Bill
How did you react to
Missy's hospitalization?
I was very upset when she went into the hospital. I didn't really understand
what was going on. She seemed to be fine and then all of a sudden she was
in the psych unit. I had never dealt with the idea that someone really close
to me having psychological troubles. I'd thought about car accidents or
traumas, but never something like this that I knew so little about.
I work as a pharmaceutical representative, so I'm interested in the medical
field. In my job, I learned a lot about antidepressants and have wanted to
help people get better. So, I read a lot of medical textbooks. I realized
that depression is really hard to understand and deal with it. There is no
simple solution.
How did you cope with Missy's condition?
I thought I dealt with it pretty well, but I did eventually develop a tic.
I went to see a psychologist after a few years. The psychologist said, 'how
long have you had this tic?' I said, 'what are you talking about?'
I didn't know I had it. I tried to focus on taking care of Katherine.
I made all the meals. Some days Missy would take care of her, other times
I did it.
I was always analyzing the situation thinking 'how can I make this better?'
I worried about whether her blood sugar was ok, if she had eaten a meal in
the last few hours. I wondered whether she needed more exercise, or suffered
from a lack of sunshine in the wintertime. I was always thinking there must
be some way to fix this. I couldn't deal with the fact that it's a
chronic, biological condition that has to be managed.
One difficulty is I could never predict what the next day was going to be
like. I never knew if I was going to have a good day, or week, or month. The
day could start out fine, but then I could get home from work and it would
be terrible. If Missy is feeling terrible, then I'm on duty for the rest
of the day. I wasn't upset that I was doing too much work; I was just
so upset to see her in such a mess.
