My husband and I have been married for twenty-one years now. But the last three years have not been very easy for us. It has been a long struggle. The children have required a great deal of reassurance.
It all started on a Wednesday in January, three years ago. He had been out chopping firewood for the evening fire. Little did he know that the axe was broken. As he raised the axe to strike the stump, the blade left the handle and went spinning down and crashed his femur.
At the hospital, they put him under a sedative, but the pain was evident on his face. The doctors gave him an oxycontin prescription. He was in the hospital for a month. When he was discharged, he took the prescription home.
At home, he slowly became depressed. He could no longer go to work. He was now confined to a wheelchair. The only times he would seem a little happier was after taking the oxycontin prescription and then he would slowly slide back to depression after the medication’s effects wore off. He began taking a larger dose of the tablets so that the effects could last longer. Each day he took more and more, gradually replacing meals with those tablets.
Money started being a problem, yet he couldn’t do without the expensive medicine. He became lean with each passing day. Talking to him was no good, as he did not listen. When his parents tried to talk to him, he simply nodded in agreement then went back to the drugs as soon as they were out of sight.
Soon after, he started complaining of a backache. We were back to the hospital. Tests showed that he had severe spinal injuries due to abuse of oxycontin. He had to spend another two months hooked to machines. Friends and relatives contributed towards paying the bill, but that was not enough. The health insurance denied liability, claiming that the injury was self-inflicted. Problems piled up as friends gradually became tired of contributing.
The hospital could no longer house him so he was discharged. He took the new medication that was prescribed to reverse the effects of oxycontin. Day by day he regained health even started talking again. Also with the help of an online addiction support group we was able to curtail his addiction. He admitted that he had been aware of the effect oxycontin was giving him, but he couldn’t stop using it. He is ready to get help and I am happy to have a second chance to get my family back together again.
