11. One-Hundred Pound Baby

Summary

Blink | Jake Haendel's Story

Episode 11: One-Hundred Pound Baby
Release Date: May 18, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 11 of Blink | Jake Haendel's Story, listeners delve deeper into Jake Haendel's tumultuous journey battling a terminal progressive disease. This installment, titled "One-Hundred Pound Baby," explores Jake's relentless pursuit of independence, the complexities of his relationships with his father Daron, and the unsettling transformation of his wife Ellen into an increasingly controlling caretaker.

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Jake's Fight for Independence

Jake's determination to regain autonomy after his diagnosis is a central theme of this episode. Facing a grim prognosis, he refuses to return to Tewksbury State Hospital despite the medical community's reservations.

[03:10] Jake Handle: "I had this complex surgery which brought me into Mass General. They wanted to send me back to Tewksbury. I was like, no, absolutely not. Hell no."

To leave the hospital, Jake had to secure 24-hour care, a challenge exacerbated by the COVID-19 lockdown. He turned to non-medical aides, leveraging the availability of individuals from the hospitality and retail sectors who were temporarily out of work.

[04:08] Jake Handle: "I reached out to about 12 other people. They all made certain dollar amount commitments and it was a little scrappy, but we got the money in the account."

Eventually, Jake transitions to living independently in a Cambridge apartment, marking a significant milestone in his fight for self-sufficiency.

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Rebuilding the Relationship with His Father, Daron

Jake's relationship with his father, Daron, undergoes significant strain and eventual reconciliation. Initially distant due to misunderstandings surrounding Jake's diagnosis and care, the two work to mend their bond.

[09:01] Jake Handle: "Daron was helping me write letters in the kind of infancy, mer recovery or email. And I was, like, skeptical, but I knew I wanted to. I just needed time."

Their efforts to communicate lay the groundwork for a collaborative approach to Jake's care, emphasizing mutual respect and understanding.

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Ellen's Increasing Control and Suspicions

Ellen, Jake's wife, initially appears as a steadfast caregiver. However, her behavior gradually shifts, revealing a more controlling and suspicious demeanor that strains her relationships with both Jake and Daron.

[14:29] Daron: "She was a decorated Veteran. A marine who saved her comrades. A hero."

Despite her heroic facade, Ellen's actions become increasingly erratic. She installs surveillance devices in Jake's hospital room, ostensibly to monitor his condition but ultimately to exert control.

[32:16] Jake Handle: "I started hearing her talk to herself... I think it was for her in control."

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The Strain on Relationships and Ellen's Behavior

As Ellen's control intensifies, tensions escalate between her and Daron. Disagreements over Jake's care and Ellen's invasive actions lead to frequent conflicts and mutual distrust.

[28:15] Daron: "Either she's completely unaware of what she's doing, or she's doing this on purpose. And I just felt really uncomfortable."

Ellen's constant surveillance and manipulation create an environment of fear and uncertainty for Jake, who begins to question her motives and the reality of his situation.

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The Unraveling and Jake's Recovery

Jake's growing awareness of Ellen's manipulation coincides with subtle improvements in his health, suggesting that his mental resilience plays a crucial role in his survival.

[16:23] Corinne Vien: "He's the only known survivor of stage four of acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy. So perhaps Jake's sheer mental strength and determination, coupled with his wife's belief that he was indeed still conscious and had a chance to recover, truly saved him."

However, as Jake piecemeal reconstructs his fractured reality, he uncovers unsettling truths about Ellen's intentions and actions, leading to a profound sense of betrayal.

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Conclusion

Episode 11 of Blink | Jake Haendel's Story presents a harrowing exploration of trust, control, and the human spirit's capacity to endure under unimaginable pressure. As Jake navigates the treacherous waters of his illness and personal relationships, listeners are left questioning the true nature of the people closest to him. The episode culminates in Jake beginning to piece together the disturbing possibility that Ellen may have played a role in his prolonged suffering, setting the stage for further revelations in his survival story.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jake Handle [03:10]: "I had to find an hourly rate for 100 and change hours. I reached out to Eli... I'm gonna get better. So we reached out to about 12 other people."

• Daron [16:20]: "She was talking at me and kept talking. But meanwhile her shirt is like on open so, you know, I can see her breasts. And even more than that... is why is she doing this?"

• Jake Handle [25:12]: "I think it was for her in control. But at the time, it didn't... I was trying to do whatever would make her feel okay."

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Blink | Jake Haendel's Story continues to unravel the complexities of survival against all odds, offering listeners a gripping narrative filled with emotional depth and shocking twists.

Transcript

[Corinne Vien]

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[Daron]

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[Corinne Vien]

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[Daron]

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[Corinne Vien]

Visit mailchimp.com this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Knowing you could be saving money for the things you really want is a great feeling. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Blink is intended for mature audiences as it discusses topics that can be upsetting such as drug use, sexual assault, and emotional and physical violence. Content warnings for each episode are included in the Show Notes. Resources for drug addiction and domestic abuse can be found in the Show Notes and on our website blinkthepodcast.com the testimonies and opinions expressed by guests of the show are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of myself or affiliates of this podcast. Jake was finally starting to see things more clearly about his relationship, about the people in his life, and maybe even about himself. Some truths had slipped past him, or maybe he just wasn't ready to face them before. But now there was no choice. He was determined to move forward, focused on recovery, rebuilding and reclaiming what was his. But that also meant asking hard questions. Who could he really trust? And what part did everyone else play in the mess that nearly destroyed him? At the time of his divorce, Jake was still a patient at Tewksbury State Hospital and he was traveling to Spalding for outpatient therapy. But if you remember from the very first episode, I met Jake in the elevator of our Boston apartment building, not a hospital. So what happened in between? How did Jake go from being completely dependent on others to living on his own and fighting for his independence?

[Jake Handle]

Jake was desperate not to go back to Tewksbury and us basically having to convince the medical community that he'd be okay. I wanted to get out of there. I had this complex surgery which brought me into my Sharon Oral Mass General wanted to send me back To Tewksbury. I was like, no, absolutely not. Hell no. The only way they would let me leave to go back to the community is if I was able to find my own aides because I needed 24 hour care. So luckily this was during COVID lockdown. So all these people that worked in hospitality and retail were kind of like out of work. So I was taking these facetime interviews from my hospital vet, Ms. General.

[Corinne Vien]

So to be clear, not everyone was a trained medical professional, and it was.

[Jake Handle]

Just like people that I kind of vibed with.

[Corinne Vien]

I asked Jake how many aides he had and did it take a few people before he finally found his core group?

[Jake Handle]

I only had four. Those four were my people. I know a lot of people get ones that they only have for like four days and have to find a new one. I had four. Two in the day, two for overnights. So, yeah, my doctor, good old Dr. Levinson was like, I will only sign off on this if you have money for the apartment. Money in the account in the state will only pay 58 hours a week. And forgive me on the math, but 7 times 24 is a lot. So I had to find an hourly rate for 100 and change hours. I reached out to Eli. Eli was like, this is obviously a large amount of money. He's like, how long do you think this will take you? And I'm like, honestly, I don't know. I'm like, but I'm gonna get better. Give me like four or five months and I won't need 20 for a care. And he's like, you know, what if it takes longer? And I'm like, put me back in a nursing home. I'm gonna get better. So we reached out to about 12 other people. They all made certain dollar amount commitments and it was a little scrappy, but we got the money in the account. We found an apartment in Cambridge. It's amazing how many places claim that they are ada capable. They can handle disabled people.

[Daron]

This place was totally.

[Jake Handle]

No, except that he was still completely bedridden, so it didn't matter. It wasn't like he could go to the bathroom anyway, you know, get in a wheelchair and wheel over. He couldn't do any of that stuff. Imagine you have a newborn baby. Everything you have to do for them. Getting me up, getting me dressed, putting on my socks, brushing my teeth, feeding me, transferring me onto the toilet, even wiping my ass, showering me, picking me up off the ground when I made boo boo, which only happened once or twice, as well as like grocery shopping, taking me to medical appointments, doing my physical and occupational and speech therapy, homework, scheduling. If I had to write something down, they'd write something down for me. Recording videos that you may have seen on my social media, everything. I was bedridden and I was out of the hospital. I could finally get this next level of care and guess what? I came off 24 care. I did that in four months. I just knew what would happen. I knew that dollars were ending. I was like, I gotta do this. Not that I was not motivated without that, but you know, it's like do or die. It's always been do or die for me.

[Corinne Vien]

If we haven't already learned this about Jake so far, it's very clear that he's willing to do whatever it takes. But as Eli mentioned, this place was not ADA compliant and in a very Jake fashion, with a lot of serendipity and worst luck, best luck moments. He found our apartment complex which would become the place that he would eventually live independently.

[Jake Handle]

So I'm on the partner shuttle bus which runs in between mgh, Ms. General, Brigham Spaulding, and the bus breaks down and I get out and it was the first time I kind of looked around, I see this high rise and it says, move in today, three months free. And I was like, free? That sounds really good. So I was like, will me in there. We go in there still COVID lockdown. Bunch of people in mass, they're very happy. They're like, what do you need? And I'm like, accessible and affordable. And this place didn't look affordable at all. He's like, well, we got one place. It's got kind of a bad view. I'm like, again, I haven't showered in like three months. And he's like, well, you smell great. And I'm like, thanks. And he showed me this place. It worked. It turned out with the three months free to be cheaper than the inaccessible spot I was paying for. So it was like a no brainer. I just moved here and that's how I ended up here and how you saw me shaking like a leaf in the elevator.

[Corinne Vien]

Clearly meant to be, and it's proved to be the perfect place for Jake to rebuild his life. Which, speaking of one of the more complicated relationships Jake carried with him into this new chapter of his life, was with his father, Durone. At one point, Jake genuinely believed Ellen's accusation that Daron tried to strangle her. But Jake later learned that this case was dismissed. The damage this caused to Jake and Daron's relationship, it just couldn't Be undone overnight. Rebuilding trust would take time. So how did they find their way back to each other?

[Jake Handle]

Eli was helping me write letters in the kind of infancy, mer recovery or email. And I was, like, skeptical, but I knew I wanted to. I just needed time. He was very respectful of that, you know, regardless what he was feeling inside. I think the first time I saw him was at Mass General Hospital, and he just came to visit me. I just felt. I felt kind of uncomfortable. There was this, like, awkwardness because I knew, or I kind of knew what he was going through, like, watching me die. I could only imagine. His wife died, his dog died. But, yeah, just took it slow. And it was like, you know, felt like we kind of picked up where we left off in a way, and not really going into any details of, like, that was really hard watching you storm or are you divorced or any of that. It was just like, how you been? You know, casual talk, normal talk.

[Corinne Vien]

I asked how they reached this point, the point where Daron felt ready to open up about everything that he'd witnessed during Jake's decline. When did he finally feel safe enough to share his perspective?

[Jake Handle]

I was working on a book proposal. I was just, like, doing interviews like this with people, and I was like, hey, dad, can we put on the GoPro and let me just, like, ask you some things? And he was like, yeah. And that was the first time on a live recorded interview we really went into it, and I'm just kind of like, okay. He never pried and felt the need to be like, and this happened and this and this. That's just who he is. He's not trying to overwhelm people's stuff. And probably he's like, when my son's ready to ask me about whatever, I'll tell him. And that's how it went.

[Corinne Vien]

Daron began to unveil more to Jake, sharing things he had observed before Jake's diagnosis, things he'd kept to himself out of fear. Jake had been newly in love, talking about marriage and starting a family, and Daron didn't want to get in the way. But now, with time and reflection, those conversations have grown deeper, and they're still happening to this day. Take the sample collection at the hospital, for example. Dorone had no idea it happened more than once. He found out while listening to this podcast, he had believed that he was giving consent for one single collection, a chance to preserve the possibility of Jake becoming a. A father. But to hear that Jake's body was put through that repeatedly and in different rooms and different wings that Was devastating. Daron was only trying to do what he thought Jake would have wanted. And one of those things was making sure that Jake's wife was by his side in what everyone believed were Jake's final moments. In fact, when Jake was first diagnosed, Daron spoke with Ellen. He tried to give her perspective what it's like to care for someone who's dying. It's something Daron, heartbreakingly, had already done. Twice.

[Daron]

She went to see some old boyfriend, whatever, disappeared, trying to figure out whether she's going to stay married to him or not. She shows back up. I took her out for breakfast and we had a chat. And, you know, his wife is talking about dumping him, and all I could think of is, he, he wants her, so how do I make her stay for him to make him happy?

[Corinne Vien]

Daron knew that there was a chance Ellen wouldn't stay. So much had already happened. She was young, and in this marriage that was already facing many challenges, and now this. But Dorone gave it his best shot.

[Daron]

The talk I gave her was meant to, like, kind of pump her up for doing the right thing. I told her, look, you know, I don't know if you've ever had to take a care of somebody or been close to somebody dying. I've done it twice. He is your husband. Part of you loves him. I understand you're angry with him, but maybe let the anger go for now. You know that the chances of him surviving this are really poor. And all I know is that if.

[Corinne Vien]

If.

[Daron]

If you leave now and just take off, you might really regret it later. If you take care of somebody all the way to the end of their life, it'll be like, probably, I'd say the greatest thing that you can say that you've actually done for someone. And I left at that and realized that she was going tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. Yeah, Everybody's gonna think how great I am. And I'll tell you the truth. Part of it was a little selfish on my part because I just couldn't find fathom how the hell am I going to take care of them all by myself? Maybe, you know, between the two of us, maybe we can make it work. Over time, I just saw more and more kind of horrible stuff. But I know that Jacob is in love with her. You know, I didn't want to wreck it.

[Corinne Vien]

And we all know how this ended up. The two of them working together to care for Jake and make decisions for Jake. Until it wasn't the two of them. It was just the one. Ellen.

[Daron]

She was a decorated Veteran. A marine who saved her comrades. A hero.

[Corinne Vien]

She was stoic, modest, tough. Someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't.

[Jake Handle]

I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying. This is a story all about trust.

[Daron]

And about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh.

[Corinne Vien]

I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying.

[Daron]

Listen to Deep Cover the truth about Sarah. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[Corinne Vien]

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[Daron]

She was constantly talking about herself, how she does so much and this and that, but she's sticking to me with most of the work, you know, and then she'd disappear for hours and, you know, I gotta do this. And then she come back and then she criticized everything I've done, that sort of thing.

[Corinne Vien]

No doubt. Everyone believes Ellen took incredible care of Jake, and many attribute her dedication with his survival. And as a reminder, he's the only known survivor of stage four of acute toxic progressive leukoencephalopathy. So perhaps Jake's sheer mental strength and determination, coupled with his wife's belief that he was indeed still conscious and had a chance to recover, truly saved him.

[Daron]

Should be like the sing songy kind of banal chat about how wonderful everything is. And, you know, and Jacob looks like he's doing better today, don't you think? What do you think? And I'm thinking to myself, no, he's going downhill fast every day. It's, you know, I don't know whether it's wishful thinking. You know, I'm trying. Yeah, maybe a little better, maybe.

[Corinne Vien]

And maybe by Ellen convincing herself that Jake was doing better, she was convincing Jake too. But there was still this piece that many of the people interviewed, both those who agreed to have their voices on this podcast and those who are still waffling with the idea, many remember these chunks of time where Ellen would disappear when Jake was in hospice. It would be for hours with Jerone Having no idea where she was, which makes sense as their interactions were becoming more and more tense by the day. And when Jake was in the hospital, sometimes it would be for a week or more, according to people's memories. But as Jake started to reflect on the things that he'd observed and as Dorone and others shared memories with him, things started to take shape. One of these early instances happened in the hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital. It was New Year's Eve just before Jake was put on hospice.

[Jake Handle]

It was the New Year's Eve wedding anniversary. He won't make it till the new year. I remember getting a New Year's hat put on me and kazoos decorations.

[Corinne Vien]

When Jake began to recover, a photograph was shared with him showing this exact moment.

[Jake Handle]

And then my mother in law sent me this picture and I was like, wow.

[Corinne Vien]

The picture appears to have been taken via Snapchat. Ellen sits over Jake, a kazoo in her mouth and black and gold feather boa around her neck. Jake lays in the bed, the feeding tube in his throat in a Snapchat filter of a New Year's hat with fireworks and sparkles dances around his head. Jake had a positional eye gaze at this time and he was not able to control where he looked. But the camera is placed just so, so that Jake is looking directly into the camera. Not long after this memory, Jake was put on hospice, cared for at his father Daron's home. With Daron and Ellen as his primary caretakers.

[Daron]

Ellen decides that we're going to have a welcome home party for Jacob. He's coming home in the ambulance. It was my job to go to McDonald's to get him a McFlurry. I don't know how she gave it to him. I think. Did she pump it into his feeding tube? I don't. Trying to remember. Didn't make any sense. Or did I get it for her. But yeah, I remember that was my task. Then I'm thinking to myself, what is this ridiculous nonsense? The guy's lying here home in hospital, you're having a party.

[Jake Handle]

I remember getting me into the house up these icy stairs. I mean I almost got dropped and rolled out of the gurney and I'm on this ventilator and there's like, I don't know, 30 of her friends, a couple of the bridesmaids from my wedding were there and you know, I can't move or signal. I'm in this breathing machine. I think it was a sad, uncomfortable and confusing vibe in there. I don't know how I felt. I felt like why is there a party happening? I just want to die and go away.

[Corinne Vien]

Jake's move to hospice would result in Dorone and Ellen spending more and more time together. Dorone and Ellen began to bicker and fight. And one of the issues that arose time and time again was about the house. Jerone had initially told Jake and Ellen that they could pay rent and those rent payments would work towards eventually buying the home from him. A few payments had been made, and derone remembers a lot of discussions around this and other items that Jerome owned. And this sort of division between what Jerome owned and what Ellen had the right to, it became this sort of contentious and regular argument.

[Daron]

I had several cars in the driveway. I had an old Lexus that Jake was driving around a bunch. I had an electric car that didn't get very good mileage and I had my wife's Nissan anyway, so I was letting her have access to a vehicle.

[Corinne Vien]

Jerome tells me about Jake's first storming episode while at home on hospice.

[Daron]

She called for an ambulance and they took him right into to Boston to Mass General. And I get a call from her and she says, jake's at Mass General. I said, do you need a ride? She goes, no, I'm already on my way. And she hangs up. I drive in, I get there and I'm heading up to fourth floor Lunder Neural icu. And all of a sudden I'm surrounded by security. I don't know if you've been to Mass General, but there's security guys wear these nice suits. They look like Secret Service agents with a earpiece in. And I'm not allowed in to see Jake. I'm like, I'm his father. They said, I'm sorry, you're not allowed. His wife says, you're not allowed in. So, well, I said, yeah, two can play this game. No more car for you.

[Corinne Vien]

That did not go over well. And other people were brought in to help mediate.

[Daron]

My stepdaughter wound up negotiating the deal. I'll let her use the car and I can go see Jake.

[Corinne Vien]

Eventually, Daron would not be allowed to see Jake. And even if he tried to sneak in, it would have been nearly impossible.

[Jake Handle]

To not get caught when she wasn't in my hospital room. Regardless of where that happened to be, she would set up cameras where she could do check ins. So I was aware she was doing Amazon and Echo. So like on the Echo shows, they have cameras where you can do drop ins. So she was able to hit a button on her app and it would open up the camera. Into my room and a little red light would turn on and it freaked the nurses out. And then I also heard there was some nanny spy cams, kind of like teddy bear cameras, which is a no, no in hospital worlds.

[Corinne Vien]

When Blink first launched, we held a launch party in Boston, inviting many of Jake's friends, family, professionals, nurses, and doctors who've helped him along the way. One of the nurses here shared with me how spooky and weird it was to be watched through these devices. And I will say this story was told by many as an example of the need for control. And when I first heard the story a few years ago, I thought it was totally crazy. But after a hospital stay with my infant where I had my husband bring in some extra monitoring devices for my own peace of mind, I don't think it's crazy, but perhaps all of you listening think I'm also crazy for that too.

[Jake Handle]

I heard her speaking. I wasn't sure if it was a teddy bear or the Amazon devices, but I would hear her voice be like, don't do that or he needs this or like, whatever. And it would scare the nurses. And there was a button you could hit for like, do not serve. And they started to do that when they would hear these voices. And I just remember her coming in the hospital and kind of like freaking out on them never to touch that button. It didn't feel concerning in that moment at all. It was just like I always thought going through that it was for my best interest, but nowadays I don't think it was for me. I think it was for. For her in control. But at the time, again, it. It didn't. Yeah, I don't know. I'm still like fucked up in my own head because I'm like, did I think this way because I was so blinded by the love I fell for her at that time or what? But yeah, it was always like I was trying to do whatever would make her feel okay.

[Corinne Vien]

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[Daron]

I couldn't allow myself to feel much of anything. It was impossible. I mean, nobody could come to my home because she didn't want anybody. Everything had to be her way. And that's kind of caused some friction because she would do stuff and then she'd call me an idiot because I didn't wasn't either doing it the way she wanted it done or she hadn't told me how she wanted it done and assumed that I should just know. But she had this thing about making sure that his urine was not very yellow. It should only look a little yellow. It shouldn't look like a bright yellow. We had this big syringe. He'd say, now you fill this up and you push in three things of water. I thought that's an awful lot of water. The feeding and the. And all the water that she would pump, it was way too much. And I said, are you sure? She go, yes, I know she's like adamant about, okay, I can't argue with her. And Jake told me he was. It was like I thought I was going to explode. Literally. I was like, oh my God. And I'm like trying to read his eyes. I said, I don't think he likes this. I'll slow it down. I go every now and again I go, nah, I'm not giving him this water. She just made me self conscious and I just felt like I was a person who didn't belong in my own house.

[Corinne Vien]

Tyrone recalls a very uncomfortable moment.

[Daron]

I walked into a room to ask her a quick question and she was just talking at me and kept talking. But meanwhile her shirt is like on open so, you know, I can see her breasts. And even more than that, and she's sitting like this, a crotch shot on, thinking to myself is why is she doing this?

[Jake Handle]

Is she. She.

[Daron]

Either she's completely unaware of what she's doing, or she's doing this on purpose. And I just felt really uncomfortable. And the longer she stayed under the roof of my house, the more I really wanted her to go away.

[Corinne Vien]

Daron recalls that things escalated from differing opinions on how Jake should be cared for to. To Ellen becoming suspicious of him.

[Daron]

We had this lockbox to keep his medication in. And then she accused me of stealing his medication. I don't need to steal his medication. Number one, I don't want to steal this medication. Number two, and if I wanted any medication like that, I knew where to go get it.

[Corinne Vien]

There was also this issue around a.

[Daron]

Check summons in the mail for check fraud. And I'm thinking, what else can she come up with?

[Corinne Vien]

We're interrupted by some squeaking, the noise coming from Daron's lap, Accompanied by some twitching paws and huffed breaths.

[Daron]

Just having a good dream, huh? That's Brownie. She a good dog? It's nice to be a dog so you don't have to think about those things.

[Corinne Vien]

Brownie was also witness to these events, living alongside Daron, Ellen and Ellen's own pets.

[Daron]

She seemed to, you know, take good care of her pets, whatever.

[Corinne Vien]

She.

[Daron]

They seemed to be important to her, but if they were in her way, she had no problem, like, just pushing them away real hard. And she seemed to like Brownie. But obviously, once I was out of the house, she was rid of me. She decided to not allow Brownie back in the house once she exited.

[Corinne Vien]

As we know, a restraining order was taken out on Daron while Jake was on hospice, and Daron had not been allowed back into his home. But this day, the day Brownie was left outside of the house, Daron had just been there saying his tearful goodbyes to Jake. It was the day Jake was read his last rites.

[Daron]

All in, like, within an hour of my leaving my house under the threat of arrest if I didn't get going soon, you know, after saying my final goodbyes to Jacob, my phone rings and it's one of the his caretakers saying, l l threw your dog out the door and wouldn't let her back in. I said, what? So where's. Where's my dog? She goes, I have her. I brought her home. Okay, I'll come get her now. So I went. She bought her a new leash and collar and something to eat. Very sweet to her. All right, now I gotta make sure the hotel's okay with the dog.

[Corinne Vien]

Another caretaker had a different update for Daron.

[Daron]

One of his caretakers said to me, hey, she's telling talking about getting rid of all your wife's stuff. No, no, no. Tell her I said not to touch my wife's stuff. Anyway, I saw I made the grave error of sending Elle's mother a text message through Facebook messenger, I guess, asking that she please not touch any of my wife's stuff. That was a violation of my restraining order. Friends and and relative, people are saying how can you let her do this? How can you? I says, you don't understand. It's not a matter of letting she's done it. How can you let her keep Jacob away from you? I said, there's nothing I can do about it.

[Corinne Vien]

So with Daron out of the house and with Ellen as the primary caretaker during hospice and occasional AIDS coming and going, Jake began to recognize some interesting behaviors.

[Jake Handle]

So when I was on hospice and isolated, just me and my wife, I started hearing her talk to herself. She would just be rambling on and on about her day and things that pissed her off. And when she'd be like cleaning me, changing me, she said, you know, honey, you know how I always wanted a baby? Well, now I got my own hundred pound baby. Obviously I'm not £100 anymore, but I was another thing she would say, which first time I thought it was kind of funny, humorous because I have dark humor. She would say, I always wanted a husband that could not talk back. And then she kept saying it and that's when. What's that movie? The movie Misery. I was like, oh my God, she has lost her mind. I'm like stuck in misery. But that guy could talk and kind of move, not me. So it's very scary. So these were the strange admissions I heard how she always wanted a baby and how that she has her own 100 pound baby and she always wanted a husband that could not talk back.

[Corinne Vien]

It's unsettling to think about. Jake was largely alone in his father's house with Ellen trying to make sense of the strange offhand comments, never sure if they were meant as jokes or something more. Meanwhile, his father Dorone had been living out of a hotel with Brownie unable to return home due to the restraining order. Ellen had full control of the house for a time and eventually she did move out and Dorone was finally allowed back in. But by then, as we know, Jake had already vanished.

[Daron]

She didn't get to keep my house and that's probably what really pisses her off. But she also caused damage to it somehow. She flooded the hall, upstairs hallway and the master bedroom carpeting was wet. I don't know if she purposely took buckets of water and just dumped them on the wood in the floor to just wreck the house or what. He started getting better and she distanced herself from him. She posted on Facebook that she was leaving him. She wrote this whole long thing about justifying her reason for leaving Jacob. She wasn't going to be getting any more like pats on the back now. That he, he's doing better. I mean, what's in it for mother.

[Jake Handle]

In law at the time? Cindy, after Elle broke. Well didn't break it off but she like stopped coming around. And when I said I love you, kind of hung up the phone and I filed for divorce and she got really angry and it was battle. Her mother secretly visited me and talked to me like all the time. Actually that's the only reason I have any photos in that video of me dying in the hospital. That's, that's from her. This goes all the way to when I can verbally speak again. And the divorce is starting to get real heated and Eli's back in my life and we'd have like different visiting times. And she said this one thing to me. I was like, I don't know why Ellen is acting like this. She goes, well honey, think about it. Your life is getting a lot better and her life is getting a lot worse. And I was thinking about that last night and I'm like in the scheme of things at that time, like my life was no picnic. And it still isn't quite frankly. But that was odd. And then it was hard for me. I was like, Cindy, I have a lot of love for you, but I think we shouldn't speak anymore until the divorce is final. And she started crying and she was like ah, like I want to still be in your life. And I'm like just til the divorce is final and then I'll reach out. And I, I did reach out. I mean, I don't know if I ever told you this, but before we were married, all the time Cindy would call me and be like, can you tell Ellen to please unblock me? Like that's how enraged she would get. And she block her own mom. So the fact that Cindy would come and visit me, she knew she was really betraying her daughter's trust. But I was thinking last night, that is a weird thing to say to someone who's still bedridden your life. Sienna is so much better and her just getting so much worse. I mean I know very little about her. When I think about everything as a whole now, it's like I fell in love and we never spent a day apart and we were married like three to five months later. That's crazy. That's not crazy. But yeah, okay, maybe it's crazy. It can end good too. But it didn't end good for me. Well, I guess in the scheme of things it did. I'm reconnecting with people, I'm starting to put pieces together like a puzzle and I had a crazy thought and theory about how maybe she had something to do with my hospitalization. The more I started talking to people and hearing these things that were happening not in the room I was in, that theory started to go from crazy to closer to a possibility. And then unprovoked, I get a message from a guy who happen to have the same theory. Foreign.

[Corinne Vien]

Thank you for listening to Blank. This podcast is hosted and produced by me, Corinne Vien, alongside my co creator and survivor Jake Handle. Our original music is composed by the brilliant and talented Michael Margay. We're so grateful for your support. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider rating, reviewing and sharing this story with others. For additional resources, updates and behind the scenes content, Visit our website blinkthepodcast.com Blink will return with a new episode next Sunday.