joyful2beeblogs

A beacon in the darkness

Finally, after about fifteen years, one friend suggested that I read, “Women Who Run With Wolves” By Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes. As I read the book, I felt empowered and realized how I had given away everything that made me strong, independent, and “me.”

I began to see that I was not stupid; we all have abilities and gifts that help us deal with our lives. I finally realized that I was stronger and smarter than I ever knew.

A bit of clarification

I want to clarify here. By this time, I had been a nurse for 13 years. Probably the last 8 years of that career, I worked as a critical care nurse. I handled all kinds of stressful situations and cared for some very sick, dying, or injured people with monitors and intravenous medicines that could kill them if I made a mistake. I worked with plenty of doctors and got along with them. I was also one of only three in my unit who passed the Critical Care Registered Nurse certification! I was, and am intelligent!!

My metamorphosis began

One day, I was helping a doctor (who was frequently hard to work with) to sit up my patient in the bed so he could listen to their lungs. The patient had an IV in her neck, which I supported with one hand as I helped sit the patient up with the other hand. This doctor incorrectly and rudely told me, “Don’t pull that IV out!” 

I did not respond until we got back out to the desk, where I informed him he was misjudging the situation and should not have made a scene in front of my patient!

Wow! Then I asked myself, “If I could stand up for myself to this doctor, hold a Critical Care Unit position for many years, why couldn’t I stand up to my husband! Why did I think I was less than intelligent!!??”

I chose my battles

Finally, I began to “draw the line in the sand.” I chose my responses to my husband’s accusations more times and chose to “duck” on minor things. But as my confidence and self-assurance began to grow, I ducked less and less. I was striving for my self-esteem!!

My husband’s physical problems

Around the time of this incident with the doctor, my husband had a disc in his back literally explode when he caught a piano falling off of its moving dolly. The next day he was in excruciating pain, so I drove him to the hospital.

When his blood work was drawn it was found that his blood sugar was over 800!! (70-100 is normal). While working in ICU, I cared for patients with 400-500 blood sugar who were on Insulin drips.

Diabetes enters the picture

The doctor attributed the high blood sugar to the severe pain. (My husband had had normal fasting blood sugars in the past.) But it was several years later that he was actually diagnosed with Diabetes Mellitus and placed on insulin!

Years later, over an 8 or 9 year period, he suffered another back surgery, a major stroke, and complications from a small part of his colon being removed. He recovered and went back to work after each event! Finally, he collapsed at work from severe heart failure. He died six days later at the age of 58, after 36 years of marriage.

A phenomenal tolerance to high blood sugar

Blood sugars may rise temporarily to around 500 in normal people due to severe pain or stress. My doctor told me that for his blood sugar to have been 800 and for him not to be comatose, he probably had had rising glucose levels for about 10 years before being diagnosed with diabetes!

Well, 10 years before was about when the problems worsened. We had been living in New Orleans then for about 4 years into our marriage. He had been drinking 2 two liter bottles of sugary soft drinks/day because the water tasted bad to him. He knew, (because he read my nursing magazines and because he was instructed by his doctor) that sugary foods were not good for him. I know it is hard to change eating habits for diabetics. He knew what he was doing was dangerous. I also found out later that he had two close family members with diabetes.

High blood sugars cause many kinds of poor mental behavior by making the blood vessels and capillaries thicker, thus slowing the flow of blood to vital tissues like the brain and heart especially. He tried at first to adhere to the diabetic diet, but soon, he was eating like he always had.

Poorly controlled diabetes caused him to have severe needle like pains in his feet (diabetic neuropathy), high blood pressure, diabetic retinopathy which slowed his ability to speed read, or just read, even after the laser surgery on both eyes. He also had severe calf cramps,  sleep apnea and was obese.

My vision became clearer

Now, in retrospect, I see that from the beginning he was Obsessive Compulsive about a lot of things and it worsened over the years. Issues with his father had caused emotional pain for him as well.

I am not excusing all of his behaviors because of toxic levels of glucose or possibly PTSD. I only want to understand why things progressed as they did. But I did not deserve the ways he treated me! No matter what the causes, he had no right to treat me the way he did. But at last, I understood “why.”

More physical problems

Another factor we discovered after the MRI for his major stroke was that he had had mini strokes before the big one that caused changes in the white matter of the brain. After all of these discoveries and really even long before his death, I knew something was wrong. I tried to understand why he behaved like he did.

I found peace from that knowledge. I feel that I lost my husband a little at a time over the years. The changes were so insidious and gradual that I just adapted to each one as it arose at great personal cost. Some abusive spouses may or may not have physical problems. What matters is: he had no right to treat me abusively.

I needed to learn to love and respect myself so I could stand my ground about his behavior. But again, none of this was my fault!

He was not evil

There were plenty of times that he was fun to be with. There were plenty of times he thanked me for helping him through school and supporting him emotionally and financially. He even dedicated his dissertation to me. He truly appreciated how I cared for him through each of the physical disasters he lived through. He asked my forgiveness on his deathbed too and told me he loved me.

I am a new woman

So this is how my confidence was lost and regained. I will write blogs later to tell how and what I learned about abuse and its effects on me as I healed. I feel like a new woman, taking charge of my life. Healing is ongoing. I now know that I was strong all along to have endured and survived emotionally and mentally all that I went through. Now is my time to heal and to live for me.