It’s 8:30 am this Wednesday morning, and the power just came back on. It’s raining, because of course it is. We live here in Oak Ridge, Tn, one of the three homes of the Manhattan Project, along with Los Alamos New Mexico and Hanford, Washington. I would have voted for Biden in the primary yesterday, but life had other plans. Our 17 year old granddaughter overdosed on fentanyl late Monday night, and I spent Tuesday morning watching them struggle to keep her alive even before they could transport her to an er. She is now critical in ICU, on a ventilator but with little hope. The hospital, East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, has a sterling reputation, will perform a triple organ transplant on a nine year old girl. Later today the decision will be made on unplugging her from life support.
This past Sunday our granddaughter attended the funeral of a friend who died from a fentanyl overdose. I think everyone knows we are in the midst of an opiate epidemic. I have, however, run out of words to say. I will leave one tidbit of information for parents. These young victims tend to share everythingon social media. I learned that our granddaughter boasted of scoring some “blues”, slang for fake light blue OxyContin, also called M-30’s. It is apparently a myth that kids are dying from other drugs unknowingly laced with fentanyl. They know what they are taking. This is beyond my comprehension. Twenty-two years ago we lost our youngest son to heroin. I don’t know how I can go through this again, and so I do what I always do in these situations. I write.