I Am My Obligations, Part 1 of ?

By way of context, my wife's return to work last Monday failed. She was nervous, which was to be expected given the trauma of the previous months, but seemed to make it through the day. Tuesday, her car was in the shop, so I drove her to work and carried on to my office. Almost immediately, she had a panic attack and it all went downhill from there. She made it through the day, mainly because she had no way out until I picked her up at 4:30. But, I don't know if she managed to accomplish anything. Tuesday night she was exhausted, but only slept fitfully. By Wednesday morning, she was highly agitated and despondent, not unlike before I put her in the hospital. She called in sick and suffered through the day until we visited her therapist that evening. No relief was found there or at the psychiatrists office the next morning. The doctor made some suggestions to changes in her meds, and we went off to her office to talk to her boss.

My wife is an attorney, 10 years removed from law school. But she has always been hampered in her career by her fears and, frankly, the possibility that she is just not suited for the field. To be sure, she is intelligent and hardworking and has never been fired. But, she just cannot see herself as competent. She cannot see herself as others see her. So, we had decided that she was going to explain to her boss that the doctor was making some medication changes that should take a few days to settle in and she should be back on Monday. But, she was going to tell her boss, if this was going to be a long term recovery that she intended to resign her position because it was not fair to leave them waiting for her. It is a small firm and cannot redistribute work easily.

The idea that her boss had offered her the first leave of absence because they couldn't fire her for being sick had been an ever-present idea in my head. By putting resignation on the table, we relieve them of any obligations to keep waiting on her. It is what is right for both sides. Right for my wife to not have to face meltdown every Monday and right for the firm to be able to run their business unfettered by the uncertainty of an employee that may never return. Much to my surprise her boss stopped her before she could even complete the sentence and told her that they think the world of her there and want her to start feeling better before making any radical decision. Now, this is a small firm, but a well-regarded firm. The lead partner and my wife's both are both considered among the best attorneys in the state and are also nationally recognized in their field. By putting resignation on the table, she gave them freedom from any obligation to maintain her on a leave of absence. That they would choose to wait spoke volumes to me about my wife's abilities and, sadly, her distorted view of them.

We left the office to return home and my wife's demeanor had changed. She was calm, responsive, even able to laugh a little. I don't believe that it was due to her boss' support as I still see evidence of her distorted self-image. Her change was due to being relieved of the obligation to go in for a few days. Indeed, today is Sunday and she is already starting to show signs of getting worked up about going back in tomorrow.

I am at the point that I don't know what to do. Attempts to show her how her thinking is distorted and calm her down enough to go in don't work anymore. Offers to let her quit, and simplify our lives so we can live on my salary, are seen by her as proof that she is a failure. There nothing I can do that doesn't either force her into mortal struggle with her fears or reinforce her self-image of being fatally flawed. I don't know how to break the cycle. We tried letting her take time off to figure it out two years ago and it didn't help. She never figured out what she really wanted to do (which doesn't surprise me given her belief that she is weak and incompetent), she spent most of the lay-off struggling against the same fears, and she was eventually driven back into a law firm out of desperation to get back to work. I don't see another period of time off leading to any different result. Until we address the underlying thought patterns and distorted beliefs, there is nothing but pain in her future whether she works or not.

And so tomorrow we start again. My wife had been on Xanax before to help calm her down, but Xanax is an insidious drug and, I believe, contributed in some way to her recent collapse. The doctors had her on Klonipin to ease the Xanax withdrawal and keep her calm. Klonipin is similar to Xanax except that it is slower acting and, thus, contributes less to panic attacks as it wears off and, in turn, leads to less addiction. She had been of Konipin for several weeks, but the doctor offered her a prescription for short term help. All I can offer my wife tomorrow is to take her Klonipin with her to see if it tamps down the anxiety and gets her through the day. If we can use it safely to help her continue to work, maybe it will buy time for the therapist to help her begin to see herself differently, give her room to see if she really does or doesn't want to continue as an attorney or to try something different.

I hate this. I hate not being able to fix this. I hate not knowing what to do. I hate seeing her in pain. I hate that I have no vision for the future beyond getting through the day.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more

So, today is the day. About 45 minutes ago, my wife walked out the door for her first day of work in 6 weeks. I could tell she was scared, but she was calm in a way that she hadn't been prior to her collapse. She has come so far in the last 6 weeks, but there is still a long road ahead of her.

There is going to be fear and anxiety in the days to come. I think we are both afraid that she will succumb to it again. I am ready to sell out our property and most of the horses. I am ready to move into a non-descript house in town that will allow us to live on my salary and still let her have horses in her life. But, I don't want it to come to that. I want her to be happy and productive. So, I sent her out into a world that frightens her and I hope she has the strength to push on and I have the strength and calm to support her, I also hope for the wisdom to know if it isn't working and we need to scale back our expectations from life. Because, given the choice, I'd rather her be happy than productive and perhaps she can't find both.

Maybe someday I'll write more about the journey she has been through recently. But, right now, it is hard to concentrate with the fear that is gripping me knowing she is out there staring down her anxiety.

But yonder comes the powerful king of day, Rejoicing in the east.

Courage, brother! do not stumble,
Though thy path be dark as night;
There’s a star to guide the humble,
Trust in God and do the Right.

- Norman MacLeod

Sunday had to be one of the worst days of my life. My wife came home on Thursday and seemed stable. She even, against my wishes, went into work on Friday for a few hours to make sure nothing urgent needed to be attended to. She was okay on Saturday, as well, but I could sense concern growing about having to go in to work on Monday and face her boss. All through Sunday, her agitation grew. I was concerned about her going back to work so quickly after hospitalization, but she had worked herself into a corner and I wasn't sure what to do. She didn't want to go back, but she didn't want to get fired. I couldn't get her to settle on a course of action. She was gridlocked in her own fears and quickly descended into the same plaintive despair from prior to when I took her to Tulsa.

Finally, without any other options, I began investigating the in-patient program in Houston that her psychiatrist recommended. It seemed like a perfect option, but it was expensive, costing over $1000 per day with an estimated stay of 6-8 weeks. I called and talked to the admissions person, asking questions about the program. When we came to the subject of cost, he informed me that they rarely receive any payments from insurance and expect payment, in full, within 90 days of discharge. With that one statement, my hopes seemed crushed. I don't have $40,000 to $60,000 lying around. I have some liquid assets, but not near enough. To afford that program, I would need to sell our house or raid my retirement savings plan.

She took her meds and fell asleep early, sleeping from 8:30 straight through to 6:00 AM. My faint hope that a full night of sleep would clear her head was quickly disabused. I slept poorly and, sometime during the night, resolved myself that I would sell the house and get her the treatment she needed. When she woke, she remained in the same place she was the night before. I told her she needed to break this cycle and make a decision. I told her she needed time off to recover and, if her boss wouldn't help, she needed to resign her job. She wouldn't do it. She saw no way out and vowed to just keep pushing through the days. I tried to tell her that wasn't want I wanted for her and couldn't continue to live my life watching her suffer as she was. But, she pushed on and went into the office.

But, she wasn't able to quell her anxiety and I had two more awful phone calls from her within an hour of her arrival. But, finally, the first glimmer of light broke through the clouds. Her boss offered her a leave of absence to get herself healthy. No pay, but a job waiting for her and continued health benefits during the interim. She took the offer, but was so exhausted from her state of agitation, I had to drive up to the city and bring her home.

We got home and started making calls regarding our options for recovery. Since this all started spinning in after her hysterectomy, we had set up an appointment with a highy recommended Ob-Gyn that specialises in hormone replacement. We couldn't see him until late November, so took an October 8 appointment with one of his nurse practitioners. I called up to see whether they had a waiting list of folks to call to fill in slots opened by cancellations. They said they don't, but if you call in each morning and check they might be able to squeeze us in. Half jokingly (since it was 2 PM), I asked if they did have any such openings today. The person earnestly checked and found an open slot at 3 PM, an hour later. Since it was a 45 mile drive, I grabbed my wife, we got into the car and drove at breakneck speeds to get there, arriving right at 3:00. She had a good session with the nurse, getting some new hormone prescriptions. We stopped after at a local diagnostic lab on the way home to get blood drawn for tests, then came home.

Today, I am going to let her rest, but am going to schedule an evaluation on Wednesday at a day treatment program up in the city. She would be there from 9:00 to 3:30 five days a week for 4 weeks. The program seems like a good fit and while it still isn't cheap, it's better record getting payment from insurance means we don't have to turn our lives completely upside down to pay.

So, arising out of the dark of my Sunday seems to be some hope. We still have a long way to go, but for once I have something tangible to look forward to, beyond just patching her up each day and sending her out to fight her demons.

Unforgivable

Are there some decisions that are always and forever unforgivable?

I drove my wife to Tulsa yesterday and put her into a psychiatric hospital. It is only for a few days to get her stabilized, but I am not sure it was the right decision. Yes, my wife is troubled, but there are seriously scary disturbed people in there. It was like "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" with nicer flooring. People wandering around the ward, talking to the themselves, looking for other people to play a role in their delusions. My wife felt great shame in being taken there and having seen the place, I am ashamed to have taken her there. But what else could I do? I don't know.

I don't even know where to start. My wife grew up with a unpredictable, violent father. She has always struggled with relating to authority because of the latent fear of mercurial power that she learned as a child. In her work life, she strives relentlessly for the unobtainable perfection, she is tenative about working independently; always looking for guidance and help, she is irrationally fearful of doing anything new. We were able to keep the anxiety under control through medication, but she didn't like how if dulled her thinking.

I guess the latest episode had, as it's starting point, the complete hysterectomy she had earlier this year. She had never recovered her energy level after the surgery, likely due to hormone imbalances. But, never one to let grass grow under her feet she pushed on. Through her job, through her life. Never resting. Last month, she forgot to take the medicine she took during the day once and felt good, so she stopped taking it. Only consulting with the doctor later. She also starting scaling back rapidly on the Xanax that she needed to counteract the other medicine in order to sleep. The result? Heightened anxiety, and an inability to sleep through the night. She cratered quickly.

I spent alot of time trying to hold her together, but she continued to spiral in. She expressed wish that she was dead. I didn't see it as suicidal, more using the thought of death as a form of catharsis for her tortured mind. But, she teetered. My last two trips to Dallas for work had to be cut short to come home and pick up the pieces. The last trip,last week, I had to find a friend to drive up to the city and pick her up and bring her home since she was bordering on incoherence and couldn't drive safely from the lack of sleep. The helplessness of being three hours away was unbearable. I got home as quickly as I could and tried to get her calmed down and resting. It came to the point where I would wake up in the middle of the night and just hold my breath until I could hear hers.

But, it all came to a head yesterday. Working from home, I tend to get an early start. Around 6:30 she came into the office and collapsed at my feet, plaintively begging me to let her stay home forever more and not go back to work. Having seen her torture herself during her work hiatus, I know that avoiding work would not end her torment, only shift it's focus. I told her that, but also told her that maybe she should stay home and rest. She said no, that she had work due that needed to get done. She wants me to let her stay home, but she won't stay home. What am I to do? As she came downstairs, as if to leave, she came into the office and asked me where her Xanax was. I told her that I took control of it the previous night because I was concerned what she might do. She looked angry at me and I asked her why, when she only takes it for sleep, would she need it in the morning. Her reply was that she just wanted to go to a hotel room and take it all. Again, I thought she was just trying to calm her mind with the idea of relief. I told her how precious she was to me and thought I got her back together.

She got out the door, but halfway to the office, she called in tears. She can't go in, but she can't come home because they will fire her. I redirected her to the doctor's office and I scrambled to get there to join her. The morning only got worse. We reviewed all this with the doctor and were getting to the point where we had a solution. We were going to get her set up with a top notch hormone replacement doctor and get her onto a new anti-depressant. But, she continued her descent, ending on the doctor's floor in a fetal position crying inconsolably. That is where I had to make a decision. The doctor recommended a temporary hospitalization for stablization and I agreed. The doctor didn't like any of the hospitals in OKC and recommended one in Houston (a 7 hour drive away). I don't know how to arrange that. With animals to care for and a job to keep, how I a supposed to hospitalize her over 400 miles away and still be there for her. The good Dallas programs were all out-patient day programs, three hours away. Tulsa, while not a good option, was the best we had.

On the entire two hour drive up, she begged me not to take her there. She said she would behave, just don't take her there. All through admittance and the receiving process on the ward, she promised me that she wouldn't kill herself, just don't leave her there. I left at 7 to go to the store and get her some clothes and toiletries. I walked out knowing that I wouldn't see her again for at least two days. I got home late and slept poorly. The phone rang at 7 and it was her wanting me to bring her some things and begging me to get her out of there. I am weakening. I am not sure she deserves to be there, but I cannot live my life on suicide watch. I can't live that way, but I am not sure I can live with what I did. I feel like I betrayed her, taking away her last shred of control. I guess I cannot blame her if she hates me for doing that. But, I was scared and I didn't know how to fix her anymore.

I’ve been chasing grace....

....grace ain't so easily found.

This is my139th post on this blog. The number isn't itself significant in any way, except inasmuch as it is probably my last. I set out in February hoping to use writing this blog as a way to discover the means of becoming the pilot of my life, rather than a passenger buffetted by the eddies of those who do take charge. As I look back over the last ten or so months, I can only conclude that I have failed in that regard. To be sure, I have been pleased to find that, with the right job, I can enjoy work and some of the malaise lifted with that. But, overall, I am still an observer; still watching myself move through the world with a "studied indifference."

I am not sure what went wrong. As I look back, I can only count on one hand the posts that I have liked and took some degree of pride in. They were, not surprisingly, those posts that were laden with emotion, touching on a subject near to my heart. The rest? Self-indulgent crap. A means of posing and posturing for the crowd (such as it was). Posts on my daily life were meant to evince a sense that I have an interesting life. The Friday Random Ten became an exercise in showing off the breadth of my musical taste. If a lousy song came up in the rotation, I fast forwarded past it and didn't include it on the list. Even those discussions of the struggles with my wife's depression didn't seem intended as tools for working through the situation, but rather as a way to seek validation. I wasn't looking for help with what was between her ears, but rather looking for complements for what was between mine.

It was, in short, an exercise in ego. I suppose the paucity of my readership is, in no small part, due to this basic insincerity. While every word I wrote was true, precious little of it was authentic because it was presented under false pretenses. That a main protagonist in my writing was completely unaware of this blog also has weighed heavily on me. Thus, it is time to lower the curtain on this experiment.

For the handful of you who have come here with some degree of regularity, thank you for your kind words and, more importantly, your indulgence. I will continue to read your blogs because you are what I aspire to be: a person seizing their lives and living it. Even in your darkest, most painful moments, I admired you because you were genuine and passionate and fought for something better for yourself. That is a precious gift.

I leave you with my early prayer for 2009.

Random Play

1. "Feel Like Makin' Love" by Ned Gerblanski
2. "Whiskey Bottle" by Uncle Tupelo
3. "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen
4. "End of the Party" by The English Beat
5. "Oh, Boy!" by Buddy Holly
6. "There Is a Time" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (with Rodney Dillard and Ricky Skaggs)
7. "Shiny Happy People" by R.E.M. (with Kate Pierson)
8. "Rhythm Guitar" by Emmylou Harris
9. "Deep Ellum Blues" by Red Dirt Rangers
10. "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica
11. "Crescent City" by Branford Marsalis
12. "Keep Me in Your Heart" by Warren Zevon

Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick....

...Jack watch out for pointy stick.

Of the seven horses at our place (our six plus one that belongs to a college student friend of ours), four are what is known as easy keepers. That is a nice way of saying they put on weight easily. Too easily, so during the winter months, when they are not ridden much, we have to restrict their hay intake. For them, we buy small square bales that weigh around 55-60 pounds and cost $5-$6 each. Then we parcel out their rations twice a day. Depending on the horse, they will get roughly 5-12 pounds of hay at daybreak and again in the evening. I buy that hay and put it up in the barn loft during the summer.

The other three horses, including the 23 year old quarter horse gelding Jack, are on free choice. 'Free choice' is a fancy way of saying that we dump a 1200 lb round bale of hay (cost: $50) out in the pasture and let them have at it. They can eat as much or as little as they want. When the bale is gone, we dump another. Round bales, however, present a logistical challenge since I do not own a tractor and have to buy them as I use them. I have a 16 foot flatbed trailer that I can store them on, so I buy them 4 at a time. As I need them I drive the trailer out to the pasture and dump a bale. When I drop the last, I buy more.

Which brings me to today. After busy day at work, I headed out immediately over to Little Axe to buy four more rounds from my local hay guy. As I approach my property, I can see my barn and pastures for a couple hundred yards before the drive. As I approached today, I saw a Suburban and several people that I could not recognize from a distance standing in front of my barn. Our boarders thoroughbred stood at the hitching rail all tacked up. I figured she had some friends over to visit her horse. I pulled into the drive and noticed her boyfriends T-bird parked, but didn't think anything of it. It is unusual, but not unheard of, for him to be over. I turned back east and headed down the drive towards the barn, stopping only to open and, after driving through, close the gate. Oddly though, John, the boyfriend is walking up towards me. Not sure what is going on, I ask him "wassup?" He tells me that they had to call the vet because Jack had a puncture wound below his right front knee joint and they were working on him at that moment.

My heart sinking, I parked the truck and trailer and entered the barn. The vet had just pulled a stick out of the puncture wound and was preparing to feel around inside the wound with a pair of forceps to be sure there wasn't any remnants of the stick broken off in there. The leg was swollen up to twice its normal size, but there wasn't anything further in the wound. So he proceeded to lather the leg in antibiotic ointment and DMSO, an anti-inflammatory, and apply a sweat wrap.

The prognosis is good. We are to keep the leg wrapped and dry for two days. On Wednesday evening, we'll need to remove the wrap and make sure the swelling has gone down. If it has, Jack gets to be exercised for a few days to improve the circulation. If not, we get to call the vet back out again. With rain in the forecast for tonight and snow tomorrow, Jack is tucked away in a stall overnight, a situation he absolutely loathes. But, such is life. Jack was our first horse and he is precious to us. At 23 years of age, he is considered a senior citizen and I intend to make sure that he is well cared for and happy in his remaining days.

Now I just need to figure out how to get the antibiotics into him. But that is a story for another day.