__________
Hosea's log. Stardate January 13, 2005. Wife had an attack that I described in an e-mail to Boyfriend 4 as follows:
…. Wife
had an attack where she started snarling like an animal, making
not-very-veiled threats to damage herself and/or the children, and
insisting that nobody loved her or would care if anything happened to
her; when I tried to hold her to tell her this wasn't true she began
to struggle violently with me. I held her still on the bed by holding
her wrists and pinning her legs, because I was at this point
genuinely concerned about the consequences (to herself or others) if
I let her go. Her response was to shriek as if possessed.
Actually that's
not a bad image, because her voice got deeper and huskier and the
look in her eyes was not anything she normally has. Her reason also
left her; I told her more than once that if she stopped fighting with
me I wouldn't pin her down, but her response to that was to fight
harder ... the way an animal might. (The sounds coming out of her
mouth were feral and inarticulate as well.) I don't know if she was
actually bruised, but her skin is so sensitive that she bruises if
she bumps into a table. So I bet she was….
She finally
settled down, after shrieking incoherently for many minutes. (…I
think it helped that the boys came in the room to see what was
going on.) When she stopped fighting and snarling, she settled down
into sobbing, at which point I concluded that there was no further
danger and let her go. I think this has been building for a while. I
believe it is the depression coming to a peak. ….
I tried calling
you but got your answering machine. Anyway, here is the story of the
evening. I have left out all the story building up to it, because I
still need to feed the boys and get them to bed; but there was a long
trail of anger and frustration leading to this moment….
Oh, she did ask
me to call Boyfriend 3. … I gave him basically the same description. He
said that one of his ex-wives used to experience the same thing on
rare occasions; also that he would pray for her and put her on his
church's prayer line, but then after a few minutes Wife
was willing to talk to him. That seems to have helped her collect
herself, too.
__________Hosea's log. Stardate spring 2002.
During the spring of 2002, Wife had an extended bad spell. One Sunday in March, I took the boys down to visit my parents; I worked on taxes with my mother, while the boys played. Later that evening we had dinner and a small birthday party for my father. Wife stayed home because she wasn’t feeling well; also, at that point, she and my father got on badly and I thought they would each be happier without the other. But the next day, while Son 1 was at baseball practice, she became very angry with me. She began to accuse me of trying to take the children away from her permanently, and nothing I could say would shake this belief from her – even though there was no rational connection between anything I had done and that conclusion.
In early May of that year, she called
me at the office one afternoon and insisted I come home immediately.
She had just gotten off the phone with the hospital trying to arrange
something about her upcoming gastric bypass surgery, and something
had gone wrong. As a result she threw a tantrum, barricading herself
in the bedroom and throwing clocks and other things into the bathroom
and out the window. Her niece was staying with us at that
time, and so she shepherded the kids into another room and tried to
look after Wife.
When I got home, I tried to calm Wife
down; when that didn’t work, I held her wrists and held her down
onto the bed to restrain her forcibly from doing more damage. She
snarled and fought and shouted, but finally the fit passed and I let
her up. Later I called the hospital and worked out whatever the
problem was. I also cleaned up the mess.
__________
Hosea's log. Stardate spring 1996.
She went into a similar downward spiral
while pregnant with Son
1, our oldest. She had been taken off her
medication (then Prozac) because of her pregnancy, and one evening I
came home from work to find the kitchen a complete disaster. She had
thrown food and dishes across it, smashing glass jars and spilling
molasses, soy sauce, and many other foods all across the floor. She
was sitting on the floor surrounded by broken glass and all this
other stuff, playing with the broken glass by tracing it along her
arms. When I asked her what had happened, her voice sounded almost
serene (but crazy); she said that she was fine and that she was just
playing with broken glass. I got her out of there and cleaned up; I
cleaned up the kitchen; I called her OB/GYN to say that if she
couldn’t get her Prozac she was going to have to have an abortion
so that she could have her medicines again; and finally I got a hold
of a psychiatrist who had seen her years before (when
she was hospitalized for psychiatric reasons). I made an
appointment, and at that appointment he told her that after the first
trimester Prozac is completely safe for pregnant mothers. She went
back on her medicines and things got better.
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