Nervous Break-Downs & Other Fun Stuff

On Monday, I wrote about neglecting stress and all the other things going on in life. I had no idea what was in store for me. It all started with a little call from Steve's great aunt informing him that his mother had taken a turn for the worse. Steve decided to take a leave of absence for a week and set the whole thing up with his work. Of course, I wasn't informed of this until after the fact. He called me on his way home. He planned to grab some stuff and head up to PSL. What could I say??? Only - ok.

Later on, I called him and he couldn't answer questions and wasn't making any sense. I assumed that he was at the hospital and just had too much going on. At 7 pm, I got a call from his dad saying they were still waiting for him to show up. I didn't want anyone else to be stressed out, so I said he probably stopped off to see a friend in Palm Beach. When I got a hold of him, he was crying and told me he couldn't face it alone. He was just driving around Palm Beach, where he grew up. He told me he was seeing double and couldn't think straight. This went on for several more hours until finally he went to a friend's house to crash for the night.

Yesterday, I took the day off and we all went up to see his mom. Steve was still in bad shape. He cried most of the way there. He was acting like a completely drunk person with slow motor skills and very little comprehension, but he was sober. I am guessing that it was a total nervous break-down. The funny thing about us is that he has always been the emotional one and I have always been the strong one. I guess this was bound to happen. It is strange how that works.

His mom had experienced a few rough days, but yesterday she was doped up. Her verbal and comprehension skills were a LOT worse than his. He perked up a bit while being with her. He also had a meeting with her social worker and scheduled a family meeting for Thursday evening. We are all going to meet to discuss setting her up with hospice at home.

Later in the evening, one of the nurses spoke with everyone (including Aunt Angie, Cousin Barb, Steve's Dad & us). She told us that my MIL has no short term memory and is very confused about why she is there. She made it clear that now is also the time to have any important conversations that need to take place because the tumors in her brain are taking over. One more thing she mentioned was that she can already tell by his mom's personality that this is going to be long and difficult. All the women shook our heads because that is one thing that is obvious. The other thing that I realize is that Steve's dad is still living in denial (to a point that is quite hard to imagine) and Steve is the opposite. He keeps having flash backs of my dad and doesn't want to think of his mom in that horrible debilitated stage.

So, we proceed with me being the strong one and wondering if my husband is going to survive this - not to mention how I'm going to pay the bills with him flipping out. I am just hoping that he gets a lot of this out of his system now and we can deal with this in a logical manner. Perhaps today, he'll be a little more normal and ready to discuss getting help.