A Great Blog

Relapse

2009-09-11T13:58:00.002+10:00

Mum is in the ‘lock up’ or high security section of the mental health unit. An increasingly severe manic episode resulted in her being escorted to hospital by Police and made to stay. She made a serious attempt at self harm the day after arrival, verbally abused staff and, in her altered state, made attempts to physically attack them. She couldn’t help it any more than a person suffering a heart attack can help chest pain.

I visit her the next day and she tells me about the rage, the despair, the suicide attempt (metal hair clips jammed into the power socket). I note, not for the first time, that we talk about traumatic things in such a matter of fact way. Overhearing us, people have sometimes found this unnerving.

I’ve visited Mum in various public hospital mental health units – general ward and secure - since I was five years old. Thirty five years. The environment is sometimes violent, occasionally shocking and always sad. Many have a harder road in life than I’ll ever know. A horrific reality. My mother knows nothing else. She works hard and achieves recovery for extended periods but then, relapse. Her suffering is intense.

As we talk, I can’t help but notice the shiny, white scars on her soft, white arms. Hundreds of them. Some as wide as my thumb. A graphic reminder of the inner torment she has suffered. She didn’t wear a short sleeved top in front of me until she was over fifty years old and the cutting was far behind. I noticed the constant long sleeves of course but accepted her concerns about ‘flabby arms’. She kept her wounds – sometimes sutured and bandaged – successfully hidden from friends and family for many years. Hardly attention seeking.

I look at this woman. I love her with all my heart. It’s all too easy to become distressed. I picture her: electrocuted and lifeless. I remind myself that she’s been here before and she always bounces back. This time is no different. I smile. I stay positive. I try to encourage her. I accept who and where she is. I hold her hand.

Another patient, D, was also in the high security ward yesterday when I visited. Unnaturally thin, D’s frail little body was shaking from head to toe. She had an extreme spinal curvature (long standing?) and a slew of injuries (recent) including a black eye: a real shiner. Extremely self conscious, D was unable to make eye contact with anyone. Frightened. Alone.

Today when I visited, Mum and D were sitting together. Companionable. Calm. My mother’s true nature shines through again. She befriends people that society avoids. She’s one of them.

Mum reaches out a hand. Asks a name. Listens. Whispers “I’ve been there,” and her hug is all the more comforting for it. Words of hope, compassion, love. Talk of God and his tender mercy. Recognises inner beauty. Truly cares. Offers real and lasting friendship. Never forgets.

I am awed by my mother’s own inner beauty. Her compassion. Her capacity for genuine love and kindness for every person she encounters. In the smallest place and in the darkest hour. Truly one of God’s own. An inspiration.

Moving Day

2009-06-12T11:35:00.001+10:00

Moving day was surreal.

Something out of the ordinary happened to almost every member of my family on that one day! That Murphy really knew his stuff!

Neither the telephone nor the electricity were connected in the new flat, despite having been previously arranged with the relevant organisations in plenty of time. It has been an enormous uphill battle to get even basic services in place for her in under a week, even though there were no errors on our part. My mobile phone battery now needs replacing and all of the residents recognise me as the woman with the red face who paced for hours in the car park, unpacking luggage with a mobile phone wedged between shoulder and ear.

My husband was in a car accident. A semi-trailer merged into his lane, on top of him, whilst driving my daughters little Excel. Thankfully he moved quickly and the truck recognised the scraping sound early. Thankfully, no-one was hurt.

One family member had a very important business meeting to attend but, for the first time ever, the cab never turned up to take him. So he was pulled into the fray to hire a ute for hauling new furniture to Mum’s which, incidentally, took my two sons-in- law an entire day, following a series of mishaps, before one of them came down seriously ill and the other was aggressively chastised by his father for not being available to his own family throughout the day.

My daughter, back at home, was hemmed in by other cars and, needing to collect her daughter from school, made a 150 point turn (Austen Powers style) in her own car, drove across a number of neighbourhood lawns, dodged trees and eventually emerged from someone else’s driveway!

Then there was the incident. Mum’s cat went missing. Now, to understand the true Armageddon style ramifications of this life changing event, I really must clarify the significance. When my Mum is at her very lowest point, the single thought that has prevented her suicide is the fear of the impact of her death upon her beloved cat, Sally. I kid you not. They spend hours together, day and night, and are so deeply connected that I shudder to think how my Mother will ever cope with Sally’s loss when the unspeakable time eventually comes. The mere thought can reduce my Mum to tears immediately. Sally is 9 years old, but as an indoor cat in excellent health, I hope she has another 8-10 years.

It had been a long day. My remaining (not yet chastised) son-in-law was single-handedly constructing furniture whilst I made up the new bed when I realised that I hadn’t seen the cat for a while. This simple observation soon escalated into a full scale manhunt, well, feline-hunt. I was absolutely terrified of telling Mum that we couldn’t find Sally but once the search and rescue operation hit high gear, it was becoming obvious that something was amiss.

I tried to retain a reasonable, calm, yet appropriately concerned air when I told Mum. To my utter amazement, she didn’t panic. She stayed completely calm and simply said “I’m not worried. Sally can fit into the smallest spaces: she’ll be here somewhere. It will be alright”.

Well, I checked every small space imaginable, including down the toilet and in each of the teeny bathroom drawers.

We looked behind doors, under bags and in every conceivable nook and cranny. I searched the entire wardrobe, pulling everything out in sweeping armfuls, after hours of meticulous organization. We not only looked under furniture but lifted it up for closer examination.

I even checked out the truly unlikely scenarios. Thankfully Sally wasn’t sandwiched between the bed frame and mattress nor was she in the outside skip where I had been throwing used boxes and bags with wild abandon. It must be said at this point though, as an avid animal lover and responsible adult, I have never thrown a cat into a bin, unintentionally or otherwise! We searched the grounds and the too-close-for-comfort main road running past the retirement village. Every second felt like an eternity as the next four hours passed!

My hard working and selfless son in law headed off for home, to face his red faced father and my husband, in a different car this time, arrived at the flat with take-away for dinner(who could be bothered cooking?). Besides clogging my arteries and adding an inch to each thigh, the take-away had another effect. The smell attracted a cat. Sally appeared suddenly and extricated herself, David Copperfield style, from the tiniest little tear in the cloth base of the lounge suite. I almost fainted with relief! My husband smiled as if he had planned it that way and Mum was nonplussed.

I’ve never seen my Mum so calm. Since she locked the door of her old home for the last time five days ago, excluding a few perfectly understandable tears the first night, she has been happy, positive and relaxed ever since. Rather than struggle with the change, she tells me she feels as though she has come ‘home’ and seems to be thriving thus far.

As we start the lengthy process of settling in, finding her a new GP, getting her enormous wad of prescriptions filled at the local chemist (who has had to order in some of the less common medications hence the delay) and trying to encourage the local public mental health service to take any sort of interest in assessing her and assigning a new psychiatrist, she’s OK. Better than that actually - she’s wonderful.

Her faith in God (and mine) has not been misplaced!

S

Mum's House

2009-06-12T11:29:00.001+10:00

Its been a hectic few weeks for me. I am in the midst of helping my Mum move house to be nearer to myself and my children.

In this case, 'helping' means that I am doing absolutely everything from making a list of what she should bring, arranging removalists, organising people to help her pack leading up to removal day, paying the removalist extra to do the packing when they arrive because nothing was actually done, finding her a new place, paying the bond, paying off her existing bills because she has spent her whole pension on ordering strange, useless items from catalogues, buying her new furniture to replace the most severely dilapidated pieces, travelling across states with her between properties, buying her business class seats on all flights to ensure that she is treated well and kept away from people in the general cabin who are rude to her if she talks to much or laughs too loudly, talking to her for hours on the phone every night to help her remain calm throughout the process and so on.

For the last five years we have lived in different States and though I visit often, and we talk by phone daily, her need for support in everyday living is increasing with each passing day.

The fact that I am the one making all the arrangements might lead you to believe that she doesn’t actually want to move but I assure you she does. Desperately so. She is driving the process but she finds change difficult, even when its change that she initiates. She is an intelligent woman: she is capable of making arrangements herself but she finds the associated anxiety too difficult to bear.

I told her at the outset that I was worried about the move. Although I very much want her near me, I was worried that the stress of change would lead her into a breakdown. She said that she was probably going to break down either way. She felt that living alone had become torture so we needed to just go ahead regardless. And to her great credit, not once has she changed her mind about the move. She has remained steadfast though she is becoming increasingly unwell, as anticipated. In her own words, she's as tough as old boot leather and an absolute pragmatist. "Don't worry love," she tells me "no matter what life throws my way, I always bounce back. I'm still here!"

Fiercely independent, Mum has lived alone for years. Since I was a teenager in fact. She has been married three times, for brief periods, then returned to living alone. She likes doing things her own way and in her own time. She also sometimes suffers from paranoid delusions and fervently believes that everyone but family will steal from her. She fears that if she lived with anyone else, she would never be able to cope with the constant theft.

I find her current three bedroom home chaotic. It is packed to the rafters with store catalogues retrieved from her letterbox over the past twenty years and literally hundreds of plastic bags filled with bottle tops, sparkly wrapping paper and jars filled with rubber bands. She has an extensive collection of small, cheap, plastic Australian flags, most of which are dirty and broken. She found most of them on the ground over the years though I've no idea who would carry them about in the first place.

Mum has hundreds of books: dog eared and well read. She has written in pen on every single page of every single one of them - little comments about whether or not she agrees with the text or retelling a story that came to mind as she read a chapter. I can tell which are her favourite books as the original text is almost unreadable. She has a collection of stuffed toys that number in the hundreds. Honestly. Her house is literally filled with mountains of boxes, bags, chests and suitcases. Some entire rooms have become completely inaccessible due to the clutter. But Mum sees something completely different.

She sees rooms full of valuable possessions and treasured memories. Favourite books, pictures and toys so beautiful that people are no doubt filled with envy and powerless to resist stealing them. She never throws anything away and although she can never find anything (she is on her twelfth pair of glasses) she feels she has everything that anyone could possibly ever want except good mental health. And I wouldn’t ever suggest anything different. Instead, I organised a removalist to carefully pack a reasonable amount of the treasures she holds dearest, to come with her to her new retirement flat her in Queensland.

She now finds living alone impossible. She feels her home is filled with the ghosts of pain and lost. At other times, she even believes her home is literally filled with ghosts.
It will be interesting to see if her new neighbours accept her. She gets regular, unsolicited abuse from the general public – I am constantly staggered by the ignorance and intolerance within our society.

Many people feel there’s no place for a lovely, gentle, warm-hearted woman who thinks a plastic cowboy hat is the height of fashion. But there damn well is.

S

Inspired Recovery

2009-04-28T12:12:00.003+10:00

Inspired Recovery is due for completion at the end of June. I want to sincerely thank all those who contributed to the book for sharing their powerful and compelling stories with me. It takes a lot of courage to speak openly about such deeply personal experiences and I commend you all for your bravery.

Developing Inspired Recovery has been a rewarding experience for me and I have learned a lot throughout the journey. To be honest some aspects of the accounts related to me were devastating to hear. I've often needed to recognize and work through my own emotional response to such troubling recollections. But on the flip side, I've never been so inspired! The contributors to this book have true grit. They are survivors who have pushed through the challenges thrown their way to carve their own path, despite all odds. And they have achieved recovery.

The subject of mental illness is a deeply personal one to me, as my mother has suffered from serious mental illness her whole life. An only child, I shared her struggles and it wasn't always easy. Ok, it was never easy. But I wouldn't change a moment of it. It taught me what was truly important in life and showed me the resilience of the human spirit.

Inspired Recovery had to be written!

It hasn't always been easy to give this book the time and energy it deserves. My top priority will always be my family (my second grandchild is due anytime now) and I also run a business, Astor Levin. Juggling my time has proven to be very difficult but I am thankful everyday that I have such richness and opportunity in my life, well balanced or not!

Life is what you make it!

Cheers

S