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.” (More about that later.)

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, and injured people with monitors. There were medicines that had to be given intravenously through the IV lines. Any mistake could have killed a patient nearly instantly, if I made a mistake.

I worked with many of the doctors and got along well with them. I was also one of only three in my unit who passed the Critical Care Registered Nurse exam certification! I also passed a later Critical Care Registeted Nurse exam a second time! I was and am 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

Years later, over about an eight or nine 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 walking with a cane after each event! Finally, he collapsed at work from severe right-sided heart failure. He died in 2009, six days later at the age of 58, after 36 years of marriage.

A phenomenal tolerance to high blood sugar

Ten years before all of this happened, 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 he didn’t like the taste of New Orleans water. 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 changes in 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 saw that from the beginning he was obsessive compulsive about a lot of things and it worsened over the years. Issues with his father and brothers growing up 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 often 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, now I understood.

He was not evil

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 my 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!

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. He became less angry but still had flare ups. The end was near.