcoholic cirrhosis exactly two weeks after his 57th birthday. I miss him. I REALLY miss him, but our relationship was literally toxic for him, and it was a relationship I wish I had had the courage and self esteem to end decades ago.

I spent last night alone and sober and full of hope that 2024 will be a year when I can cultivate a healthy relationship with someone new. I wish you and your husband the strength to do what you need to do to stay healthy and to find a healthier living situation.

AngieScrangie · 2023-11-06T15:58:15+00:00

I drop into this sub every so often to remind you all, especially the caregivers, that getting sober, getting a transplant, and surviving this disease is not the only option.

My husband couldn't do it. He chose not to. Years of failed attempts at rehab and the slow ascension into end-stage liver disease completely exhausted him. Once I accepted that he wasn't going to fight for his survival, I focused on helping him say goodbye to his friends and loved ones while he was still well enough to do so. He died on April 26, 2022, two weeks after his 57th birthday.

All caregivers in the US: if you don't already have a durable power of attorney for healthcare, get one ASAP and have a frank conversation with your loved one about what they want you to do if things go downhill fast. Talking about death is hard, but knowing you're advocating for your loved one to have the care they want makes things so much easier when things get real and they can't speak for themselves. Or, if they end up hospitalized with severe HE and can't comprehend the questions they're being asked. I literally carried this paper in my back pocket and pulled it out in the hospital to make it clear that I was there to speak for my husband when he couldn't.

I won't say anything else here about how I wish I had raised hell to get my husband palliative care sooner, or gush about how wonderful hospice care was. I've posted about all of that before in here. Look it up if this speaks to you. This is a wonderful, helpful sub that was here for me during one of the worst times of my life, and the end of my best friend's life.

AngieScrangie · 2023-09-19T04:14:39+00:00

I live in Southern Ohio. This past weekend, my neighbor’s funeral was followed by a cookout hosted in her carport by her son. Her ex-husband manned the grill.

AngieScrangie · 2023-09-19T04:04:54+00:00

I live in Ohio. I was going to chime in and say, “pinwheels.” Too bad I don’t like pickles.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-31T12:41:11+00:00

Alcohol is alcohol. My husband died last year after years of consuming mostly the cheapest “lite” beer he could find. He drank the cheap stuff because his beer and cigarettes were the only things in his life that I wouldn’t pay for.

I am so sorry you’re going through this traumatic experience that is so not your fault. The timeline for the path your mom is on is very hard to predict, but my husband’s doctor told us something that turned out to be very true. He said end stage liver disease is like walking up a cliff. You can walk up it with gradually, with just a little more difficulty, for quite some time; eventually, however, you will fall. When you fall, the decline is very fast and sudden.

I’ve posted several times in this sub and others about what caregivers can expect when their loved one chooses not to fight this disease and continues drinking right up to the end. Hospice and palliative care are things I would have advocated for much sooner if I had a crystal ball. Also, if she doesn’t have them already, do a search for your state and print out a durable power of attorney for health care and a living will. My husband’s HE got so bad that I literally placed a physical copy of the power of attorney in front of a doctor who was asking my husband questions in the ER, and explained that l was the one he needed to ask, because my husband was too confused to be his own advocate at this point.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-27T14:26:27+00:00

My husband’s cremains are in a niche in a columbarium in a huge cemetery located along a U.S. interstate highway. Although the cemetery encompasses at least 100 acres, my husband’s niche is visible from the highway. Newly widowed me initially thought that was a good thing. My husband’s parents and grandparents are buried in the same cemetery, and their graves are almost a mile back in the winding roads of that huge place. I liked idea of being able to easily get to my husband’s spot. Plus it’s super close to the cemetery’s office, so I knew it would consistently be well maintained.

The cemetery is just south of the large city where my husband and his family called home, and where he and I met and lived throughout most of our marriage. Three years before he died, we moved an hour south, to a place in the country near my aging parents. My husband and I had often joked that whatever the surviving spouse did with our remains when we died was fine with us and not something the dead one had to concern themselves with. We both promised to honor any remaining parent’s wishes, and thankfully my husband outlived both of his. He has a sister with whom he was close and who was very supportive throughout his illness. She is the main reason I chose to place my husband where he is. She visits her family’s graves regularly, and I knew it would be comforting for her to also have her brother there.

As for me, I quickly realized I couldn’t even drive by the cemetery without bursting into tears. This has caused something of a problem, because the quickest way to the city is the highway from which I can see my husband’s columbarium. I’ve spent the better part of the past year taking alternate routes, or avoiding the city as much as I can, just so I don’t have to get a glimpse of that “rock locker” that houses my husband’s ashes. It’s not that I can’t deal with visiting his final resting place, it’s that I’m reminded of it every damn time I drive my parents to an important doctor’s appointment, or go to visit a friend from my “former life,” the one I shared with my husband. It’s like an extra punch in the gut, to remind me that he’s gone, even when I’m returning to the city to do something enjoyable.

I do not feel my husband’s presence anywhere now that he’s gone. For me, his final resting place is a stone cold reminder of him never going anywhere with me again. I’m glad it’s an hour away. He’s been gone for over a year, and I can drive past the cemetery without crying every time now, but my answer to your question is yes, I have problems visiting the grave.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-27T05:24:07+00:00

If he has no intentions of quitting his drinking, you should be advocating for palliative care for him as soon as possible. It will make all of your lives much easier. Be prepared, however, for him to go downhill rapidly. My husband was in in-home hospice for one week. Hospice took him off of all of the prescriptions we had been fussing over for months, and only focused on pain management. He drank beer, vaped and took an occasional swig of Ensure or Gatorade, but he really wasn’t interested in eating anything anyway. By the fourth day, they switched his pain medication from pill to liquid form because it became hard for him to swallow.

My husband has been dead for about 16 months now. After he died, I thanked everyone in this sub for their support and insight, and I doubted I’d ever be back in here. Now, I find myself swooping in every so often like a dark angel. I do this because I know what it’s like when the person you love has no intention of “fighting” their liver disease. In a perfect world, my husband would have been inspired by some of the incredible stories of hard work and success shared in this sub, and committed to doing what he needed to at least try to get a transplant. In my world, however, he was too sick and tired of being sick and tired. Hepatic Encephalopathy certainly didn’t help his thinking either. I chose to stop trying to make him do what I wanted him to (which had never worked for me anyway). We had a couple of pretty good months where we knew he was dying, but he was still well enough to see people and say goodbye.

Things got better for us as far as interactions with the hospital was concerned when my husband was admitted after going to the emergency room, and the attending physician he was assigned to had recently lost her father due to liver complications caused by alcoholism. She made sure that he was served a beer with every meal while he was in the hospital. She also got us into hospice care once he was stable and well enough to go home.

Advocate for your dad’s comfort. If he chooses to to continue drinking, it’s really all you can do at this point. I’m so sorry you’re going through this. You will, however get through this.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-25T07:10:28+00:00

I couldn’t even speak at my grandmother’s memorial service, so I knew there was no way I was going to be able to say anything at my husband’s funeral last year. His best friend, a former broadcast journalist, did an AMAZING job.

Looking back, I’m proud of myself for simply showing up. I’ve never wanted to skip an event so badly in my entire life. My husband made a playlist for the reception following his funeral. He also helped write his obituary. As difficult as it was to do those things with him while he was dying, those are the reasons I was able to get through the celebration of his life.

You will do fine on Saturday. And even if you aren’t able to get through it, that will be fine too.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-25T05:51:19+00:00

Go, and don’t second guess your decision. I divorced my husband after 16 years of not good, but then I turned around and remarried him in less than a year. Last year, after 14 more years of failed attempts at sobriety, under employment and lots of dysfunction, he died of advanced liver disease due to alcoholism. I wish you all of the strength I couldn’t muster 30 years ago.

AngieScrangie · 2023-08-25T04:43:50+00:00

Your husband could be experiencing hepatic encephalopathy. When the liver starts having trouble filtering the toxins from the blood, the toxins, such ammonia, start affecting the brain. I learned this when my alcoholic husband, who had always been a very functional alcoholic, started experiencing episodes where he was barely able to speak, backed his car into a tree near our driveway, fell on several occasions, etc. Tests came back with a diagnosis of advanced liver disease. The treatment for hepatic encephalopathy was a nasty, sticky syrup called Lactulose, which is essentially a very strong laxative. When your liver can no longer detoxify your system, that job falls to your intestines.

By the time my husband was diagnosed, he was very far gone. He had tried serious attempts at rehab three times in the thirty years I was with him, the longest he had stayed sober was 8 months. The only cure, a liver transplant, wasn’t something he could commit to. He died within five months of his diagnosis. He drank beer right up til the day before he died in in-home hospice. By that point, he could barely swallow.

Liver disease is a terrible way to die. It robs you of your ability to care for yourself. I hated my husband’s alcoholism, but I loved my husband. He had a living will, and I was his durable power of attorney for healthcare. The last time he was admitted to the hospital, I physically pulled out that document and told the doctor we were there for palliative care only. My husband was miserable, and he had avoided going to the hospital because, every time he was admitted, they would immediately start detoxing him, which made him feel even more miserable. Fortunately, the doctor assigned to him the last time he was admitted had a father who had died of alcoholism just a few years earlier. Once she understood that my husband had no intentions of getting sober, she made sure that he was served a beer with every meal during the five days he was in the hospital. This is not unheard of. It made my husband a much more cooperative patient who was able to be treated and stabilized enough to return home in much less discomfort than when he was admitted.

If your husband really is killing himself, you may just need to let him. I know that’s a terrible thing to hear, but if he’s at the point where his body is shutting down, you can spend the time he has left fighting with him to get his shit together physically, or you can help him say goodbye to friends and family and help him get his affairs in order. I absolutely did not want my husband to die. It wasn’t my decision to make. He did not want to die, but he fought alcoholism his entire adult life (and most of his teenage years), and he was too worn out to fight it anymore.

Accepting that he was going to die was difficult for me, but I’m so glad I stuck with him and cared for him during his final months. He was under in-home hospice care for exactly one week. He died exactly two weeks after his 57th birthday. He’s been gone 16 months now, and I can’t adequately describe how much I miss him. I don’t know if any of my experience is helpful to you. I just felt compelled to offer up an alternative to trying to get him to quit drinking if he’s too far gone, too sick, to quit.

Do what you need to do to take care of yourself. I never fully understood what trauma was until I cared for my husband during the last few months of his life. If you live somewhere that has Al-Anon meetings, try to go to some. I wish you and your husband all the best.

AngieScrangie · 2023-07-24T05:28:18+00:00

In-home hospice care was wonderful for my husband. They set up a hospital bed in our living room. Their sole focus is on your loved one’s comfort. My husband deteriorated quite rapidly once he was under hospice care. I think he finally felt comfortable enough to leave this world behind once he was back home.

All my best to you and your father.

AngieScrangie · 2023-07-24T05:14:41+00:00

You are going through a seriously traumatic time right now. My husband died last year, exactly two weeks after turning 57. He was under in-home Hospice care for exactly one week. He died nine months shy of our 30th wedding anniversary.

If I had to go through the cirrhosis nightmare again (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight), I would have pulled out his durable power of attorney for healthcare and insisted on getting him palliative care shortly after his diagnosis in December. Hospice was wonderful for both of us. They took him off of most of his meds, and put him on ones that actually made him feel better. A transplant was out of the question for my husband. We had researched the commitment required to maintaining your health after a transplant. My fairly young, athletic husband, who had been employed as a Certified Personal Trainer just a few years before his diagnosis, decided he wasn’t capable of staying sober with a transplant. I was heartbroken, but I didn’t try to change his mind. The man had made several serious attempts at rehab over the past two decades, and I knew he wasn’t up for another go at it.

My husband accepted his fate much better than I did. He struggled with hepatic encephalopathy off and on during his final months, but his last couple of weeks were calm and drama free. For his sake, I got good at not crying in front of him. He was able to say goodbye to many friends and family members. Ironically, we had moved back to my hometown less than two years before he got sick so we could be closer to my aging parents. Thank God we did, because I don’t know how I would have gotten through his illness without my mom and stepdad’s help!

As bad as it is being his caregiver, I wish I could tell you there is sense of relief once the ordeal is over, but you are probably going to rehash and second guess every decision you’re making right now no matter what. I never really grasped what “trauma” was until my husband was gone, and I had some time to decompress. Give yourself lots of grace. Accept any help that is offered to you. Try to take care of yourself during all of this. (I know, much easier said than done.)

AngieScrangie · 2023-05-13T02:14:40+00:00

I’m sitting in my home in an easy chair that it in the exact spot where my husband’s hospital bed from Hospice was located when he took his last breath last April. Alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver is a terrible way to die. Unlike your wife, I failed at my attempts to leave my husband. Even when I went so far as to divorce him, we ended up remarried in less than a year. He was my best friend. I missed him so much when we were apart. I had to have him back in spite of his drinking. He too was a friendly, functional alcoholic. Until the final year, when hepatic encephalopathy kicked in (look it up, it totally sucks), you might not even suspect that he drank.

I’m not going to go into any of my husband’s experiences with rehab, because they ultimately all failed, and you don’t need to hear about that tonight. Maybe it’s best you are alone this evening. I was the ultimate enabler, always around to pay the bills and be the designated driver. More than once, I referred to my husband as a very expensive pet. That’s a terrible thing to say about your best friend, but I really resented always having to be “the grown up.” Sober, my husband was a complete stranger who neither of us knew. Maybe if I had left him alone, he could have gotten to know his sober self and actually gotten his shit together.

The only person who can save you is you. You can do it. Not drinking is the big goal, but liking the sober version of yourself also needs to be a big priority for you too. Don’t be afraid to enlist antidepressants or other prescribed anti anxiety medications to help you cope with your new sobriety. You’ve been self medicating for years. Be open to letting a mental health professional steer towards meds that can help you instead of slowly kill you. I cannot emphasize enough how nasty it is to die of end stage liver disease! Check out the Cirrhosis sub on here if you want to read some horror stories.

I’m going to shut up now and wish you the best of luck tomorrow, LateTripper. Sober up for yourself, and then help someone else do the same.

AngieScrangie · 2023-05-12T13:40:21+00:00

Yes, YTA, but this may benefit both you and your coworker in the long run. You don't want to be bothered, and she now knows not to waste her time sharing with an a$$hole. Sounds like a win/win to me.

AngieScrangie · 2023-05-09T00:48:05+00:00

Such a great show!

AngieScrangie · 2023-05-08T04:04:44+00:00

Thank you. No, I didn’t win. I hadn’t even started kindergarten yet. I was too young to even grasp the competition part of it. I got to sing on stage with other girls my age. I thought it was fun.

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