Welcome To The Equator

Ok so howdy! This is my first Blog. My name is Deb. I am 40 years old. I always considered myself pretty generic. I am relatively bright, moderately funny, have a spattering of creativity. Just enough of the basics to toodle through life with a 80/20 smile to frown ratio. I married young (21). I became a mom at 23. I put my nose to the old grindstone and got through undergrad and grad degrees while being mommy and wife. By 34 I was divorced. My first husband is a great guy but nobody really tells you when you are younger (and I probably would not have listened) that everything changes... including dreams, goals, and desires. I had ever changing goals and he desired another woman. Such is life. So I kept toodling on. You learn a lot about yourself when you date in your 30's. I learned that alcohol is not a good beverage while evaluating a potential mate. I learned that there is an inverse relationship between honesty and vulnerability. I decided to try online dating. Over-all I would say it was a sucessfull venture. The ability to talk to people before being put in the pressurized environment of a face to face date allowed a more rational evaluation of potential compatibility.

Low and behold, I met my current husband. It was a whirlwind romance. We fell in love very fast. Our chemistry was apparent to most who witnessed it. Our first date an elderly asian waitress came over at dinner and said "you marry her!"

And so it came to be.

Ok so I ignored a few flags... hmmmmm like the ex-wife who called 3 times a day. She actually called the day before we left to get married to ask my fiance to bring over Marshmellows, graham crackers and chocolate that my soon to be step-son had left at our house to make smores. Bigger Flag... he did it.

After we married her attempts to disrupt and control our lives became more bothersome and eventually culminating into the atom bomb. The final straw was the day my step-son's school called to say that he reported my 16 year old son was hurting him. When his father questioned him in private, he said his mother told him to say it. I have only called two women on this sweet earth the "C" word. I consider it the ultimate insult to the female gender. One was bestowed on a boss, the other this woman I daily call beezlebub. I blew! I decided I needed to take this into my hands now! I went to the school counselor, I started to compile list of times she called our home asking us to go get various things from cough medicine to getting clean laundry from us. I was going to tape the phone calls thinking eventually we may be able to legally gain custody of this child if her irrisponsible actions continued to escalate.

SCREEEEEEECH...... (that would be the sound of the brakes being applied to my life). Right as I had started my campaign, I noticed my husband was acting strange. The technical term is MANIC. By Golly! He is Bi-polar. I very high functioning Bi-polar. He persists 99% of the time in what is called a hypermanic state. a very productive but precarious place to be.

Alright... I know what you're thinking.... "Didn't he know or tell you he was Bi-polar?" . The answer to that is a hard one to swallow but unfortunately true. My husband is a 20 year luekemia/bone-marrow transplant survivor. According to his doctor, the extreme chemo/radiation is what brought on his Bi-polar disorder. Because his case is so unusual he has only had two other episodes. The first was soon after his leukemia treatment. At that point it was labled post traumatic stress disorder. He did not have another for 7 years. Not until he found out beezlebub was sleeping with other men. And yes if there was a way to make the word "men" any more uber plural I would. She was very active. This stress brought on his second episode. This last third episode was 8 years after the second. So to answer the question, he did not believe he actually was bi-polar. Does this make the episode less painful? No. But I know he does not have a malicious bone in his body. According to his doctor his trigger was extreme personal stress.

For 6 months in varying degrees we dealt with his manic depressive behavior. It constituted everything from him self abusing to painful recitations of all his previous love affairs and painful details of each one. Two A.M. walks, ranting and raving of insidious plots to ruin him by some unknown force via the phone and internet, and fits of uncontrollable crying at night. This 6 foot 2 body builder would lie in my arms sobbing.

And then it passed.... Back came my wonderful, loving, appreciative, giving intelligent husband. In addition to his previous wonderful qualities, he was also cognitive of the extreme pain his episode caused me. He came back to me with even more passion and love. We started back down our matrimonial path arm in arm once more.

THEN..... almost one year exactly from the onset of his manic episode, my mother became ill. It started with a phone call from my brother... he had taken mom to urgent care and they were admitting her with an obstructed bowel. I knew she had been having abdominal pains but her doctor had blamed in on an irregularity brought on from various blood pressure medications. I rushed to the hospital. I saw her come off the elevator in a wheelchair being pushed into her hospital room. I had to hide my shock and fear as I helped her change into her hospital gown. The bones protruding in her 4'11'' frame that had shrunk to 83 pounds. 2 days later she was moved to ICU because her breathing was becoming labored. In the many tests they performed they found her heart was functioning only 15-20%. Ten days after her admit I recieved a call from the hospital. She was having emergency surgery, the bowel was about to perforate, they think it is cancer, but her heart is so bad they don't think she will make it through the surgery.

She did. The surgeon came out and solemnly explained that even though she made it through the surgery where they had removed her large intestine that was filled with cancer and gave her an ilieostomy, he did not think she would ever wake up.

She did. Then another doctor stood over her bed and told us she will never get off the ventilator. He said we should say good-bye to her and let her know it was O.K. to pass.

She came off the ventilator. hmmmmmmmm..... That is when it dawned on me.. my mom was going to write her own chapters. So I asked my hubby if he would mind if she came to live with us. He said it would be an honor. We told the hospital she would be released to me. They stood slack-jawed for a few moments. Then they started to object... She needed more physical therapy... she needed OT... she needed more skilled care.... she needed a skilled nursing home.

I said no... she needs me.

Nooooooooo... just let her go to a nursing home for a little bit to buy you and her time to get ready to come home to you! PLUSSSSSS they can help get you more resources for home.

OK PEOPLE.... if you ever love anyone.. never...ever place them in a nursing home. She was there 2 days... it took 36 hours to convince them to give her a shower.... they left her sitting in a wheelchair in her room with a 12 inch abdominal incision for 2 hours, I had to put her back in bed. They let her ilieostomy bag over-flow bile and fecal matter into her incision twice.

I am a pretty easy going person.... usually.... but I brought fear into the hearts of all that worked in that facility. I had her released to me. Oh.. and remember how they would help me with resources? None of the supplies they told me they ordered for home delivery ever arrived.. I had to advocate for my mom and have everything re-ordered myself.

So now what is life like. It is a painful, joyful exhausting rollercoaster. I have this gift of a mother whom I was supposed to say goodbye to weeks ago. Painful... even though she fought to still be here, it does not mean her fighting spirit could eradicate the cancer that is eating her alive from the inside. She is now down to 68 pounds. I have to take her into outpatient surgery once a week to have the fluid drained in her stomach that builds up from her malignancy. Exhausting.... nights of changing linens when she vomits... 2 A.M. bed checks when she wakes up disorientated... holding her hand while she cries.... biting my tongue when she snaps at me angry for a pain or discomfort....

Rewarding..... I get to tell her everyday I love her.. she replies I love you more... and I routinely say no way mom and kiss her.

So why do I call myself the equator? Because I found myself in this life where I am all my loved ones middle ground. I keep everyone on an even keel. I started to lose myself in my efforts to be everyones everything... So I have with help from some very intelligent people started to heal me too. Now I am even my own equator.