All posts tagged family

My Sister

by Drey on September 22, 2008 in Life with 1 Comment

As a few of you know, I went to Ohio a little while ago to see my sister Vanessa in the hospital. She is dying from complications from diabetes. While there is no date set, she has a few months left to live and I won’t ever see her again. The doctors have never seen a case of gastroparesis as bad as hers. Basically her digestive system has stopped working. She is hooked up to a bunch of tubes for nutrition, medication and excretion. She was in constant pain and, for whatever fucking reason, is on enough painkillers for 20 people (as estimated by the doctor in the new hospital). She is addicted to those narcotics now and it would take a month to wean her off. She could go through a month of agony to gain some mental coherence, or stay in her current relatively pain-free state, but not know what day it is.

She has three young daughters who live with my mother. Her plan is to take care of them as she has been for the past year or so. That is a whole other issue.

I don’t want my sister to die. But she has been sick for a long time and everything has been tried to save her. She doesn’t have a high quality of life right now. She’s been in bed for so long that she can no longer walk.

I’m doing okay. This is always in the back of my mind until something brings it to the forefront. I don’t really want this to be about me. I just wanted to update those of you who were following this and let the rest of my friends know the deal.

Untitled Monserrat Project

by Drey on December 7, 2007 in Something Real with 2 Comments

I’m currently in the Self-Expression and Leadership Program, the third and final course in Landmark’s curriculum for living. The main focus of the program is to create a project that inspires you and has an impact in one of your communities or the world in general. They encourage you to think big and take on something unlike anything you’ve ever done before.

I looked at the communities in my life and I really struggled to find something where I could do a big project. There were some obvious things that I was probably going to do anyway, but nothing that really jumped out at me and lit me up.

Then it hit me. Single mothers are really important to me as they have had a big impact in my life. I wanted to do something that would empower, recognize and perhaps even aid them. Then I thought about how much I love movies. So I decided that I would enlist 10 women filmmakers to contribute or create a short 5-20 minute film on a subject that empowers women. The idea would be to have a screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. So the project would end up empowering and recognizing the filmmakers and single mothers as well.

I need to see if there are any sort of national organizations that somehow benefit or provide aid for single mothers. And I need to start talking to filmmakers, women’s groups and the like.

And I need a good name for the project.