Caregiver Seizing Control

Continuing on the ongoing theme of control freaks make the best caregivers....
It’s only special people who can truly rise up and become major caregivers to others in need. Vows of "in sickness and in health" often get broken under such circumstances. I find myself remarkably lucky to have or have had some of the people who have passed through my life and/or remain part of it. I am a cantankerous unmarried and unattached man without close family who went blind at 40. I’ve had more than one person who did or does take excellent car of me, often going out of their way to do so. Two of those rise above all others to the depth of their efforts. Conflict is inevitable with each. They have control freak tendencies in general, and my loss of control and ability creates a vacuum that is natural for either to want to fill.
One is my former employer, business partner, friend, border, roommate and probably a lot of other roles and definitions that escape me right now. I’ll deal with him later.
The other is "Pat," a name I assigned for gender neutrality in the policy I have always maintained with this blog of not specifically mentioning friends and rendering almost all of them anonymous to the blog readers and mutual acquaintances alike. I’ve known Pat for well over half my life and while there were intervening years without contact, at several points we were close, if not intimate.
When the blood hemorrhage happened, it seems Pat dropped everything to be there for me. It did not seem that way from the onset; he just gave rides and other favors here and there. The frequency rose quickly. My parents had taken me to the first few eye appointments in October 2009, but Pat took over that responsibility and had driven me to all the PRP sessions and other appointments. This was one of the first signs that Pat’s help was expanding from charity to control. I want neither Pat nor no one else to misconstrue anything here or think that I do not appreciate everything he did. I appreciate Pat’s actions and the person behind them.
The PRP appointments and intervening exams went from the option of Pat driving me to a mandatory thing by his actions. Pat was rearranging hectic work schedules to do this for me, and taking time away from an already troubled marriage at the time, which made that aspect worse at home. I was dealing with the loss of independence and self control as well as the loss of plain old eyesight. Pat was helping me, but it soon developed that he would arrange future appointments to his work schedule. He would take the appointment cards for upcoming visits; I would never have possession or sometimes even much knowledge when the next appointment was without his reminders and scheduling of my time.
I do not think Pat was intentionally acting out any control freakishness with any bad intent or simple goal of controlling me. Pat simply found it expedient to make sure he knew when the appointments were so he could rearrange his schedule and make sure the treatments were met.
I see this as a classic way that caregivers end up taking control. There’s no sinister conspiracy to seize someone else’s life. Pat did no wrong to me and in fact did much, maybe too much, right. Yet in that time, while I was trying to hold on to everything I was losing, there was no way that the small things Pat took over for expediency or ease in providing help could be surrendered without resentment.