Beginning Therapy

I've held out long enough. Been stubborn stoic long enough.

It's time to admit that I need professional help.

I guess.

__________

Do I have to?

::balls up fists and stomps foot::

I should be strong enough to handle my life, dammit! I'm not the only person in the world with problems. I'm not the only one carrying a heavy load.

I deal. I cope. I cry and laugh. I find the good and positive amidst the crap.

I get a little bit stronger with each passing crisis.

Or do I?

__________

Maybe I get stronger with each crisis, but they break me a little too. Like one step forward, two steps back.....

I have diagnosed myself with PTSD and anxiety. I don't know anyone who would disagree with those presumptions. I have flashbacks to the nights Mark's heart stopped, and my breathing catches and tears sting my eyes. What is minor to someone else is difficult for me because my emotions are  constantly raw and at the surface.

I think, time will heal. It does some, but not entirely. The nerves and fear are still there.

I'm strong yet sensitive. Courageous yet afraid. Positive yet cynical. I am a walking contradiction.

The contradictions are hard to reconcile.

It's time for me to accept some help figuring all this out. As much as my friends and family love me and blogging is free therapy, neither holds the understanding I long for.

I'm not sure why I find this so hard to do. I have pushed and pushed the idea of therapy away for a  long time. I do know I worry it will only serve to muddy the waters more.

But it's my children, although they don't know it, who are inspiring me to give in. If and when we lose their dad, I will need all the help I can get to be everything they need me to be.

__________

Tomorrow.

Not like Scarlett O'Hara's "I'll think about that tomorrow", although I admit I have done plenty of that.

No. I will begin seeing a therapist first thing tomorrow morning.

How do I proceed?

I thought I was doing just fine. Thought I was moving through my day-to-day with an ease and grace in the aftermath of what we experienced last March.

Because I am beyond grateful and living in the moment.

And then BLAM! I am smacked in the face with nerves and worry and insecurity.

I am FULL of anxiety.

Perhaps I can blame my kids going back to school leaving me with time to think. Thinking is not always a good thing.

__________

At first I assume I'm feeling insecurities because my friend and I aren't talking as much as we sometimes do. This is my go-to feeling. I've felt this many times before in my life.

Why hasn't she called me?

Why hasn't she texted me?

Is everything OK?

Did I do something? Is she mad at me?

Doesn't she care about me anymore??

Try as I might not to say these things to my friend, I always do. I vomit them all over her and she doesn't know why. She doesn't think anything is wrong. She's just going about her life.

I get offended that she doesn't see it. I think she's being mean to me. Cold and uncaring.

I take a breath. Maybe the angel of friendship (there must be one, right?) whispers in my ear. And it occurs to me that it isn't really about her or our friendship at all.

It's something else entirely. I apologize profusely to my bewildered friend. Who, as a matter of fact, is very concerned about me.

In my utter confusion as to what is really going on with me, I have hyper-focused on entirely the wrong thing. It's an easier thing to focus on than the real issue at hand.

Which is, my ever-present fear and worry of losing my very best friend and soul mate forever. Not my friend whom I've just dumped on, but my husband, my kids' dad.

__________

It has been needling at me for pretty much two full years now, since Mark's bypass surgery on 9/21/10. A year after that I thought it had been the worst night of my life. Until 3/1/12 when Mark's heart stopped again, this time due to arrhythmia.

There was so much talk of death last March. I will never forget how my knees buckled in the middle of the ICU floor hallway when my MIL, dealing with her own fear and worry, bluntly stated, "Well he is going to die." My mother and father both reached out for me, ushering me into a Quiet Room, all of us trying to absorb strength from one another.

We really did think that was going to be it. All our worst fears were about to come true.

And then they didn't. Mark said, "I'm not dead yet!", and proved us all wrong.

I'm not saying it was a miraculous recovery after which all was right with the world. Far from it. We still have much to deal with, and will for however much longer Mark is with us.

And, I think, therein lies the problem. No matter how grateful I am that my husband is still alive. No matter how much I "live in the moment", "soak up the good" or "hold onto joy", I am traumatized. These near-death experiences are haunting me.

Oh and it makes me SO ANGRY! I hate that it's impossible to let go of. That I'm not strong enough to beat PTSD's ass. That it's f*cking with my head.

So now what?

My friend urges me to seek out counseling. I remind her that I did last spring but it seems that if my husband wasn't actually about to die, I don't really need it. It seems that if you're simply having a hard time and would just like to have some help processing, no one knows how to make that happen. I figure with my or Mark's or our kids' insurances, somehow, someway we should be able to afford it.....but I haven't found a good option.

I may ask my doctor if he thinks we should up the dosage of my anxiety med. I take only the smallest amount right now. I will probably start taking the Vitamin B6 my dad swears by....

Regardless, what I know today is that I have to keep swimming. My family needs me. And I can.

__________
Update: I didn't intend to publish this for a few more days; I hit publish accidentally. There is an option to "revert to draft", but since I didn't realize what I did until I started getting comments, I kinda gotta go with it, right? Also, the comments are so nice, and since it's World Gratitude Day, I will just be grateful for a happy accident.

Coping Mechanisms

Are you OK?

I have no idea how many times EACH DAY I ask my husband that question.

But I know it's a lot.

While he's still sleeping (if I think he's breathing funny).

Mark.....are you OK?

Shortly after he gets up.

How are you, Honey?

If he starts yawning a lot or can't finish a sentence which could mean his blood sugar is getting low.

Do you need to eat?

When he grunts, groans or moans.

Are you OK??

__________

I worry about Mark. So much.

It's not as if I don't have ample reason to worry. The fact that his heart stopped 6 times in 2 years is enough. Not to mention diabetes and dialysis.

So you can understand why I might not jump for joy when we get a little bit of good news. I may think "well that's good", but I don't feel all that much relief.

We recently found out that Mark's heart pump function has improved since his arrhythmia trauma last March. At that time it was functioning at only 25%, but now it is up to 45%.

This is good news and I spread it, because I know the people who care about us want to know these updates.

On our family Facebook page:

Which I also shared to my personal page. I then posted on my blog fan page where it got 13 likes and a couple of comments. I tweeted and got a few excited replies.

But do you see above how I merely stated the results? No expressions of excitement, no !!! or :-).

It's because there's just a lot to factor in. Sure, this is a bit of good news, but.....

The thing is, too much has happened. Mark has too many health problems that pose various threats to his stability for me to naively celebrate ONE good test result.

This does nothing to reassure me of how much longer my husband will live. How much longer he can push back against all that is trying its damnedest to shove him to the ground.

Mark is an amazing and inspirational testament to the strength of the human spirit!

But....

So sue me if I can't be excited that his heart pump is stronger.. I have to look at the whole picture. I have to keep my head out of the clouds.

I have to be only cautiously optimistic. It's a coping mechanism.

I fear it may come off as cold and callous. That is the opposite of what I really feel. In fact, I feel so much, that if I don't employ a way to deal, I'll absolutely end up a puddle on the floor.

Maybe what some see as cold or callous, is actually strength.

Strength and self-preservation. Because watching someone you love so much suffer with health problems, as well as live with the fear of losing them, hurts. It hurts bad.

There is a constant battle going on inside me to find a balance between the stress and fear on one hand, and the gratitude and joy that my husband is still with us on the other.

So I feel and process. I deal and find gratitude. I self-preserve and I get stronger.

Or it's really just fear and denial. I honestly don't know which. Could be both or all.

All I know is I have my ways of coping. Right, wrong or indifferent....

Stupid PTSD or Grief or WTF-Ever!

I've been feeling kind of angry and cynical lately.

But I don't want to admit it. I don't know if I want anyone to actually see that side of me.

Everyone says such wonderful things about how I handle the struggles in my life. And I feel so proud that I'm able to be that kind of person.

It makes me angry that I still get angry, if that makes any sense at all.

I remember the night of Mark's bypass when his heart stopped the first time. After going in to see him, I emerged from his room and walked directly into my friend's arms. She held me as I began to cry. But then I pulled away from her, balled up my fists and stamped my foot in anger.

I didn't fucking want to be crying! I didn't want to feel afraid. I didn't want to be a mess.

I have to be strong.

I don't want to get lost in feelings of despair and hopelessness. What good does that do? Whom will that serve? There's nothing to be gained by wallowing.

But Goddammit! I also don't want my husband to be sick, and I sure as hell don't want him to die!

I love being married. I don't want to think about being a widow. I don't want to think about losing my very best friend and I don't want to think about being a single parent.

I do think about those things. A lot. Too much.

And if one Goddamn person makes any stupid judgments about how I should have known these things were possible or maybe we shouldn't have had kids, I will punch them in the face!

Because that is pure bullshit. No one should go through life not grabbing onto the things they want, their heart's desires, for fear of the maybes and what-ifs.

That is not a life well lived.

My cynicism comes out when someone very sweetly and innocently says something like, "Praying it will be smooth sailing from here on out." I think, that's nice, but not likely. Yes, we experience calmer waters, lulls in the chaos, but there is always something else on the horizon.

And I just can't, even for one minute, hope that that's not true. I'm too practical.

There is a battle going on inside my head right now between the part that is grounded, positive and grateful, and the part that is scared, angry and tired.

I'm so tired. But you can't take a break from chronic illness.

My nerves are raw and frayed.

I'm hardly laughing.

::

And then I start to get fed up with all the above and somehow....some miracle happens where I can feel my feelings starting to shift. Something that brings me back to the NOW. And I say, "All that there? That's the bullshit, and it's robbing me of my joy."

But it takes a lot of work on a DAILY basis to do that. It takes effort to push away the scary thoughts all the time.

And so I'm still tired.

I suppose that probably won't change.

Linked up with Pour Your Heart Out and Yeah Write.

Climb Aboard the Hall Family Roller Coaster!

I posted this on Facebook on Monday: Climb aboard the Hall Family Roller Coaster! Sit down & buckle up. Our ride begins with a broken chest wire, we will pause for just a sec to remove it, there will be several very fun loops and things during a perfectly normal weekend and then we will end by heading back to the station (hospital) for IV antibiotics. Enjoy the ride!

I am so witty online!

For those of you who don't know, my husband Mark had heart bypass surgery a little over a year ago and they use wire similar to piano strings to hold the chest plate together for healing.  Well, Mark broke one of them, possibly by sneezing hard, it got infected and he needed to have it removed.

And now....

My husband is in the hospital with a staph infection requiring IV antibiotics after he tried to get himself treated before it got to this point.

I am angry, frustrated, bummed and completely OFF.  I just wrote last week in a post about my priorities how when something is not OK with one of the four of us, everything feels off, and here we are.

I know I remind the world all the time of Mark's health conditions, but it seems to be necessary, even to the medical professionals who care for him.  He is a Type 1 Diabetic, has been since the age of 9, with a 6 year reprieve when he had a successful kidney/pancreas transplant.  He is 43 now and since losing his transplanted organs, has been back on insulin and dialysis for nearly 10 years.

These things make him extra susceptible to infection.  Last year when heart bypass was required it was discovered that he had pericarditis, a septic staph infection SURROUNDING HIS HEART.

People?  Mark may have survived that, but this is not a man we take chances with!

So yeah, I and just about everyone we know are pretty frustrated that Mark's doctors dragged their feet on this.  That might be a bit of an understatement for me.  Because a staph infection could KILL MY HUSBAND!

I don't think this is just me being melodramatic.  Or maybe it is....buuuuuttt it happened to my uncle.  It happens all the time.  It could happen to Mark.

On the other hand, I do think PTSD from "the night from hell" is rearing its ugly head right now.  I am having to force myself to see this as a separate thing.  I am having to force myself to not think about death.

And it's really hard to do.

This infection was caught early, in spite of the initial bumbling efforts of the doctors.  This will be OK.  Mark will be OK.  EVERYTHING WILL BE OK.

This is just another hiccup, bump in the road, minor inconvenience...yada, yada.  I feel like people think I should just be used to this.  That these things happen with Mark and we just have to deal them.  Well yes, that's true, but "these things" are actually serious, and they suck.

I'm allowed to hate it, aren't I?

I'm allowed to hate taking my kids to see their dad at the hospital.  I'm allowed to hate all that Mark has to deal with.  I'm allowed to hate what I have to deal with, what our parents deal with, and our friends deal with.  That there are perfectly healthy people out there who have no flipping idea how good they've got it!  I hate it all.

When you've been traumatized the way I have it can be hard to be OK with the little hiccups.  They tend to all feel like big, scary things.

It's almost Christmas.  Mark had his first heart attack on Christmas Day of 2008.  Such lovely timing.

I'm sorry if this post is rambling and doesn't totally make sense to anyone else.  Just gotta get it off my chest.

We're hoping he will be able to come home today and we can get on with Christmas....

(This post was linked with Shell's Pour Your Heart Out at Things I Can't Say.)

* *

Update 12/27/11: Mark did come home that day, but it was difficult to "get on with Christmas".  He was really tired and bothered by the wound vac they sent him home connected to.  We were both very tense and on edge all the way up to Christmas Eve.  But Christmas Day was great!  We had fun, the kids loved their gifts, we saw extended family and had a fantastic dinner in spite of a power outage.  Yesterday, at the Wound Ostemy Clinic where Mark has his dressing changed, the nurse said his chest is healing so well and so quick he may not need the wound vac much longer.  This I believe is due to all the care and concern from both and near and far, and I am grateful.  Oh, the roller coaster!

#37

The Worst Night of My Life

The title of this post is not an exaggeration.

One year ago yesterday, September 20, 2010, my husband Mark went to the ER having his second heart attack.  The next day, a year ago today, he had double bypass surgery.  While in surgery it was discovered that he had pericarditis, a staph infection surrounding his heart, and he was septic.  This can easily kill a person.

That night, after Mark had made it through surgery and seemed stable, his heart stopped 3 times.

After a year I still gasp a little when I talk about this.  I still want to cry.

I didn't start writing about this experience until November 2010, when I and my closest friends realized I needed to do something, to get it out somehow.  The first step was to admit I was having a hard time.

I realized I probably had post-traumatic stress and that helped me understand what I was feeling a lot more.  I went through fully feeling my love for Mark to being deeply touched by movies I watched.  I easily felt like the sky was falling any time any little thing was off in my world, and there was a lot of crying.

By the end of November I felt like things were shifting back to the positive and maybe my head was too.  Yet I still also felt heavy, like the weight of the world was on my shoulders.  I had this one really good moment when I didn't think about the night from hell, instead thinking about the day they pulled Mark's breathing tube out and he was finally awake.  I was so on an emotional roller coaster, but I spent the rest of the Holiday season focusing on the good things.

I had hoped by the new year I would somehow just snap out of my funk.  Unfortunately you can't simply order these things up.  2010 had been split pretty much in half, the beginning an exciting time when we bought our house, and the end dealing with the aftermath of the night from hell.  I wished so much I could wrap it up and tie it with a pretty bow and be done.

Life doesn't work that way, does it?  I was apparently on a slow path to learning some pretty effing huge life lessons and it was kind of pissing me off!  But I kept plugging along, writing about whatever revelations came to me.  I had this one really awesome day that I just had to share....

Then 6 months post-surgery came and I realized I was still traumatized.  But I also realized I didn't care anymore about whether or not that was OK or normal.  I was where I was with it all and I would get wherever I needed to be whenever I got there.

That bit of wisdom allowed me to start blogging about more of the other things in my life.  I actually just realized this going through my posts.  Wow, it is so interesting to look back at things after some time has passed!

So where am I at today and what does coming to the 1 year anniversary of the worst night of my life mean for me?

It means a lot has changed.  I've changed.  Mark has changed.  We've both learned so much and gained so much wisdom.  Do I wish it didn't take traumatic events to teach us thick-headed humans important things?  Yes.  Do I wish we had never had to experience that?  Absolutely.  Do I wish Mark's doctors hadn't felt the need to repeat over and over again that he should have died?  Ya think?  Pretty sure that didn't help me a bit.

But as I sit here now, I think coming so close to losing my husband is now just another notch on my belt, so to speak.  It's just one more thing we've gone through.  It's one more experience woven into the proverbial tapestry of our lives.  I know now that what I felt that night will always be with me, sitting on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.

But maybe that's OK because then I can't take anything for granted.  It's not allowed.  I have come away from nearly realizing my biggest fear with a fuller heart and with so much gratitude, I can't even fully express it.

I will always be traumatized, damaged, scarred.  But that's OK too.  It's all part of who I am and I think, who I'm meant to be.  I'm not saying it doesn't suck, because it totally does.  But it's not all bad.  In fact, there's plenty of good.

I've shared this quote before:

"We have no right to ask when sorrow comes, `Why did this happen to me?' unless we ask the same question for every moment of happiness that comes our way."

~ Author Unknown

How Do I Love Thee?

Update 3/27/12: I love this post so much because I was able to articulate exactly how I feel about my husband. I wrote this in the aftermath of Mark's heart bypass surgery. That was a year and a half ago. Just this month, I almost lost Mark again. Everything below still holds true....except we keep getting closer to losing him. 

...Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Sonnet 43)

The love I feel for my husband amazes me.  That sounds like an odd thing to say because I wouldn't have married him if I didn't love him.  But I absolutely did not love him then as I do now.  Ours is a love that has grown and matured and deepened over the years.  On your wedding day you think you love your spouse-to-be madly, passionately, above any other, and you will til the day you die!  But you really have no idea what that means as you're standing there saying vows, professing your undying devotion to this person.  I believe that if you marry the person you were meant to, the true "depth and breadth and height" of the love between you unfolds over time, through your shared experiences as you make your way through life together.

Everything I've ever read about who Mark and I are astrologically says NO!  Scorpio + Aries = Bad. The Chinese zodiac tells us Monkey + Tiger = Bad.  I guess this is because we can both be hot-headed and stubborn so we are prone to volatility.  While we indeed have had pretty heated arguments, we always come back to our mutual love and respect for each other.  We both believe that if you don't fight, you don't care.  We are also both very loyal and steadfast.  And I think our stubbornness is a GOOD thing in our marriage because we aren't about to let what we've built together go without a fight!

Regardless of what "they" say, Mark is a mate to my soul, the "great love of my life".  I know this like I know my name.  We are connected, as if there is a string running between our two bellies.  The string is short when we are together and lengthens when we are apart.  I know I was meant to love him, and he to love me.  We were meant to go through life together, to take care of each other.  We have endured and overcome and forged ahead.  There is nothing spectacular about us, nothing overly special or "shiny".  What we have is just real and true and strong.  We enjoy making each other happy.

And then we have these two gorgeous children!  Camryn is my dream come true and AJ is my hope for the future.  Literally.  Having Cami was the realization of my Dream to be a mother, and having AJ meant I had overcome my fears and instead grabbed onto Hope.  I am so very proud of the little family we have made!
 
Is it any wonder why recent events have been so traumatizing?  We have been through A LOT in the last 16 years, lots of ups and downs, lots of dealing with Mark's health problems.  But none of it compares to coming so close to losing Mark as we did when his heart stopped 3 times during the "night from hell".  There has literally not been anything scarier than that.  Nothing scarier than learning there was an infection in his blood surrounding his heart.
 
I had no control over any of this.  I had to put my trust in the medical professionals trained to make him well....and pray my little heart out.  The one thing I had going for me is that I knew he didn't want to leave us.  I knew he wanted to stay here, stay with us.  He wasn't ready to go and I knew he would fight.  Because that's what Mark does.  He is the definition of a fighter.  But he is not invincible and matters of life and death are not ultimately under our control.  And anyway, just how much can one body take??
 
So I was still scared.  And I was torn.  Torn between staying vigil at the hospital all night long, and being with, and there for, our children.  I mean, there is very little that can't be made better by a hug from a child!  Since having children one thing I have been determined to do is let all this scary medical stuff effect them as little as possible, to disrupt their sweet little lives as little as possible.  That's not to say that I believe in sheltering them, because I don't.  But they are just kids after all, and shouldn't be burdened if we can help it.
 
Ever since my friend Emily died, leaving her husband and 2 children, I have been all the more aware that that DOES happen.  You CAN lose your spouse before you're old.  You can be left a widow or widower while you're still young.  I have been very worried about that happening to me.  I swear I do try not to dwell on that possibility in my day-to-day life!  But then it was right there, in my face.  And now it is haunting me.
 
I think I need to stop here for now.  I feel like I'm gonna start rambling.  Bottom line is, I still love and need my husband very much, and our children do to, and am not ready to lose him anytime soon.  So there.

The First Step

...is to admit you have a problem.  I have a problem with the fact that I was recently faced with one of my worst fears: losing the love of my life and father of my children.

It has been 6 weeks since my husband Mark had double bypass surgery on his heart.  When his surgeon cut him open he discovered a terrible infection.  He was a lot sicker than anyone had anticipated.  That night his heart stopped 3 times.  We almost lost him.

I am still struggling with this.  I'm afraid to SPEAK it for fear that I will just melt into uncontrollable sobs and not be able to actually get the words out.  So I've decided that I need to blog it out, have my nearest and dearest read it so that we're all on the same page, and then maybe have some conversations.

This is my first post about this, my first step.  It will be interesting to try to get everything swimming around in my head and my heart out in some succinct manner.  I will do my best.

All I know is I don't want to dwell in the night of September 21, 2010 forever.  I need to work through this and let it go.