Been away awhile

[Asphodel]

Hello, all,

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I've not been here for awhile,

My last couple of months have been one of those 'stranger than fiction' stories.........but there weren't any firearms involved, just nearly so.

Should I tell the story here?

cheers

Carla

[freonr22]

Please do

[mosinnagantm9130]

I admit, I'm curious to hear it.

[movie zombie]

PM me, Carla, if doubts...I note all the responses thus far were male........

eta: nothing wrong with male responders except some forget this is the LADIES FORUM and react like it is OT........

[sealocan]

I apologize ladies.
a lot of the times I'm using the Calguns from their iPhone wallpaper /style on my Android smartphone,
and it doesn't show me what particular sub-forum of calguns.net I am on.



if you want me to to delete this post as well let me know.

[movie zombie]

I sort of thought that might be the case, sealocan..........you are welcome to participate but I just wanted to make sure everyone knew which forum they were in as the rules are different than in OT.

so, having written all that: Welcome! Carla is one of my fav calgunners and can more than hold her own re guns, pretty much all things mechanical, and OT responses, LOL!

[freonr22]

my apologies, posted from my phone.

[movie zombie]

not a problem, freonr22.......again, sort of thought you might not know you'd hit into the LF.

[Dano3467]

OK....you have my curiosity up now, continue.

[Glock Girl in CA]

I want to know and I'm a lady in the Ladies Forum!

[Asphodel]

Alright, I'll share the story......understand that its not a mere 'rant' for amusement, but contains very real warning, don't make the mistakes I did.

I'll start a new 'thread' for the story......its a longish story, so for those who don't want to take the time to read through it, the 'abstract' is that I'd allowed my brother to stay at my place after he'd been bankrupted, and he self-destructed into serious mental illness. I allowed myself to be over-stressed by this situation, leading to a physical breakdown and had to be hauled to hospital. Even worse followed.

cheers

Carla

[movie zombie]

dang, Carla. ok now?

[BonnieB]

C, we missed you. Hope things are going better now, and is there anything we can do besides hold your metaphoric hand and send hugs?

[Asphodel]

Hi, mz, Bonnie, and all,

Well, this is quite a story......and its a story of making some 'I really did know better' mistakes, which had serious consequences. Its about my poor brother, five years younger than I, who self-destructed about as horribly as anyone could imagine.

He was an electrical engineer, living in Seattle, and a very good one, with patents to his credit in the analog audio field. He designed fancy sophisticated sound systems for entertainment venues, and did them very well......was a bit famous in his field, until he had some sort of 'breakdown'.....and, as it turned out, for all his ability to design sound equipment, his ability to read a contract was not very good.....in short, he got ripped-off.

He called me, and asked me if I'd provide him some space here in California, til he could get 'back on his feet' in business.......I said 'alright, but there's one catch......no dope and no alcohol here. (his musician friends seemed to want to keep him 'stoned', and I have a really bad attitude about dope and alcohol, having seen what can happen with those.) This was in early 2003

Well, he stayed here for a few months, found a new girl-friend, and bought a little 'travel-trailer' which he put out in my back yard as a 'privacy space'.

He got into a business venture in Marin county, moved up there, and I heard little from him until early 2007, when I got this plaintive phone call........'the venture failed, I'm totally broke, can't pay the rent, no place to stay, can I move back to your place?'

He got into two more business ventures, both of which failed......one should have done well, with dear brother designing fancy ultra-sophisticated sound for a dance venue in S. F......but the owner of the venture, a 'spoiled rich kid' whose family sent him 'mega-dollars' of financing for his venue, self-destructed from an over-dose of something, and the venue shut down, owing my brother many thousands of dollars, which he never received.

After that, he became a bit of a 'recluse', just staying out in his trailer, and not wanting to even talk to other people........and, he was experimenting with a truly strange sort of electronic widget, something called 'cranial electro-stimulation', a sort of quack medical widget, with which the user puts wires on his earlobes or temples, and runs 'pulsating low-voltage dc' power through his head.......no joke, this is real.......

Now, I'll admit.......I thought the idea of running low-voltage power through one's head was 'spooky'.....maybe placebo, maybe dangerous, but, well, if he could build them, and enough people bought them, he was back in business.

I came to believe that these widgets could be dangerous......or maybe it was just an extra-strong experimental one.....the night when he came into my house, with these wires on his head, literally shaking like he was going to go into convulsions, and asked me for a 9v. battery, for all the world like an addict needing a 'fix'. I didn't have any 9v. batteries, so, a moment later, I heard his car leaving.......apparently, shaky as he was, he had to get to a store to get a new battery.

Thats some quality 'spooky'.......but it got worse.....

Apparently, running dc through his head wasn't fixing his issues, so he took to purchasing 'east bloc' psychiatric pharmaceuticals from some outfit in Bulgaria. Yes, its technically illegal to import that class of drugs, so the packages were marked 'electronic components' or 'food supplements'. I've no idea how they got through customs, but he had literally dozens of 'strange and wonderful' drugs, with Russian-language labels. (look on the web-site 'psypharm' for these drugs, and English translations.)

(and, I was seriously getting 'stressed out'.......I had visions of a 'drug raid' and being told that I was equally criminal cos it was my property.......seriously frightening, that.)

He was acting more and more 'withdrawn' and reclusive......he'd come into the house to use the bathroom, but would not reply to a friendly greeting, and took to avoiding me.

When I told him that I wouldn't have illegal drugs on my property, he'd have to either move away or get rid of the drugs, he got a bit hostile, 'you can't tell me what to do'........yuck, more stress...I started calling drug/alcohol rehab facilities, and was told.....you have to convince him to come in voluntarily.

Then, one day, I came home from an errand, to find him 'dazed', in my kitchen, with blood pouring from cuts on his face. He was only barely able to say 'I fall', after several tries. I called dispatch for a medical response, he was transported to hospital, and found to have a cracked cervical vertebra.

Well, the secret was out..........the weirdness of the drug interaction was bad enough, but he'd taken to drinking alcohol, and had been avoiding me, hoping I'd not learn about that.......but he fell and struck his face on the black-top road, next to his car. (I don't like the thought that he might have been planning to be driving somewhere, in that condition.)

He had to spend a month with his neck in a collar device, as the vertebra healed........

Then things turned really, quality 'weird' or 'bizarre'......he took to coming into the house late evening, when I'd be browsing on the computer at my desk, and doing 'irrational rants'........particularly about how his life had gone bad, and he needed to commit suicide. It was even more 'creepy' that he apparently had totally neglected personal hygiene, and 'reeked' of mould, apparently from mould which had over-grown his trailer.

After the last of a couple of those incidents, I couldn't sleep, finally got just a couple hours of sleep, but awakened feeling unable to breathe.....some sort of panic reaction or some such. I called dispatch to have myself transported to hospital, where I was diagnosed with a bit of a cardiac condition.....I'd gone into an intermittent tachycardia.........likely stress/panic attack related. The cardiologist made a very specific point of explaining to me that I must be very careful to avoid any further stress situations.

Alright, I was treated and released. One of our comms people had come to stay with me in hospital, and took me home. Once safely home, I said to myself 'I should have done this two months ago', and wrote dear brother a formal letter 'you are evicted, you have to go away, you've broken your promise to never have drugs or alcohol here, and I don't have to live with the irrational being you have become.'

He came into the house a bit later, apparently wanting to do another irrational rant, and I handed him the letter, saying something to the effect of 'look, I've tried and tried to get you into some treatment programme, but you're just getting more and more irrational and bizarre. I now have my own problems, so you'll have to deal with yours elsewhere, as you may not stay here any longer.......take a few days time to make arrangements, but you must leave here.'

I didn't see him for a day, then, next morning, around 0830-ish, he came into my house, as I was at my desk, and mumbled something about 'I need to go to hospital.'

I was horrified......he was barely able to stand, had difficulty forming words, looked totally disoriented, and reeked of mould........literally acting-out a 'zombie' character from some old horror movie. I called dispatch for a medical response, and fire responded first......they kept him on a step on the back of the fire rig til the ambulance crew arrived and loaded him out.

After he was loaded out, the firefighters told me that he was known to them as a 'frequent flyer' for alcohol over-dose responses.

He was released from hospital later that day.

Just two days later, he did the same thing. only more so, showing up in my house shaking and reeling, gasping for breath, and having great difficulty trying to form words to speak.....three or four nonsense syllables before each word.......and the reek of mould was about the same, just horrible......he had literally turned himself into a zombie.

He looked so much worse that I said to him 'I'm not waiting for a response, get in the Rover, I'm taking you to hospital *now*.' I had sort-of 'steer' him to the vehicle, and lost no time in getting him to hospital, wondering whether he might really have taken some combination of drugs as a suicide attempt.

When I got back home, I was well and truly 'stressed-out'.....and this had to be the last time.....I really had 'had it'.

After resting awhile, I called Adult Protective Services and asked for a social worker, to have him 'committed'......altho I had to be careful to use the now politically correct phrase 'evaluated for placement in a residential facility'.

I gave the social worker all the 'gory details', and he agreed, a 'residential facility' was appropriate......but.....he might not have a space available.

So........now, I can only guess......the social worker at APS likely called the lead social worker at Regional, who....again, at a guess.....told my brother 'your family wants you committed'.

I had asked to be called if he was released from hospital.....but didn't get a call.......

About 1930-ish, I was at my desk, on a fairly important phone call, when dear brother, who had been treated and released, came into the house by the side door, walked up behind me, and grabbed my neck with both hands to strangle me, saying 'This is what you get for what you did to me. Your guns won't save you now.'

Yes......it really happened.....just like that.....total surprise.....

I was in some sort of 'shock' for some seconds.....then reached up with my left hand to grab a finger of his right hand to bend it backwards, trying to loosen the choke-hold so I could breathe.

At some point in all this I remembered that I still had the cordless phone in my right hand, so I hit 'off' to drop the call I was on, then 'on' for dial tone, then 911 for dispatch. I had a flash of memory about Tricia telling people 'always get an incident on the dispatch tape if possible'.

When dispatch answered, and I croaked something to the effect of 'I need a S. O. response', my brother let go of me, and ran away.

Rather serious stress situation, that.......and after the cardiologist was so very emphatic about how I mustn't get into any stress situations again, lest really bad things happen.

Anti-climax......S. O. on scene, arrested dear brother, questioned me about the attack, made me tell the story three times for their little recording widget, filled out a 'restraining order' document for me, and took him away.

I got lucky.....he was able to 'post bail' and be let out of jail the next day, then came back here......but I wasn't alone, I had a friend here with me, so he didn't get to do any revenge, but just hid in his trailer. I called the S. O. to have him removed, which they did.

I was pretty much 'dysfunctional' for awhile, am beginning to feel a little better now......cardiology appointment today, just an electrocardiography procedure ( a sonogram view of one's own beating heart is quite an experience, for someone who knows nothing of such things) The cardiologist will have things sorted in a couple of days' time, and I'll likely be put on some sort of medication regimen.

Well, there's the 'stranger than fiction' story.........whatever pulsating dc power does to one's brain (it must do something, the way he was almost convulsing that one time), plus a mixture of eastern bloc psych drugs, plus, apparently, half a bottle of vodka at a go......result, well, hard to describe, but sure looked like he was as close to being a 'real' zombie as its possible to be.........with that smell of 'the mould of the grave', that was about as close to the horror movie 'undead' as I'd ever care to see.

Now.......I 'got lucky' on another level......I didn't 'get my name in the papers'........but it was an 'almost'......had he not let go of me when he heard dispatch come on the phone, he was so very wrong about 'your guns won't save you now'.........since I occasionally have a rat try to invade my kitchen, my 'close to hand' revolver is set up with a 'rat-shot' or 'snake-shot' round coming first under the hammer. If there'd been no other option, I'd have put the muzzle up against his wrist and fired.....the light load and powder burn would surely have disabled that hand, and kept me from being strangled.

cheers

Carla

[Gene1986]

I'm late to work cuz of your story but very bizarre.