Good-byes

This is my one-hundredth post to my blog. It is also my last. It will remain available on Facebook and Blogspot, but I doubt that I will add anything to it.

I’m stopping here because I think I’ve shared all that I need to share (also, one hundred is a nice round number). In TV talk, I’ve “jumped the shark.” (I vividly remember that episode of Happy Days, and thinking that Fonzie had gone too far).

I started this blog for selfish reasons. I needed a forum in which to open up, so that I would feel less shame about my illness. I wanted to help my family and friends understand me better. I needed to feel that I was doing something useful while my wife was in hospital and I was off work.

I was expecting a handful of readers. Instead, I got several thousand.

The internet is a crazy thing.

You have been reading Upsy/Downsy along with people from twenty different countries. Most are from Canada and the U.S., but there are also readers from Santiago, Chile; London, England; Paris, France; and even more in Norway, Finland, Venezuela, Croatia, New Zealand, Romania, South Africa and on and on. I enjoyed receiving e-mail from around the globe.

Mental illness exists all over the world. I worry about the stigma in Canada, but know that it is much worse in many other places.

I hope that all of you who have read Upsy/Downsy, if you aren’t already, can share a little bit of your understanding with others - to help lift some of the burden from the shoulders of the mentally ill around you.

If you are living with mental illness, I hope that this blog has provided some comfort, and that you find the tools and the support that you need to heal.

Thanks for reading. Be well, my friends.

D’Arcy

Turf Wars

When I was released from hospital, I had to have some supports in place. I didn’t have a family doctor, so was told to go to the same walk in clinic each time. I was assigned a psychiatrist, and got a referral to a therapist.

My first stop was the therapist.

“Do they have you seeing a psychiatrist, too?”

“Yes.”

“Are you on medication?”

“Yes.”

The therapist clucked disapprovingly.

“So, they’ve got you on the medication merry-go-round.”

I must have looked confused.

“Look – these psychiatrists will just get you hooked on medications, and keep you drugged up the rest of your life. You really should just be in therapy.”

Next was my appointment with my new psychiatrist (I’ll call him Dr. No).

“What are you doing with a therapist?” he asked with a big smile. “You don’t need one. Don’t waste your money. I don’t treat people who see therapists – it gets too confusing.”

I was weak and vulnerable. All I knew was that the hospital psychiatrists had saved my life. So I called my new therapist and told him sorry, I was going to have to stop seeing him.

It was like a weird love triangle. The therapist was furious with Dr. No. I was being forced by both of them to make a choice. Looking back, I think either choice would have been bad.

Dr. No began by taking a detailed history of my ethnic origins. He drew a complex chart. This, he explained, would help him decide how to treat me best.

He prescribed entirely different medications than I had been given in hospital. When I asked why, he said that they were older, more proven, and cheaper.

The side effects were horrible. I had weight gain, sleep disturbances, was tired all of the time, and had to wear sunscreen as my skin had become highly sensitive to sunlight.

When I went to see Dr. No for my weekly appointment, I would start off by talking about how I was feeling – then he would cut me off. “We’ll simply adjust your medications a little,” was all he would say. Then he would get weird, and talk about his failing marriage.

Then I learned that a possible side effect of Imipramine is sudden death from cardiac failure.

Dr. No had not explained this to me.

So I fired him.

I went to a walk-in clinic. I saw a doctor and told him my story.

“Will it kill me or irreparably harm me if I quit my medications - cold-turkey?”

“Well,” he replied, looking concerned, “you should really talk with your psychiatrist. If you do quit, you should taper the doses. If you are having psychiatric symptoms, they may return.”

“I’m sorry, but you didn’t answer my question. Will it harm me or kill me?”

He hemmed and hawed. “It won’t kill you. But you will feel like hell for two or three weeks.”

I went home and threw all of my pills in the garbage. I was super sick for two weeks.

The symptoms returned, but were manageable.

Since then I have met many amazing psychiatrists (most are – Dr. No was a rare dud), who use modern methods, modern medications with few side-effects, and recommend counselling. Still, I come across some therapists who look down their noses at psychiatrists (but they are becoming rarer).

When your life is at risk, turf wars can kill you.

You need every tool available to survive. 

Support

My wife is finally home. It has been a year since her first hospitalization. The last twelve months have been, to say the least, a huge challenge for everyone in our family.

I am so proud of how hard she has worked to get to this point. There is still a long way to go – right now she is getting daily visits from nurses, and a once a week house call from a doctor. (They still do that! It’s like Little House on the Prairie – except we don’t have to pay him with apples or a chicken). Our goal is to keep her out of the hospital.

My daily struggle is maintaining a healthy balance: between stabilizing enough to be able to return to work, and supporting the woman I love in her recovery. Both of us need to get healthy for ourselves, our family and our relationship. But there is no doubt that she has suffered more and needs much more support than I do.

What I’ve been learning to do, no matter how guilty it makes me feel, is to rely on others for help. When she is having a hard time and I am low on resources, I will get her to phone a member of her care team. I have to admit to myself that I can’t do everything for her, or for our family. That’s why there are professionals, and that’s what friends and extended family are for, too.

One of the reasons my first marriage broke up was that my partner didn’t understand my illness, and the strain of living with a sick person became too much. She expected emotional resources that I couldn’t give, and in return couldn’t give me the support that I needed to be well.

Some people have said that I must be a patient man to live with a person as ill as my wife.

I say that she is the patient one, slowly and with great effort moving herself towards recovery.

No matter how difficult things get with my wife’s illness, it is so much better having her home than in hospital. She lights up the house and everyone is happier - even the cat.

I am working on my balance so that I can continue to get well, and provide the resources my wife needs. I want to support her in the way that I wish I had been supported when I was so sick.

She deserves nothing less.