Local Video
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| Lori's story: In constant fear |
By: By SUZANNE ROOK, Senior Reporter
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Posted: Friday, July 4, 2008 5:07 pm
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Lori Endres blamed her divorce. She blamed teenage angst.
She never thought her son’s reclusiveness, irritability or indifference were anything more serious than a minor bout of depression.
Not until her oldest son called, saying he’d found evidence that his brother was using heroin, did she have any idea what she was up against.
For two years, Lori, who lives in Northfield, has lived on the edge. She has seen her son, Ryan, now 21, through treatment and an overdose that nearly took his life.
The worry, she said, never goes away.
Lori finally found a few days’ peace last month, she said, while Ryan served time in jail for driving with a suspended license. “That’s awful,” she said, “when you sleep well because your son’s going to jail.”
She calls him often these days — just to remind him she loves him — and checks his arms and between his toes for signs he’s using. Getting past the memory of almost losing him — well, that hasn’t happened yet, she said.
Ryan overdosed, he told his mom, in a friend’s car while the two were parked outside the Dundas K-Mart. He remembers easing the needle into a vein and pulling it back out again, said Lori, who believes it was then he blacked out.
Ryan’s companion — Lori refuses to call him a friend — panicked, and drove the unconscious Ryan to Cannon Falls, leaving him with another friend who brought him to the hospital there.
By the time Lori arrived, Ryan’s oxygen saturation was 30 percent, indicating a serious lack of oxygen in the bloodstream.
“I thought he was gone,” she said. “I thought it was over. I was just concentrating on waking him up.”
The next five minutes, Lori said, felt like an eternity. Her son woke up, but seemed disoriented. While he recovered, Lori went through his belongings. In his pants pocket she found syringes and a pipe.
“It makes me sick just thinking of it, it’s so real. Everybody thinks ‘not my kids,’” she said, wiping away the tears. “But when it does happen to you — God. Now I can’t sleep. He could relapse at any time. I’m still afraid I’m going to get that phone call ….”
— Suzanne Rook can be reached at srook@northfieldnews.com or 645-1113. |
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