What Makes a Person Take Another´s Life?

         A 44-year-old man drugged and shot his wife, 14-year-old son, mother, and mother-in-law while they were still asleep in their beds. Afterwards, he shot himself. Apparently, he owned a company and with it a debt which summed up to a grand total of 30 million reais. Some other facts that were mentioned in the report was that he shot each family member in the face. However, an intriguing fact was that he allowed the live-in maid to escape. Why did he not kill her, too? Why did he leave a witness? To no vail, because she was not able to fill in the blanks as to why he had done this. Another interesting fact was that his father-in-law had recently passed away, so the mother-in-law was staying with them during this period of mourning.

         Was it an act of selfishness or kindness?

         Analyzing the situation coldly, if he had only killed himself, the family would be left to deal with all the financial issues. The wife would discover that he was a big failure. The son would think he was a coward for having taken his own life instead of just facing the problem. To spare his family from all this pain, by killing everyone, he committed an act of kindness.

         Was it an act of love?

         It must have pained him to shoot each family member. According to the police, his son was shot last because the father´s body was found on the floor next to his bed. According to the caretaker, the bullet shots were one after the other except the last one which happened a few minutes after the 4^th shot. Could this mean that he was suffering and crying for having just shot his son? Could there have been a second of regret before taking his own life? Maybe fear overtook him.

         He must have been planning this for quite some time. Because he had drugged all the family members to make sure they were asleep while he executed them and also so that they wouldn´t suffer during the execution. Perhaps he added the drug to the drinking water, but how was he sure that all of them would drink it? I suppose that they had made a toast, so that he could be sure they´d drink it. He could even have put it in their food, this way everyone would eat it together at dinner time and he would keep his eye on who was eating. However he did it, it worked because he had to go from room to room, shot and no one woke up from the noise – except for the live-in maid. This, still remains a mystery and no conclusive answers have been given.

         The police stated that they had spoken to other family members – an uncle and a cousin – who had said that they hadn´t noticed a change in his behavior. They mentioned that they were a happy family who always traveled and enjoyed their time together.

         No suicide letter has been found up to the present moment.

 

Written: April 27, 2022

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Dealing with Neuropathic Pain

 

One never knows what this is like, until one has it. Sometimes people look at you and start to doubt whether you are really in pain because you're always smiling and never complaining. Neuropathic pain is something connected to your emotional state. It can be sequelae from illness which is what you're stuck with even though you have healed from the illness to some extent.

Sometimes this pain can be twenty-four seven. In the end you kind of get used to it because it's there but there are so many other things going on that it stays in the back of your mind.  However, when you undergo a stressful situation, the pain that was around rated 3 out of 10 goes to a bursting 15. This is the kind of pain that even the clothes on your body bothers you and for sure you don't want to deal with other people’s drama drives you mad.

Last week I had one of these crises. Thankfully for medication, rest and sleep, the pain died down in four days. Now you might think that four days is a long time and it is don't get me wrong; nevertheless, you know that each day, thanks to the medication, the numbers start decreasing and then finally you can get the pain down to its usual 3.

The more people ask you how you are doing; if you are better; if the pain has decreased, the more irritating it is because it is something that you simply cannot control. It's something that takes you out of your comfort zone and makes you feel as if you were worthless, good for nothing, going to die due to the never-ending torture your body is being put through during that period of time.

 Even though you know that this pain comes from an emotional state, load of stress that you have been accumulating for a period of time, it hits you like the tidal wave or tsunami if you prefer to choose the latter. When you least expect it, the pain that was 3 is much higher than a 10. Once I asked my neurologist how they rated these numbers; exactly what that number related to in pain. He answered that a 10 was when I wanted to hit my head on the wall because the pain was so unbearable. I beg to differ with this number because 10 is not that grand. A 15 is when you want to be alone otherwise, you're going to smack somebody.

Pain relief medication does work. Breathing techniques do work. Watching a comedy series works. Reading a good book works. Being alone and not doing anything time related works.  Therefore, if you suffer from neuropathic pain, try to rest, and wait for it to die down before you can go back to your daily routine.

To those people who don't understand, I only hope that you never have to suffer from this.

Written:  May 2, 2022

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