Chiari Continues…One Wife’s Story…Abandoned

Time has a way of running together after a while. I never was a really good person to estimate and keep time. I could say something happened the other day and it was three years ago, or vice versa.  I know that as the months started turning into years there were a couple more jobs lost in the process. Always the employers fault of coarse…it couldn’t possibly be that fact that my husband was miserable everyday and projected that off into every aspect of his life.

I’ve often wondered about those people that have gone through some tragedy in their life and they rise above it with such positivism and grace. They seemed so heroic in the face of fear to me. In my home we were handling our unfortunate situation with anything but grace and positivism. It was more like anger, fighting, blaming, and faultfinding with one another.

Family members on both sides were quick to point out our shortcoming in handling the situation. Always offering up advice to look on the bright side, strengthen your faith, pray more, go to church more, believe harder. It was easy to say when you were not the one living day in and day out with the demon named Chiari.

Chiari mocked us and laughed at us around every corner. I was starting to believe that Chiari wouldn’t stop until it had torn us completely to shreds with nothing left to show of our lives but the carnage of a broken life together.

My mother-in-law was to be remarried and she wanted a small wedding with just her immediate family to celebrate this new event in her life. My husband had gone up the night before and was to meet me at the wedding the next day. Oh he met me alright….highly over-medicated…to the point where he was dosing at the dining table and he could barely get the fork into his mouth with his food. He was slurring and dropping food everywhere. It was quite embarrassing, but at the same time I felt like they needed to see what I had been dealing with for quite a while now.

See this had become routine to come home from work and to his ease the pain by  just dosing up on meds and then spend the rest of the night in a zombie like state. Barely functioning dozing on and off in any position …at any time…while doing anything. I was so sick of watching this night after night that somewhere inside I was happy that they were witnessing it now.

One of his aunts was just so upset that he was in this state….she was angry and said something like ..”well it doesn’t matter what kind of pain your in you shouldn’t be acting like this” , and she would be correct. In reality I had felt like his family had abandoned me in my time of need, I needed help handling him. They had lots of suggestions but never offered any help.

I hate to say I did get some inner satisfaction leaving him with them for the afternoon while I took off after the wedding to shop with my daughters! Lets see how they survived a few hours dealing with what I lived with every day!

This phase is called ….abandoned…

~Chiariwife