What would you do?

[Dragonlady]

I struggled about where to put this.

My wife has a sister that is 62 years old. She is a chronic, textbook alcoholic. She had a male partner about the same age that was also alcohol addicted. He dropped dead about five years ago. She has been living alone way up in the sticks and has a job as a computer technition at a medical center. She lived in California for decades but wore our her welcome in the state. Her reputation was so bad that she was on a do not hire list.


When I say an alcoholic I mean clinically to the point of being blind drunk every night. She has some friends a few miles away that had a dinner on Labor Day and she went to their house on a four-wheeler on a dirt road. She left plastered and crashed the four-wheeler destroying her right leg to the point that she has pins in it from her heel to her hip. She had to be airlifted to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center by helicopter. Luckily someone saw her in the road and called an ambulance.

They were supposed to remove the pins today but decided to wait a week. Unbelievably, the hospital is going to release her until they remove the pins. She wants my wife to pick her up and bring her to her house where she can get more booze.

My wife talked to someone at the hospital to make sure it was an official decision and apparently it was. She cannot walk or get around by herself and my wife works. I want my wife to call that hospital and make it clear what the situation is. What would you do?

Talk to her doctor and express your concerns to him. Stress there is no one available to care for her at home. He’s the guy/gal signing her out. The hospital won’t override that decision

My sympathies to you and your wife on having to deal with this horror. She should be in a treatment facility but they won’t take her unless she wants to change her behaviour and it doesn’t sound like she has any interest in sobriety.