Okay, so a lot has happened since 2009. First, my husband damn near killed himself in his attempt to get help from people who apparently kept sending him home, saying that he seemed "okay enough" (that's what you get at CAMH sometimes, because if you're not psychotic or acutely suicidal, you're better off than most of who they've seen that day). So, long story short, he was in the ICU section of the ER for the better part of a day, and sometime after that he ended up back at CAMH just long enough for me to "inform" the psychiatrist that I thought he was Bipolar, and why. Lucky for me, this particular doctor wasn't at all put off by my providing him with a diagnosis for my husband, and they started him on Lithium. Well, talk about transformations! It was like I got my "old husband" back in a matter of...wow - I can't remember now, but it seemed like no time at all, and couldn't have been more than a few weeks or so. All the anger, rage, and hatred he had felt towards me while sick, pretty much vanished. Okay, well it was lessened to the point that he felt love for me, didn't misread everything I said, and didn't want to hurt me (emotionally) anymore. Not that he suddenly thought I was all sunshine and roses, but my status of a decent, loving wife was returned to me, which was in itself, a miracle.
There was no doubt that my husband was bipolar, that he was the "atypical" type (i.e. angry, irritable and mean, vs. euphoric when in a manic phase), and that he responded very, very well to medication. He also had Post Traumatic Stess Disorder resulting from the abuse he had experienced during his childhood. So, we knew these things by May of 2009, if I remember correctly (which I may or may not). By September 2009 we were friends again, he was spending a lot of time (and pretty good, quality time) with the kids, and over the next two years it was so, so much better. Did we reconcile? Well, no. First, I needed a good year or so to know that he was really better. And he was - he stayed off drugs, went back to school, and managed to remain pretty stable, albeit with some issues associated with PTSD still in the picture (i.e. it was still not easy for him to cope with kids acting up, but at least he did a fairly good job at it).
Which brings us to the second thing I needed to see - I needed him to "up his parenting." This took a lot longer, probably because it is affected so much by his PTSD (he was very, very badly physically and psychologically abused by his step-father, not to mention almost not parented at all by his mother, and abandoned by his father). Slowly but surely, this got a lot better, though. To the point where I could certainly trust him alone with the kids, and know that at worst he might get too frustrated and no longer be as patient as I would like (I really do have very high parenting standards, the poor guy). In fact, last year he watched the kids two nights a week when I was in practicum, and only once did it go "badly" - even then "badly" just meant that he lost his cool, raised his voice, and wasn't too nice when my son acted up once night. Nothing major, and nothing like when he was unwell.
Third, we had to learn how to be a couple - a couple who can work as a team and not have little arguments all the time (and by "little" I mean an ongoing and noticeable level of tension that is uncomfortable for the kids). This is where we were at in May, 2011. So, that is why I'm still pretty damn mad that his doctor chose to try changing his medication in June. Yes, Lithium has the potential to become toxic - I get that. However, it can happen in the very distant future or potentially not at all, so why change what's working when there are still young kids involved? Seems like a pretty damn big risk from me & the kids' side of the equation. Despite my misgivings, my husband agreed to the change, and slowly over the next couple of months things have deteriorated.
August was the first signs of something being wrong. Jerry was more irritable, much more short-tempered, especially with Dylan and I, and I started feeling like I was walking on egg shells again. At first, it seemed to stem from a bad weekend we had at a family reunion - the first couple of days were okay, but on the third day the tension between us went way up. I knew why I was on edge - too much family (not that I don't love them, but I always feel my "black sheep issues" come up when I'm around them all), and I thought I knew why he was on edge (feeling like he's being watched and evaluated), but when I suggested we let it go afterwards, he just couldn't do it. Where I could say 'hey, that was a crappy weekend, and we weren't our best, but that was a lot of pressure - I am totally willing to let this go,' he just couldn't.
A couple more bad camping trips later, and it was back to school for all of us. This year, though, unlike last year, Jerry was really struggling to keep up. He seemed depressed and anxious. He was really disconnecting from me, and to an extent from the kids as well. He was trying to work at the same time, and so was not getting nearly enough sleep - a potential trigger for Bipolar, too. But overall, I was definitely getting this sick, nagging feeling - call it "been there, done this" intuition, very finely tuned for survival, that told me this was his medication. Not that he was fully manic or depressive to this point, but things were going downhill, and I didn't like what I was seeing.
We started therapy recently, and it really sucked to have her not knowing him from before (i.e. on lithium) and coming into it at this point. She doesn't seem to be able to see what I see, and unfortunately that has always been the case (honestly, the number of doctors I tried to warn about what was coming...I was never wrong, and it was never good when they wouldn't listen). Since he is fully convinced in the accuracy of his perceptions, he is very, very convincing. I, on the other hand, come off as the "over sensitive" wife, who reads too much into everything because she's so scared that he'll get sick again.
Except that I'm not. Two things he kept repeating as reasons why it wasn't his medication were 1. I'm not calling you names, throwing things or punching things like I used to, and 2. I may be more short-tempered with the kids, but I'm still a lot better than I was. Well, last weekend he got angry with Dylan, who was acting out, and scratched his *&%$ing face, saying "how do you like it?" He left a pretty nasty scratch, and one very minor scratch, and his son was pretty upset about it all. Dylan felt better when he did finally come back and apologize, but still - this was absolutely over the line, and Jerry knew it. Ironically, just the day before he had finally opened up and become willing to approach his doctor about his medication, because he'd started having panic attacks again, which was new and freaking him out. Then this happened, and he said, again, that he would call his doctor this week. Of course, he didn't - not until Thursday (this had happened on a Sunday), so of course he didn't hear back by the weekend - and our son's birthday!
During Dylan's party, Jerry got mad at me a few times for "not listening" to him - didn't seem to notice that I had a bunch of 6-year-olds talking to me at the exact same time, or that I was trying to finish counting a handful of tiny, glow-in-the-dark spiders at the time, etc. Having moments of marital tension in the middle of a birthday party is not cool with me! I managed to move it along alright, but it made me very uncomfortable. Then, this morning (the next day), he woke up stuck in his anger, and determined to make it about me (because what else could it possibly be, right?). No matter what I said or did, there was no use - he got madder and madder. He called me callous in front of the kids, and when I went outside he followed me out and kept going. Then he lost it, hit the door (half-heartedly, but only with the greatest effort to control himself), told the kids he needed to "do some stuff" and left. To put this in context, he's spent Friday through Sunday at our house for the last year and a half or more. So now he was just gone, on a Saturday morning, with no explanation.
So, off I went to swimming, then to the family halloween party for my daughter's school, by myself. Luckily the kids haven't asked why their Dad isn't here...yet. I'm not sure what to say when they do, either. In the meantime, I feel I have no choice but to cut down on the amount of time he's spending with us, and hoping that this will get resolved before it gets totally out-of-control (as in him using drugs again, becoming suicidal again, etc. as opposed to him hurting my kid, which is out-of-control enough, but not life or death).
So, here's to hope. And, in the meantime, a bird's-eye-view of my experience co-parenting with someone with not-quite-treated-enough Bipolar.
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