YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I find it increasingly difficult to juggle my own stuff and also deal with my father being sick (24/7). Seeing him seemingly never have a day off from his issues makes me so depressed and angry. Like my problems are nothing compared to his and if I want to die every waking moment of my damn life how must he feel? We both have spent significant portions of our lives in hospitals and such and I really would like for him to be happy but I can't see that being reality. He's ill and it's fact. I can't make him better but I desperately want to every time I look at him, coupled with my own shit it makes for a pretty shitty way to live. I think my mom buries her worries about both of us and that also makes me very depressed. Lately she has opened up to me about seriously anxiety bordering on panic attacks over certain things related to both of us.
I'm open to suggestions on this PLEASE!

Spent the day with my dad as we finished up my move out inspection, we where on a bus and he was sitting across from me and I seriously wanted to just cry the whole way. Seeing him sitting there obviously holding some pain in, (I know the look because I do it too, I learned from a master.) (Social pressure to act "normal" being what it is I didn't but I really wanted to.) I have this overwhelming fear that he will die before me and I will have to handle the arrangements and not be competent to handle them emotionally or be intellectually overwhelmed by the process, breakdown and fuck the whole thing up, and thus be looked on with derision by family members and be shunned. There is also a real detailed scenario where I would get the news and just lay in bed not moving until I starve to death covered in my own waste. Which really is vivid and really shocks me. So I spent the rest of the day in bed just drained and ruminating over things. This combo of anxiety and depression is a real kick in the family jewels.

Yeah, I know what you are saying about depression and anxiety together. I have to stay in a tiny range of anxiety - with zero anxiety I just don't do anything because my motivation is all about fear and worry and avoidance, but if the anxiety level rises too much I just break down. So I have to stay in the "sweet spot" which is very narrow.

Please take care, all the best, we here are all cheering for your greatest today and tomorrow!

I've spent the last few days looking out for my dad while my mother is working. I feel guilty that I left today even if it's just to sleep in my own bed and get back tomorrow. I'm furious that he was admitted to the ER only to be sent home the next morning with a treatment plan that made things worse. I don't understand how they can say: "you need to be here." one minute then run your damn tests and send him home with no concrete solution. I am so pissed off!

Another night in the ER with my dad, I'm just so tired. I'm not very pleased that they sent him home last time and I'm thinking they are just going to cut him loose again without being helpful.
I feel that I'll never even the scales with my parents because they did this with me so many times. The act of writing this down makes me feel like a jackass because of the torture they must have went through with me as a kid and I'm just being a bitch about this. I'm sure when I discuss this week with my therapist it will get super awkward for me and ultimately make me feel more lost. I hate the real world right now. I am increasingly angry that this is what life is just some endless stream of suffering and the eternal struggle of "why" continues. Just endless questions that have no real concrete answers that just serve to drive me more crazy with every passing second. When the answer is probably just roll with it and deal. I get that intellectually but it doesn't mean I have to like it. I think I liked it better when the only feeling I had was that dull fog of depression this other stuff hurts worse.

ghughes1980 wrote:The act of writing this down makes me feel like a jackass because of the torture they must have went through with me as a kid and I'm just being a bitch about this. I'm sure when I discuss this week with my therapist it will get super awkward for me and ultimately make me feel more lost.

You are being too hard on yourself. If you knew better, you would have done better. And pain makes people focus inward and makes us selfish and cruel - it is just a side-effect of a person being in pain. Please be easier on yourself - you are holding yourself to too high a standard with regards to your parents, whom you have the very longest relationship with, and you had a relationship with when you were most in pain and you had the least number of tools and knowledge. Take care, all the best.

Well the cycle has begun again. My dad is in the ER and the doctors do what they can to stabilize him and release. This situation sucks.

Since the board was reorganized I've been poking through some forums I've never read and came upon your thread. I took care of my mother at home for a few years and then was her advocate and very frequent presence at her nursing home for the last 3 years of her life.

As far as your dad's health - is it one major thing that's impacting his life or is it multiple medical things? Is he being treated for depression? Is he being adequately treated for pain?

You may need to lower your expectations of wanting him to be "happy" at some point. I settled for "content" and as long as she was at that level I felt proud of myself. If your dad has a lot of medical issues he may not even be able to get to content, but if he hasn't been evaluated for and treated for depression (if he is depressed), anything you are able to get for or do for him is on a shaky foundation.

You sound extremely anxious about him and the future. I can relate to that. Is there any way you can lay the anxiety aside when you're with him and just enjoy that moment you're in his presence? Talking, doing a quiet activity together, something that engages the both of you in conversation and relieves the anxiety.

You also expressed some time ago your fear that you'd be left with decisions or arrangements to be made after he passes away. May I make a suggestion so that problem is eliminated? For you or your mom to have a frank talk about what his wishes are for medical care in the event he becomes so ill he can never really recover, or needs to be on a ventilator (he can express what his wishes are as far as how long, under what circumstances, etc.) and try to cover everything that might happen. Write it down. You don't even really need a lawyer unless your mom is opposed to his wishes, then it would be a good idea to have an attorney involved in writing it up.

Funeral arrangements--would you be willing to talk to your mother and go with her to make pre-need arrangements for him (or both of them?) so in the event both of them pass there are no decisions to be made under stress? I made arrangements for my mother prior to her death and all I had to do was have the nursing staff contact the funeral home and they took care of the rest according to my plan.

I hope you're not still in the cycle of ER, home, ER, home, doctor, home, ER. How are you doing? I'm a planner and I become very unsettled when I don't know what's going to happen. We can never predict the future, but we can always plan for the worst case scenario and at least we're prepared for that.

Well it's been a while since I've posted on this subject and things are getting worse. My dad is now not eating and resorting to Ensure and other similar products for nourishment. His organs are failing faster (kidneys, pancreas, and his stomach can't hold solids.) I talked to him today and he's been to the specialists and they don't seem to be offering anything in the way of solutions. All the doctors I've personally spoke with about his health know what is causing this: one particular medication he is on for skin care. He knows this too but I think he would rather die faster than deal with the side effects of the standard treatment for his underlying condition (severe eczema) which would be high doses of steroids and antibiotics for flare ups coupled with an anti-depressant for the steroid rage. He had great success with this between 1996-2006 but this "new" treatment Cyclosporine promised to do all these things in one pill (if you could avoid the organ damage side effect.) Well he hasn't avoided it, it has ravaged his insides but he still clings to it like a miracle cure because it eases the dermatitis. I don't want to visit their house anymore because I'm just watching him stubbornly die! I am resenting his course of action since both my parents really stuck with me through my health issues and never gave up. It seems to me like my dad has given up and I'm furious. On boxing day I helped him administer his meds because he couldn't move and I just wanted to flush all the shit down the toilet and yell: "There now you'll have to take doctors advice you stubborn asshole." But of course I didn't being the total chicken that I am I helped him continue to poison the organs. This is really messing me up! I can't deal and it's really, really hard.

I had a conversation about empathy with my therapist before the holiday break and I told him I really hate having it. It was so much easier when I wasn't being treated for depression to just ignore feelings and I want that power back so much it hurts. I doubt not feeling would solve anything because the world keeps going with or without me but man I'm really having a hard time.

Do any others on this forum deal with chronic illnesses that require repeated hospitalization and release because there is nothing the doctors can actually do but balance your various levels ie creatinine or enzymes and hope your organs can bounce back? I talked to my dad on the phone last night and that's what they are planning for him. his is so frustrating!