Posted by Gracie2 on October 4, 2002, at 2:57:31
In reply to Re: I don't know how old your kids are..., posted by lawrence s. on October 2, 2002, at 21:37:47
My God, how awful for you, how terrible for your children.As miserable as you are, your first responsibility is your children. Even though your wife is a "functioning" alcoholic, able to hold down a job despite her drinking, she isn't a responsible adult while she's drunk. She has no business driving in that condition, much less with your kids in the car. Of course you know that, but as long as you allow her to get away with it, you're not really considering what could happen. Not really.
Awhile back, I was working the graveyard shift at a semi-rural hospital in Illinois. Not a busy place, lots of back roads, some farm accidents. They called me in X-Ray to let me know that some critical patients had arrived after a motor vehicle accident. I ran to the ER, but I couldn't see the patients for the all the ER staff that had swarmed around the stretchers. I turned around and asked one of the ambulance paramedics what had happened - he was leaning over,hanging onto a cabinet, coughing and gagging. This was an experienced paramedic.
Later on I learned the whole story. The family -
husband, wife, kids, and a cousin - had been on a float trip, the adults drinking all day. The father, who was driving, pulled out onto the highway right in front of a huge truck hauling a load of gravel at 60 mph. The father lived, and he has to live with that. The paramedics had to pick up the pieces of the mother and the cousin and put them in buckets. The kids were transported to our hospital, but they didn't look like kids anymore. They looked like piles of ground hamburger. The little boy, who was about 4,
had a large section ripped from his lower abdominal area - his genitals were gone. He died
before medivac could transport him to a better-equipped hospital. The little girl survived - at least initially - despite the most horrible injuries imaginable.You cannot expose your own children to this kind of risk. You can't continue to hope and pray that
your children will arrive safely when your wife is driving. You can't stop her drinking, but you can try to minimize the damage that she's doing to your kids.
-Gracie
poster:Gracie2
thread:30678
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20020924/msgs/30798.html