Early December 2012

As the hospital worked feverishly to release my brother to an off site rehabilitation facility I was working equally as hard to find out all about these places and their ratings to make sure that he was not going into some seedy place. I was given a list of all of the places that his insurance would allow him to go to and it boiled down to one place in Greenwich which was 19.5 miles one way to visit and another about 25 miles one way.

I chose the lesser of the two distances and as it turned out it was the only one of the two at that time that had an available “bed”.

On December 6th Tommy was moved from the hospital up to what we nicely called “the Woods”.

There was really nothing happy about this place, albeit there were people there that were in what I deemed to be much worse shape than him.

I made every available effort to see him and to bring him things that would afford him the comfort of some sort of normalcy. Hell, I even brought him Mommy!

He made every effort to be difficult in accepting his new surroundings. He was demanding (I want this water, can you get me this or that) and when I complied and brought him the very stuff he wanted, he would not use what I brought him.

BUT, I knew he was having a hard time. I mean who wouldn’t and I kept praying for him and asking for prayer on all different levels.

Every molecule of his life going forward was now changed or going to have to change.

He could no longer drink. It would kill him. That meant he would have to face his problems head on.

He would be under constant Dr.’s care and need to take medication for his liver. That would require him admitting to EVERYONE in his circles that he was an alcoholic.

He knew that when he was released from the “Woods” he would be under total scrutiny at home – FROM EVERYONE. MY BROTHER HATED WHAT HE CALLED BEING “MICRO-MANAGED”.

I really tried my hardest to try to get him to be positive for everyone sake.

My brother had one incident where they thought he was having a seizure and they had to take him to a neighboring hospital. He was in there from a Monday to Thursday and they found nothing wrong. He was taken back to the “woods” and I continued to be his best ally……………..