The PTSD of Relapse

I had my first pain relapse in over a year.  I have no idea what caused it.  Could have been flying, insomnia, decaf coffee, a disturbing movie, a butterfly flapping its damn wings somewhere.  All I knew was the pain was back, and I dropped down the shaft into the PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) pit.

I huddled.  I made frantic phone calls to doctors (none of whom returned them...sigh).  I went to the dark places of forever, never, always.  I clung to my heating pad like it was a life raft.  I had no conception that this would ever end.  The years of relief I lived between the onset of my pain condition and this current relapse disappeared.  The reassurance those good years could have offered was dissolved in an instant by the first waves of pain.  My rational mind went walkabout.  It was just me, my heating pad, and my terror.

Except for Richard.  He became my memory.  He once again hoisted up the mantle of hope and draped it over my sunken spirit.  He reminded me that I was in PTSD-land and that while my now was awful, it wasn't predictive of my future.  His voice and sanity reached me.

I went back up a step on my meds.  I unwound.  I reached.  I'm doing much better now.

Richard just came into my office as I was writing this and put his arm around me and chanted, "I'm so happy, I'm so happy."  Me too.

How Did Your Parents Deal With Illness?

How far do we travel from our parents' patterns?  A question psychotherapists and their clients have been wrestling with for decades.

We can't escape the parental imprint.  Some of us may not want to.  But those of us who did hope to be different often find ourselves in our 40s or 50s unexpectedly leaking parental behaviors or attitudes we thought we had purged ourselves of in our 20s.

I sometimes hear myself saying to Richard, my partner, as he heads out the door for his Tae Kwon Do class, "Be careful."  He has a second degree black belt and has been studying for years.  He is always careful.  My admonition is a spillover of my father's anxious voice warning me to be on the lookout for endless, unnamed dangers hiding in plain sight at every turn.  Other times I see myself tighten up like a fist when something I thought I had control over twists in an unpredictable direction.  It is not my jaw that clenches in agitation; it is my mother's jaw, on my face.

How our parents do or did illness is a powerful pattern.  Did they suffer in silence, while allowing no one to offer tenderness or help?  Did they submerge into illness and allow it to define who they were?  Did they use illness to control and manipulate?  To get attention?  Did they remain engaged in living and loving?  Did they learn from illness to become more fully who they were?  Did they become nastier to each other?  Or sweeter?  And finally, did they take care of each other -- physically and emotionally?

My parents, who kept each other at a distance when well, became even more separated when ill.  They went so far as to resent each other for their increasing incapacities.  It was not pretty.

There were times when I was in the thick of my pain condition, that I isolated and withdrew from Richard.  But more often, I allowed my pain to teach me to reach out for comfort and connection.  I had to.  For me, the voice of pain was more powerful than my parents' example.

Dealing with illness can be a consuming job.  When you find yourself behaving in ways that don't create the kind of bridge to your partner that will help lighten the load for both of you, pause and ask yourself:  "Am I playing out a pattern that doesn't really belong to me?  Whose voice am I speaking with?  Can I do it differently?"

How did your parents deal with illness?  What did you learn to do and not to do from them?

Do You Maintain or Reduce Your Meds?

I'm not even sure why I do this, but I am continually trying to reduce my pain medication.

I stabilize for a period of time, and then I try to taper.  I drop a few pills and then I begin to feel tiny ripples of pain - I call them guppy ripples.  At that point either I pay attention to them and go back up to the last medication level at which I was stable; or I pretend they are indigestion, try to ignore them for a week or so.  Too often the guppies then turn into barracudas, and I have to increase the med dosage beyond where it was when I began to taper.  Sometimes, though, I can successfully taper, and this then justifies my next attempts to cut down on meds.

Richard has learned that his voice needs to be a quiet one during these medication experiments.  He reminds me of my doctor's perpetual advice to of just stay stable at the level of meds I'm on.  At some point I ignore his counsel and do my thing.  If (or when) I suffer the consequences, he just holds me and reminds me that I had stabiity and can have it again.

If you're the ill partner, how do you manage your medication?  And if you're the well partner what role, if any, do you play around medication matters?