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Showing posts with the label social services

The Cancer Diaries: The Love Monster

Over the years when I looked after Jennette, there were times I wanted to walk out of her life. It was hard watching her self-destruct, difficult to walk into an apartment that was full of paper and ashes and soot. Her friend Lu couldn't believe it when I told her about the hoarding years, the decades Jennette made neat pathways to the bathroom and the bedroom in-between the untouched moving boxes, and the couches overflowing with her dead mother's clothes. "The Jan I knew had an apartment that was neat as a pin," Lu told me. "I just can't believe she lived that way." I knew Jennette for 25 years, and every place she rented looked the same. They were always full of clutter, neat in places, especially the bathroom. The rest of her apartment looked like a bombed out place in Aleppo. The first time it was a problem was when the paramedics came to get Roger who had collapsed on the bed. It took them nearly an hour to get him out of the apartme...