Throughout all this, in my dealings with everyone from the medical and psychological communities to my family and friends, I became painfully aware of how differently people - even professionals - treat those that they feel are mentally or emotionally unstable. I was no longer a person, I was a disease, and a scary one, because even the professionals only knew so much about it, and most of what they “know” is largely conjecture. Everything I said had to be questioned and examined for validity, because it might all just be in my mind. I was a double conundrum because the arsenal of treatments that the world has thus far come up with to address the kinds of problems I was having were of no use to me anymore. The risks of another anti-depressant tipping the scales for me into psychosis again were too great for me to even consider. Dr. O kept saying, “Somebody’s just going to have to bite the bullet and prescribe something for you.” I just wanted to scream at him and say, “Who exactly should that person be? Are you going to be the one to take responsibility for me losing it if things go sour? Who do you think will really be paying the price if anything were to happen to my kids? What guarantees can you give me that nothing bad will happen? NONE!”
My husband was still afraid to leave me alone with the kids for any length of time. He had avoided working because of this fear for several months now. It was hard for me to reassure him as I felt the fear myself. When it all came down, I blamed the Effexor. As our finances reeled out of control, I contemplated seeking financial redress for my situation. I really felt like somebody in the pharmaceutical industry should pay for having kept secret the fact that Effexor could have such devastating effects if stopped abruptly. There was no indication of this on the labeling, only the usual mumbo jumbo about consulting a physician before stopping or starting any medication. If I had had any real idea of how potentially dangerous it was, I never would have stopped the way I did. A lot of internet surfing led me to discover that Wyeth-Ayerst had indeed known about the potential for severe withdrawal for eight years. I was angry that they couldn’t call a spade a spade, and made such a charade of promoting Effexor as “non-habit forming.” Other searching led me to discover I was not alone in having had an adverse reaction to this drug, or difficulty quitting. I also found many other anti-depressants, including Zoloft and especially Paxil, were not the wonder drugs that had been promised, but instead left broken and wounded people in the wake of their use.
There were law firms who dealt in such matters, but their dockets were filled with Paxil projects, because the drug was higher profile at the moment due to some suicides in the news. Since I had not actually killed myself or my kids, I was not as much on the radar. I had not lost enough to be worth media attention. I also learned that, even if I could find somebody to take my case, it could be years before I got anything out of the drug company, if ever. I alternated between days of thinking that they really owed me a large sum of money for wreaking such havoc in my life, and thinking that I really just wanted them to change the labeling so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. Eventually I signed a petition for the latter, and hoped I wouldn’t regret it later, that I hadn’t overlooked some fine print that precluded me from bringing suit later on if possible.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Merry Christmas
When I returned, my husband was surprisingly reticent. We had some very frank discussions which were a great deal more civilized. We agreed to work on some things, together and separately, and actually spent some of the quality time together that my mother-in-law had hoped for. I began to think that we’d get through all this. I wasn’t sure how I’d ever be able to talk to my mother-in-law again. She’d hurt me even worse than Jason had. I felt that relationship had taken an unprecedented blow, and had no idea how it would be reconciled. (I would later write a letter that was meant to help, but ended up making matters worse). But I was finally able to get some much needed rest, exhausted to the point of collapse by my long journey and emotional ordeal. Waiting for the kids to return at Thanksgiving was still hard, but the time went by surprisingly fast. I was still physically and emotionally tattered, but their return was like a breath of fresh air, and rejuvenated me for several days, notwithstanding the occasional twitchiness, weakness, or pain.
The week before Christmas, my son was scheduled to have his tonsils out, something he badly needed and could not wait on. I prayed every day to have the strength to get through that ordeal. I barely decorated the house for Christmas, feeling just too overwhelmed as it was to take on any more than absolutely necessary. Many gifts I’d planned to give and activities I’d intended to attend just had to be let go. The day of the surgery arrived, and all was well, until my husband left me alone for a while at the hospital, and I began to panic that he would not return before our son awoke from the anesthesia. The shakes started up and I felt a horrible weakness take hold of me, which only made the problem worse because my greatest fear was not being able to be there when my son needed me most. Somehow, I found untapped reserves of strength, and my husband returned just in time. We managed to get through the day’s challenges, in spite of some petty bickering over how to comfort the boy, both of us being extremely hypersensitive at that point about who was the better parent.
It was the next five days till Christmas that my condition really deteriorated, staying up till all hours with a boy crying piteously from the pain. Jason lacked the patience to deal with his near hysterical sobbing. There was no one to do it but me, and I did the job willingly enough, but it took its toll on an already ravished nervous system. By Christmas Day, I was once again a physical and emotional wreck, and Jason and I bickered and eventually had a blowout after the kids went to bed. I shuddered through the night, trying to ignore my racing heart, too proud to ask Jason for any kind of help. The next day, after he was gone, I called my parents and Dr. O and begged for answers that were not forthcoming. Why was I so messed up? Wasn’t there anything, anybody, that could help me get better?
The week before Christmas, my son was scheduled to have his tonsils out, something he badly needed and could not wait on. I prayed every day to have the strength to get through that ordeal. I barely decorated the house for Christmas, feeling just too overwhelmed as it was to take on any more than absolutely necessary. Many gifts I’d planned to give and activities I’d intended to attend just had to be let go. The day of the surgery arrived, and all was well, until my husband left me alone for a while at the hospital, and I began to panic that he would not return before our son awoke from the anesthesia. The shakes started up and I felt a horrible weakness take hold of me, which only made the problem worse because my greatest fear was not being able to be there when my son needed me most. Somehow, I found untapped reserves of strength, and my husband returned just in time. We managed to get through the day’s challenges, in spite of some petty bickering over how to comfort the boy, both of us being extremely hypersensitive at that point about who was the better parent.
It was the next five days till Christmas that my condition really deteriorated, staying up till all hours with a boy crying piteously from the pain. Jason lacked the patience to deal with his near hysterical sobbing. There was no one to do it but me, and I did the job willingly enough, but it took its toll on an already ravished nervous system. By Christmas Day, I was once again a physical and emotional wreck, and Jason and I bickered and eventually had a blowout after the kids went to bed. I shuddered through the night, trying to ignore my racing heart, too proud to ask Jason for any kind of help. The next day, after he was gone, I called my parents and Dr. O and begged for answers that were not forthcoming. Why was I so messed up? Wasn’t there anything, anybody, that could help me get better?
When It Hits the Fan
My husband has two married siblings who live in the same town, his home town, and a teenage sister, who all dote on my kids. I also have a sister who lives there, and says she is willing to pitch in. I know they will be alright, but I still worry about them, mostly because I’m not so sure about myself.
My own parents are aging. I know there are more fail-safes with my in-laws, and the environment is one that is familiar to the kids, nothing new to adjust to, like my parents’ new apartment. My decision also has something to do with an inability to admit failure to my own parents.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, has seen me falling all over myself for the past seven years, pretty much. She knows me in all my current persevering tenacity as well as my most pathetic weakness. This is both a source of comfort and bitterly galling. I think that I am blessed to have a mother-in-law who does not lord it over me for having this knowledge. I will find out otherwise in a few days. But it makes me feel particularly vulnerable the night they leave, especially if my marriage were to permanently go south. I say permanently, because its been heading in that direction for quite a while now since I got sick, and I keep hoping somehow we’ll be able to pull the nose up out of this dive, but I’m currently at a loss as to how.
So now, the only thing that I feel I’ve ever been particularly good at, motherhood, is in the balance, my offspring in the hands of what could prove to be “the enemy” if things don’t change, and I have no power to do anything about it because I hurt too damn much. I didn’t think I could undertake the trip with the kids, although I was invited, because I thought I’d be a certifiable basket case after traveling six hours on winding roads in winter weather after a trip to the doctor the other day made me cry like a baby every time we hit a bump. But now, in the middle of the night, I think I’d be willing to undertake the journey on foot, in a blizzard, barefoot, just so long as I didn’t have to be so afraid I might lose my babies for good.
Over the previous three days, with the kids safely out of the picture, all the stress that my husband had been dealing with reached critical mass, and without an audience there for him to feel self-conscious about, he had the freedom to tell me exactly what he thought of me and everything I’d been “putting” him through. He was not particularly kind about it. In fact, he was quite brutal. At first I tried to defend myself, and it was fighting, but after a while I was just too tired and hurt too much to fight, but he just kept verbally pounding on me, and it wasn’t fighting anymore, just him taking out his frustrations. By the end of the three days, when he stopped yelling at me at about 3 a.m., I was a physiological mess, and drove myself to the hospital again, heart racing, head pounding, extremities shaking wildly. When the ER doctor essentially shrugged me off, saying he didn’t know what else could be done for me, I went home.
I sat in the car, a tremoring bundle of painful and dysfunctional nerves, and knew I simply could not go into my home and deal with my husband for one more second, or I would go mad or strangle him. I felt like I had imposed on all my friends in town far too much lately, and could not impose on them any further. I contemplated going to a hotel for a day or two, but thought my husband might think I was abandoning him, or fear I was getting suicidal again. The thoughts about my children that had haunted me the previous night came to mind again, and all I could think of was that I desperately wanted to be with them. Letting them go had felt like the worst kind of defeat, and I just needed to feel like I mattered in their lives. I missed them so much, and I knew that if they were around my husband wouldn’t have been so brutal in his verbal attacks on me. I just wanted them home. I decided that I would just get on the bus and go to them, and if I needed a couple of days to recuperate before we came back, I thought surely my mother-in-law would allow me that. After all, initially she had invited me to join them. I just hadn’t thought at the time I could handle the trip. Now I knew I had to.
My parents' new locale was midway in my journey, and they greeted me with both warmth and concern. For a little bit, it was like coming in out of the cold. I spoke to both my husband and mother-in-law on the phone briefly. My honey spoke to me like I was a dangerous lunatic, and his biggest concern was that I was not going to run off with the kids and endanger them. I was insulted that he would even think that, and hung up on him. My mother-in-law sounded just plain mad. I hadn’t expected that, but I accepted that she might be disappointed that I wasn’t spending the time working on my marriage, or that she’d have to put up with another houseguest after all. It really had not even entered my thoughts that she might think I was abandoning him. It seemed obvious to me that, if I was planning on leaving him for good, that the last place I’d want to go was to his mother. It wasn’t so obvious to her, I guess.
Perhaps my judgment was impaired, because even my Dad expressed concern that I was running straight from the swarm of bees right into the hive. I still believed that everything would be alright once I could be with the kids. I refused my parents invitation to stay for a day because I just wanted to see the kids so badly. My sister came and took me on to my in-laws, where I arrived too late to do much more than kiss the kids good night and go to bed. Not that I slept.
In the morning, once everyone else was off to work and school, I found myself alone with my mother-in-law. Out of courtesy, knowing she was not happy with me, I gave her a chance to express her feelings before I tried to justify my presence. I had no idea what I was in for. Operating under the assumption that I was leaving my husband and had come to take the kids, she let me have it. She told me everything she had ever thought was wrong with me and then some. She called me a host of colorful names and accused me of all manner of wrong-doing in my marriage and in my dealings with people altogether. I was so astounded, so unprepared for this attack, that I could barely summon a response, much less a defense. I knew in my heart she was wrong on most counts, but there was just enough truth in some of her accusations to sting me to the core. I knew I had not been easy to live with over the last few months. I knew it had been hard on my marriage and the kids, and I hated myself for it anyway, so for her to rub it in my face and call me the Wife from Hell and an Unfit Mother, etc. etc. just made me feel horrifically awful.
Perhaps the only thing that saved me was her accusation that I had been selfish in sending the kids to stay with her, because I knew wholeheartedly that was wrong. Letting them go had been one of the hardest, most selfless things I had ever done, and I knew that deeply in my soul. I also knew deeply in my soul that I was still too sick to take care of them properly, that they were in good hands where they were, and that I could not stay. I called my sister, and for the second time in a week I had to relinquish the care of my kids to someone else, which had been hard when I trusted my in-laws to do right by me, but a thousand times harder this time around.
I had no choice now but to return home to prove my husband and his mother wrong about my intention of bailing out of my marriage. It probably would have been beneficial to my health to stay with my parents a couple of more days, as they invited again, but I just couldn’t let those unfounded fears fester. It wasn’t a question of pride, but rather of knowing that if I balked now, it would be my kids that would ultimately pay the price. If anyone was going to bail on this marriage, it wouldn't be me. I could not risk my children ever believing I would intentionally give up on our family.
(Unknown to any of us at the time, my mother-in-law was herself ill at this time from what would prove to be fatal cancer. She was also having her own domestic squabble with some of her siblings, and my kids, my problems, and I were just three things too many for her to handle with grace. As a result of this fiasco of a trip, she and I did not speak to each other for over a year, a year I sadly regret now that she is gone. We made peace with each other before her passing, but we both said things that permanently altered what had once been a friendly relationship. Do I blame myself or her? A little. Do I blame the cancer? Not at all. Do I blame the Effexor? Most definitely!)
My own parents are aging. I know there are more fail-safes with my in-laws, and the environment is one that is familiar to the kids, nothing new to adjust to, like my parents’ new apartment. My decision also has something to do with an inability to admit failure to my own parents.
My mother-in-law, on the other hand, has seen me falling all over myself for the past seven years, pretty much. She knows me in all my current persevering tenacity as well as my most pathetic weakness. This is both a source of comfort and bitterly galling. I think that I am blessed to have a mother-in-law who does not lord it over me for having this knowledge. I will find out otherwise in a few days. But it makes me feel particularly vulnerable the night they leave, especially if my marriage were to permanently go south. I say permanently, because its been heading in that direction for quite a while now since I got sick, and I keep hoping somehow we’ll be able to pull the nose up out of this dive, but I’m currently at a loss as to how.
So now, the only thing that I feel I’ve ever been particularly good at, motherhood, is in the balance, my offspring in the hands of what could prove to be “the enemy” if things don’t change, and I have no power to do anything about it because I hurt too damn much. I didn’t think I could undertake the trip with the kids, although I was invited, because I thought I’d be a certifiable basket case after traveling six hours on winding roads in winter weather after a trip to the doctor the other day made me cry like a baby every time we hit a bump. But now, in the middle of the night, I think I’d be willing to undertake the journey on foot, in a blizzard, barefoot, just so long as I didn’t have to be so afraid I might lose my babies for good.
Over the previous three days, with the kids safely out of the picture, all the stress that my husband had been dealing with reached critical mass, and without an audience there for him to feel self-conscious about, he had the freedom to tell me exactly what he thought of me and everything I’d been “putting” him through. He was not particularly kind about it. In fact, he was quite brutal. At first I tried to defend myself, and it was fighting, but after a while I was just too tired and hurt too much to fight, but he just kept verbally pounding on me, and it wasn’t fighting anymore, just him taking out his frustrations. By the end of the three days, when he stopped yelling at me at about 3 a.m., I was a physiological mess, and drove myself to the hospital again, heart racing, head pounding, extremities shaking wildly. When the ER doctor essentially shrugged me off, saying he didn’t know what else could be done for me, I went home.
I sat in the car, a tremoring bundle of painful and dysfunctional nerves, and knew I simply could not go into my home and deal with my husband for one more second, or I would go mad or strangle him. I felt like I had imposed on all my friends in town far too much lately, and could not impose on them any further. I contemplated going to a hotel for a day or two, but thought my husband might think I was abandoning him, or fear I was getting suicidal again. The thoughts about my children that had haunted me the previous night came to mind again, and all I could think of was that I desperately wanted to be with them. Letting them go had felt like the worst kind of defeat, and I just needed to feel like I mattered in their lives. I missed them so much, and I knew that if they were around my husband wouldn’t have been so brutal in his verbal attacks on me. I just wanted them home. I decided that I would just get on the bus and go to them, and if I needed a couple of days to recuperate before we came back, I thought surely my mother-in-law would allow me that. After all, initially she had invited me to join them. I just hadn’t thought at the time I could handle the trip. Now I knew I had to.
My parents' new locale was midway in my journey, and they greeted me with both warmth and concern. For a little bit, it was like coming in out of the cold. I spoke to both my husband and mother-in-law on the phone briefly. My honey spoke to me like I was a dangerous lunatic, and his biggest concern was that I was not going to run off with the kids and endanger them. I was insulted that he would even think that, and hung up on him. My mother-in-law sounded just plain mad. I hadn’t expected that, but I accepted that she might be disappointed that I wasn’t spending the time working on my marriage, or that she’d have to put up with another houseguest after all. It really had not even entered my thoughts that she might think I was abandoning him. It seemed obvious to me that, if I was planning on leaving him for good, that the last place I’d want to go was to his mother. It wasn’t so obvious to her, I guess.
Perhaps my judgment was impaired, because even my Dad expressed concern that I was running straight from the swarm of bees right into the hive. I still believed that everything would be alright once I could be with the kids. I refused my parents invitation to stay for a day because I just wanted to see the kids so badly. My sister came and took me on to my in-laws, where I arrived too late to do much more than kiss the kids good night and go to bed. Not that I slept.
In the morning, once everyone else was off to work and school, I found myself alone with my mother-in-law. Out of courtesy, knowing she was not happy with me, I gave her a chance to express her feelings before I tried to justify my presence. I had no idea what I was in for. Operating under the assumption that I was leaving my husband and had come to take the kids, she let me have it. She told me everything she had ever thought was wrong with me and then some. She called me a host of colorful names and accused me of all manner of wrong-doing in my marriage and in my dealings with people altogether. I was so astounded, so unprepared for this attack, that I could barely summon a response, much less a defense. I knew in my heart she was wrong on most counts, but there was just enough truth in some of her accusations to sting me to the core. I knew I had not been easy to live with over the last few months. I knew it had been hard on my marriage and the kids, and I hated myself for it anyway, so for her to rub it in my face and call me the Wife from Hell and an Unfit Mother, etc. etc. just made me feel horrifically awful.
Perhaps the only thing that saved me was her accusation that I had been selfish in sending the kids to stay with her, because I knew wholeheartedly that was wrong. Letting them go had been one of the hardest, most selfless things I had ever done, and I knew that deeply in my soul. I also knew deeply in my soul that I was still too sick to take care of them properly, that they were in good hands where they were, and that I could not stay. I called my sister, and for the second time in a week I had to relinquish the care of my kids to someone else, which had been hard when I trusted my in-laws to do right by me, but a thousand times harder this time around.
I had no choice now but to return home to prove my husband and his mother wrong about my intention of bailing out of my marriage. It probably would have been beneficial to my health to stay with my parents a couple of more days, as they invited again, but I just couldn’t let those unfounded fears fester. It wasn’t a question of pride, but rather of knowing that if I balked now, it would be my kids that would ultimately pay the price. If anyone was going to bail on this marriage, it wouldn't be me. I could not risk my children ever believing I would intentionally give up on our family.
(Unknown to any of us at the time, my mother-in-law was herself ill at this time from what would prove to be fatal cancer. She was also having her own domestic squabble with some of her siblings, and my kids, my problems, and I were just three things too many for her to handle with grace. As a result of this fiasco of a trip, she and I did not speak to each other for over a year, a year I sadly regret now that she is gone. We made peace with each other before her passing, but we both said things that permanently altered what had once been a friendly relationship. Do I blame myself or her? A little. Do I blame the cancer? Not at all. Do I blame the Effexor? Most definitely!)
Another Darkness Approaches
By the end of October I’d been to the emergency room again with another episode of my heart racing out of control and my tremors coming back. This time it was precipitated by a challenging week involving no less stressful an event than taking the GRE. The test itself had literally made my brain hurt, but I hadn’t guessed it would result in another setback physiologically. Jason was starting to think it was all in my head because every time I went to the hospital, I came home with no definitive answers from the doctors. All I knew was that I felt like my heart was going to explode, and I figured that if it did, I ought to be at the hospital.
Then came the strep throat. What might have been a merely unpleasant bout with a nasty bug for anybody else was a serious blow to my system. The pain in my throat was so intense I found it difficult to swallow, and it rapidly spread to include my head, neck, and shoulders. The stress of the pain in turn triggered my others symptoms, and the shaking and emotional roller coaster ride became more magnified. Another trip to the ER, and the doctors explored the possibility of meningitis. A painful spinal tap followed. They gave me some morphine to ease my discomfort, but it made me shake more and I felt like my body was coming unglued.
The coming and going of me, back and forth to the hospital and doctors, as well as the steady stream of different caregivers were starting to take their toll on my kids, and they’d both been wetting the bed. I felt like a horrible mother, and I knew that they needed some stability for a while that I was simply unable to provide for them at the time. I tried to think of where they would be most comfortable besides home. I called my mother-in-law, and she and my husband’s brother came the next day.
My biggest mistake was in being very open with them about everything that had happened, and was happening. Especially problematic was my revealing to them what my feelings had been that awful morning in September, and my fears since that time. I even made the unfortunate decision to mention Andrea Yates and Susan Smith, thinking it would help them understand how badly I needed their help, how I did not want to end up like those women. “Our brain chemistry is so fragile,“ I said. “I’m so afraid that there, but for the grace of God, go I.“ I trusted these people, and in my naiveté and desperation did not think about the fact that, to most people, even speaking of such things is unthinkable. In essence, I horrified my in-laws, but they did not give any immediate indication of this at the time. Rather, they very calmly took charge of my children and left me alone with my husband in the hopes that he and I would “work something out.”
(It was not until a couple of years later (ago) that I fully came to appreciate how hard all this was on my husband. I was too caught up in my own trauma to see how awful it was for him. He eventually confided in me that along about this point in time, he found himself in the shower on night, huddled on the floor, shaking, feeling like he just couldn't take anymore. Despite what transpired thereafter, it is much to his credit that he is still with me.)
Then came the strep throat. What might have been a merely unpleasant bout with a nasty bug for anybody else was a serious blow to my system. The pain in my throat was so intense I found it difficult to swallow, and it rapidly spread to include my head, neck, and shoulders. The stress of the pain in turn triggered my others symptoms, and the shaking and emotional roller coaster ride became more magnified. Another trip to the ER, and the doctors explored the possibility of meningitis. A painful spinal tap followed. They gave me some morphine to ease my discomfort, but it made me shake more and I felt like my body was coming unglued.
The coming and going of me, back and forth to the hospital and doctors, as well as the steady stream of different caregivers were starting to take their toll on my kids, and they’d both been wetting the bed. I felt like a horrible mother, and I knew that they needed some stability for a while that I was simply unable to provide for them at the time. I tried to think of where they would be most comfortable besides home. I called my mother-in-law, and she and my husband’s brother came the next day.
My biggest mistake was in being very open with them about everything that had happened, and was happening. Especially problematic was my revealing to them what my feelings had been that awful morning in September, and my fears since that time. I even made the unfortunate decision to mention Andrea Yates and Susan Smith, thinking it would help them understand how badly I needed their help, how I did not want to end up like those women. “Our brain chemistry is so fragile,“ I said. “I’m so afraid that there, but for the grace of God, go I.“ I trusted these people, and in my naiveté and desperation did not think about the fact that, to most people, even speaking of such things is unthinkable. In essence, I horrified my in-laws, but they did not give any immediate indication of this at the time. Rather, they very calmly took charge of my children and left me alone with my husband in the hopes that he and I would “work something out.”
(It was not until a couple of years later (ago) that I fully came to appreciate how hard all this was on my husband. I was too caught up in my own trauma to see how awful it was for him. He eventually confided in me that along about this point in time, he found himself in the shower on night, huddled on the floor, shaking, feeling like he just couldn't take anymore. Despite what transpired thereafter, it is much to his credit that he is still with me.)
The Constant Guinea Pig
At the end of the two weeks, I woke up one morning and my tremors seemed to have resolved altogether. I still felt a little inwardly wobbly, but found unsuspected reserves of energy to catch up on all the things I’d been missing out on. I was on fire, and my husband commented that he’d never seen me so energetic. The only problem was, I couldn’t turn off at night. All night long, my mind would go non-stop with plans, fears, creative ideas, dreadful possibilities, inventions, stories, both good and bad memories, etc. At times, my mind would get going so fast that it was like there was a high-speed slideshow going on in my head. It was wonderful and terrible at the same time. I secretly feared another psychotic break. I said little to my husband, not wanting to rouse his fears. I avoided my children, which impacted them negatively, but not as negatively as I feared too much contact might. I became increasingly dependant on other people to take care of them. My husband’s family, my family, friends and neighbors all took their turns. It broke my heart. I loved them so much and felt so inadequate, but dared not risk their safety for the sake of my own pride or selfish needs.
I shared my concerns with Dr.‘s O and E. They were encouraged by the resolution of my tremors, but concerned about the nightly episodes. Together, they decided that perhaps I simply needed to get a good night’s rest in order to heal properly. Atavan, a "widely trusted" tranquilizer, was prescribed as a simple sleep aid. The hope was that whatever had been switched on by the Effexor would be switched off by the Atavan. Jason was dubious about how it would work, but I felt I had no other choice. I just wanted things to be normal again.
My parents had been in town and were planning on leaving the day after I tried the Atavan. The night before, I took it a half hour before bedtime, as indicated, and as the half-hour passed, I could feel tendrils of ice permeating my brain. I waited for the familiar feeling of oblivion associated with general anesthesia, a sensation I was familiar with from my ceasarean sections, but it never came. Instead, the Atavan seized my brain in a grip of anxiety as fierce as anything I’d yet experienced. My entire body again began to shake, a rushing sensation pulsed in my head and ears, and I felt as if I was being chased by a pack of murderous criminals. I tried to go within myself, again, like I’d learned to do while in labor, and had better success this time than I’d had with the Effexor. I managed to get through the night without waking myhusband. But I was a mess the next day. My parents were gone, and my husband was too fixated in righteous indignation about knowing that the Atavan wouldn’t work to be sympathetic. We fought all day, and at the end of it, I was back in the emergency room, shaking violently and having genuinely suicidal thoughts for the first time since I was a teenager.
A friend from church came to the hospital and took me to her house for a few days, with the kids. She was convinced that I just needed a break from the pressures of married life, and a little distance might provide perspective. Meanwhile, Dr.’s O and E were leaning towards a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on some traumas I’d had earlier in life, but were still trying to rule out physiological causes of my distress. Being prescribers of medicine by profession, however, they were unwilling at that point to consider that the Effexor may have actually caused permanent damage or a traumatic experience itself. After all, it was supposed to be a beneficial drug. They sent me to Dr. M, a neurologist, to rule out the possibility of some congenital defect or progressive degenerative disease. She analyzed my cat scan, an MRI, and had me perform a number of tasks and movements to analyze how my nerves were responding throughout my body. Like Dr.’s O and E, she came up blank. The good news, she told me, was that I didn’t appear to have Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, or a few other disorders she mentioned. I agreed this was good news, but it still left me with no answers.
I shared my concerns with Dr.‘s O and E. They were encouraged by the resolution of my tremors, but concerned about the nightly episodes. Together, they decided that perhaps I simply needed to get a good night’s rest in order to heal properly. Atavan, a "widely trusted" tranquilizer, was prescribed as a simple sleep aid. The hope was that whatever had been switched on by the Effexor would be switched off by the Atavan. Jason was dubious about how it would work, but I felt I had no other choice. I just wanted things to be normal again.
My parents had been in town and were planning on leaving the day after I tried the Atavan. The night before, I took it a half hour before bedtime, as indicated, and as the half-hour passed, I could feel tendrils of ice permeating my brain. I waited for the familiar feeling of oblivion associated with general anesthesia, a sensation I was familiar with from my ceasarean sections, but it never came. Instead, the Atavan seized my brain in a grip of anxiety as fierce as anything I’d yet experienced. My entire body again began to shake, a rushing sensation pulsed in my head and ears, and I felt as if I was being chased by a pack of murderous criminals. I tried to go within myself, again, like I’d learned to do while in labor, and had better success this time than I’d had with the Effexor. I managed to get through the night without waking myhusband. But I was a mess the next day. My parents were gone, and my husband was too fixated in righteous indignation about knowing that the Atavan wouldn’t work to be sympathetic. We fought all day, and at the end of it, I was back in the emergency room, shaking violently and having genuinely suicidal thoughts for the first time since I was a teenager.
A friend from church came to the hospital and took me to her house for a few days, with the kids. She was convinced that I just needed a break from the pressures of married life, and a little distance might provide perspective. Meanwhile, Dr.’s O and E were leaning towards a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, based on some traumas I’d had earlier in life, but were still trying to rule out physiological causes of my distress. Being prescribers of medicine by profession, however, they were unwilling at that point to consider that the Effexor may have actually caused permanent damage or a traumatic experience itself. After all, it was supposed to be a beneficial drug. They sent me to Dr. M, a neurologist, to rule out the possibility of some congenital defect or progressive degenerative disease. She analyzed my cat scan, an MRI, and had me perform a number of tasks and movements to analyze how my nerves were responding throughout my body. Like Dr.’s O and E, she came up blank. The good news, she told me, was that I didn’t appear to have Parkinson’s Disease, Essential Tremor, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, or a few other disorders she mentioned. I agreed this was good news, but it still left me with no answers.
THE INITIAL EFFEXOR EVENT, PART 3
A couple of hours after my first dose of Zoloft, I was able to stop crying and drift off again into a restless sleep. I kept to myself, letting my husband, my friend, and my other neighbor manage the kids. About twelve hours after my first dose, I felt the horror descending upon me again, so I took another dose. After about another twelve hours, the feeling of slippage started again, so I took another dose. I took four doses over the next 48 hours.
At about 5 a.m. Monday morning, I awoke from a dreamless sleep to a state of total panic. My brain, not just my mind but the organ itself, felt very, very wrong. A feeling of pain and pressure was building like a dam about to burst. My heart, like a gathering storm, began to beat faster and faster. My entire body began to tremor uncontrollably; I feared a seizure might be imminent. I woke Jason up and told him he had to take me to the hospital immediately. He piled the kids into the car and took me to the ER.
Over the next several hours, I was hooked up to monitors and poked and prodded. A cat scan indicated that I had not had a stroke, which was my first fear. My heart appeared to be healthy, no blockages or damage that might account for any sort of heart attack, no indication of heart disease, although it kept racing erratically, bouncing between 80 and over 160 beats per minute. My normal resting heart rate had always been around 60. They injected me with Benadryl, which rather than making me relax, as they hoped, made my heart race more, and made me feel like I was climbing the walls. As the day wore on, however, the most puzzling development was the tremors. They went from convulsive to almost graceful remembered gestures. I felt like the girl in the tale “The Red Shoes”, who couldn’t stop dancing, except it was mostly in my hands, which couldn’t stop typing, playing the piano, writing, and making other familiar movements. If I concentrated very hard, I could stop the movement, but it took a great deal of effort. My right leg also kept moving of its own accord.
Dr. W, who was on call for Dr. O’s office, came to talk to me and told me she thought this movement might be tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that is associated with prolonged use of anti-psychotic drugs. She'd never seen it with anti-depressants, she said, but it fit the symptoms. I made a decision to tell her about my alarming thoughts about my children, and she labeled it a psychotic break. She prescribed Zyprexa to help me sleep and keep the horror at bay. I spent another night in the hospital, then they sent me home with the hope that once the Effexor and Zoloft worked their way out of my system, my symptoms would resolve.
The following two weeks were exhausting. My tremors gradually began to resolve, but my nights were filled with both amazing and terrible dreams. The Zyprexa worked for about three days, after which it caused me to tremor more and sleep less. Dr. E, a psychiatrist to whom Dr. O had referred me for management of my drugs, was at a loss. She’d never seen anyone respond to Zyprexa like I was responding. It was generally supposed to have a calming effect. She took me off of it and pondered what to do with me next.
At about 5 a.m. Monday morning, I awoke from a dreamless sleep to a state of total panic. My brain, not just my mind but the organ itself, felt very, very wrong. A feeling of pain and pressure was building like a dam about to burst. My heart, like a gathering storm, began to beat faster and faster. My entire body began to tremor uncontrollably; I feared a seizure might be imminent. I woke Jason up and told him he had to take me to the hospital immediately. He piled the kids into the car and took me to the ER.
Over the next several hours, I was hooked up to monitors and poked and prodded. A cat scan indicated that I had not had a stroke, which was my first fear. My heart appeared to be healthy, no blockages or damage that might account for any sort of heart attack, no indication of heart disease, although it kept racing erratically, bouncing between 80 and over 160 beats per minute. My normal resting heart rate had always been around 60. They injected me with Benadryl, which rather than making me relax, as they hoped, made my heart race more, and made me feel like I was climbing the walls. As the day wore on, however, the most puzzling development was the tremors. They went from convulsive to almost graceful remembered gestures. I felt like the girl in the tale “The Red Shoes”, who couldn’t stop dancing, except it was mostly in my hands, which couldn’t stop typing, playing the piano, writing, and making other familiar movements. If I concentrated very hard, I could stop the movement, but it took a great deal of effort. My right leg also kept moving of its own accord.
Dr. W, who was on call for Dr. O’s office, came to talk to me and told me she thought this movement might be tardive dyskinesia, a disorder that is associated with prolonged use of anti-psychotic drugs. She'd never seen it with anti-depressants, she said, but it fit the symptoms. I made a decision to tell her about my alarming thoughts about my children, and she labeled it a psychotic break. She prescribed Zyprexa to help me sleep and keep the horror at bay. I spent another night in the hospital, then they sent me home with the hope that once the Effexor and Zoloft worked their way out of my system, my symptoms would resolve.
The following two weeks were exhausting. My tremors gradually began to resolve, but my nights were filled with both amazing and terrible dreams. The Zyprexa worked for about three days, after which it caused me to tremor more and sleep less. Dr. E, a psychiatrist to whom Dr. O had referred me for management of my drugs, was at a loss. She’d never seen anyone respond to Zyprexa like I was responding. It was generally supposed to have a calming effect. She took me off of it and pondered what to do with me next.
THE INITIAL EFFEXOR EVENT, PART 2
By Friday night, I felt so awful, I considered having my husband take me to the hospital, but I was not running a fever. I thought it was extremely odd that I should feel so horribly flu-ish and not be feverish. The sounds of the television and the kids rambunctious play in the living room made me feel like I was going to start screaming. All my attempts to tune out the sound in the apartment were failing miserably, so I went outside to sit on a lawn chair by the front door. The cool night air felt good on my overly sensitized skin, but the sound of the parking lot light seemed unusually loud, more like an aggressive buzz-saw than the gentle hum I‘d come to expect. I could hear cars that sounded miles away, and voices that seemed to be both a few hundred yards away, and right next to me. The porch-light had a vivid corona around it, and I began to realize that my peripheral vision was altered, having a psychedelic corona of its own. It suddenly dawned on me that I felt poisoned, that this was not like being sick with some rogue virus or bacteria. My body was completely toxic. It was trying to compensate for having been chemically altered, and it was not doing a very good job. My insides were a roiling, tumultuous mess. My system was not being able to cope with the chemical changes happening within it.
I was getting cold fast, shaking, my body not being clear on how to adjust to the change in air temperature, so I went back inside, insisting that my husband turn off the TV and put the kids to bed. I thought I couldn’t possibly get much worse. I was beginning to feel like I was drowning. I didn’t know it was going to be a long way down yet before I reached bottom.
As they often did, and normally would have been okay doing, the kids resisted being sent to bed, and my husband turned the TV down rather than off. The urge to scream kept rising in my throat, but I suppressed it, still knowing that my children did not deserve to be yelled at due to my weakness. They finally drifted off, but my husband continued to watch Daredevil, a movie which might have otherwise been interesting to me. But due to my altered state, the dark sounds of fighting and the eerie music seemed to be emanating pure evil. I could sense it creeping in under the bedroom door. I felt certain that my husband was inviting Satan into our midst by watching such a demonic show.
I pleaded with him to turn it off, and he just looked at me like I was nuts, which I pretty much was by then. My memory of what exactly transpired after that is a little disjointed because I was disjointed. I remember thinking I was really, really cold, and I couldn’t get warm. I remember thinking a fire would warm me up. I remember having a moment of lucidity in which I realized we weren’t really equipped for a fire, that the only place I could start a fire without danger was in the barbecue. I remember not being sure how to start a fire, and thinking that the cardboard from the Kleenex box I had just emptied would make good kindling as I shredded it. I remember Jason stopping me as I searched frantically for the matches. I remember him having to drag me bodily from the door, while I clawed at his arms and wailed at him.
The next thing I remember was feeling completely lost, to God and humanity alike. I was in a place where nobody could reach me. Jason was trying. For all I know, God was really trying. I kept trying, to think happy thoughts, to try to get a handle on myself. I closed my eyes and tried to find a safe place within myself, but there was none. Every image, every memory that had ever been special to me, even sacred, any thing which I had ever associated with peace and/or escape was horribly disfigured, distorted, corrupted. The harder I tried to conjure some picture or feeling to soothe myself, the more grotesquely they became altered. Songs became dissonant and evil sounding, peoples faces became death masks, acts of kindness turned to acts of violence, and worse. My head was filled with unspeakable atrocities and abominations. Within me, humanity was on the brink of total, unforgivable annihilation.
Jason prayed with me, for me, over me, tried to bless me. He was probably wondering at that point where God was too. I finally drifted off into restless, whimpering sleep. I imagine my sweet husband really hoped and believed at that point that the worst was over. My dreams were filled with unspeakable nightmares. I woke the next morning in a cold sweat, unable to figure out where I was at first. Jason was exhausted too, so I let him sleep, and tried to manage the kids as best I could. Their noise drove me outdoors again for a time, where again I was struck by the feeling that I was poisoned. I was about to embark upon my darkest hour.
What transpired next probably only took about a second, but the details were complicated. My mind went through a series of thought processes which seemed logical at that time. My reasoning was this: if I was feeling poisoned, then surely someone must be poisoning me, and who would have the motive or opportunity to poison me but my husband. If he was trying to poison me, then he must really want me to die, and what a horrible person he must be to want to kill his wife. If I were to die, he would be left alone with the children, and did I really want a man who would kill his own wife to be taking care of my children? No, but what could I do to prevent them from falling into his hands after I was dead. I had no friends or family who were in a position to assume their care, even if it weren’t a father’s prerogative to get custody upon a wife’s death. They would be in his clutches, and there would be no one to know what danger they were in. The only way I could save them from him was to take them with me to the grave.
As soon as my thinking got that far, a power greater than me took over, fortunately. In retrospect, I must assume God was answering prayers at that point, prayers that nobody knew needed to be answered. In a state beyond reason, I had the strongest desire to take the kids to my friend’s next door. I gathered my little chicks together and walked them over. My friend could tell right away that something was very wrong with me. As soon as she asked, I dissolved into sobs. She unflinchingly assumed care of my kids, but had the presence of mind to go a step further. She asked me for my doctor’s name.
After a murmured conversation with Dr. O, she told me to go home and resume taking my Zoloft, doctor’s orders, and she would watch the kids. He hoped that it would help lift me out of the depression I seemed to be undergoing, since it had been the most effective drug I had taken. Neither he nor my friend had any real clue that I was well beyond depressed at that point, but it was too unthinkable, unspeakable for me to tell them what I had been thinking. I was afraid that I would be committed, have my children taken away from me… I was afraid I was really crazy.
I was getting cold fast, shaking, my body not being clear on how to adjust to the change in air temperature, so I went back inside, insisting that my husband turn off the TV and put the kids to bed. I thought I couldn’t possibly get much worse. I was beginning to feel like I was drowning. I didn’t know it was going to be a long way down yet before I reached bottom.
As they often did, and normally would have been okay doing, the kids resisted being sent to bed, and my husband turned the TV down rather than off. The urge to scream kept rising in my throat, but I suppressed it, still knowing that my children did not deserve to be yelled at due to my weakness. They finally drifted off, but my husband continued to watch Daredevil, a movie which might have otherwise been interesting to me. But due to my altered state, the dark sounds of fighting and the eerie music seemed to be emanating pure evil. I could sense it creeping in under the bedroom door. I felt certain that my husband was inviting Satan into our midst by watching such a demonic show.
I pleaded with him to turn it off, and he just looked at me like I was nuts, which I pretty much was by then. My memory of what exactly transpired after that is a little disjointed because I was disjointed. I remember thinking I was really, really cold, and I couldn’t get warm. I remember thinking a fire would warm me up. I remember having a moment of lucidity in which I realized we weren’t really equipped for a fire, that the only place I could start a fire without danger was in the barbecue. I remember not being sure how to start a fire, and thinking that the cardboard from the Kleenex box I had just emptied would make good kindling as I shredded it. I remember Jason stopping me as I searched frantically for the matches. I remember him having to drag me bodily from the door, while I clawed at his arms and wailed at him.
The next thing I remember was feeling completely lost, to God and humanity alike. I was in a place where nobody could reach me. Jason was trying. For all I know, God was really trying. I kept trying, to think happy thoughts, to try to get a handle on myself. I closed my eyes and tried to find a safe place within myself, but there was none. Every image, every memory that had ever been special to me, even sacred, any thing which I had ever associated with peace and/or escape was horribly disfigured, distorted, corrupted. The harder I tried to conjure some picture or feeling to soothe myself, the more grotesquely they became altered. Songs became dissonant and evil sounding, peoples faces became death masks, acts of kindness turned to acts of violence, and worse. My head was filled with unspeakable atrocities and abominations. Within me, humanity was on the brink of total, unforgivable annihilation.
Jason prayed with me, for me, over me, tried to bless me. He was probably wondering at that point where God was too. I finally drifted off into restless, whimpering sleep. I imagine my sweet husband really hoped and believed at that point that the worst was over. My dreams were filled with unspeakable nightmares. I woke the next morning in a cold sweat, unable to figure out where I was at first. Jason was exhausted too, so I let him sleep, and tried to manage the kids as best I could. Their noise drove me outdoors again for a time, where again I was struck by the feeling that I was poisoned. I was about to embark upon my darkest hour.
What transpired next probably only took about a second, but the details were complicated. My mind went through a series of thought processes which seemed logical at that time. My reasoning was this: if I was feeling poisoned, then surely someone must be poisoning me, and who would have the motive or opportunity to poison me but my husband. If he was trying to poison me, then he must really want me to die, and what a horrible person he must be to want to kill his wife. If I were to die, he would be left alone with the children, and did I really want a man who would kill his own wife to be taking care of my children? No, but what could I do to prevent them from falling into his hands after I was dead. I had no friends or family who were in a position to assume their care, even if it weren’t a father’s prerogative to get custody upon a wife’s death. They would be in his clutches, and there would be no one to know what danger they were in. The only way I could save them from him was to take them with me to the grave.
As soon as my thinking got that far, a power greater than me took over, fortunately. In retrospect, I must assume God was answering prayers at that point, prayers that nobody knew needed to be answered. In a state beyond reason, I had the strongest desire to take the kids to my friend’s next door. I gathered my little chicks together and walked them over. My friend could tell right away that something was very wrong with me. As soon as she asked, I dissolved into sobs. She unflinchingly assumed care of my kids, but had the presence of mind to go a step further. She asked me for my doctor’s name.
After a murmured conversation with Dr. O, she told me to go home and resume taking my Zoloft, doctor’s orders, and she would watch the kids. He hoped that it would help lift me out of the depression I seemed to be undergoing, since it had been the most effective drug I had taken. Neither he nor my friend had any real clue that I was well beyond depressed at that point, but it was too unthinkable, unspeakable for me to tell them what I had been thinking. I was afraid that I would be committed, have my children taken away from me… I was afraid I was really crazy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)