2018 was a real year … The kind of year that truly breaks you in two. It is not a simple break, it is complex and pieces go missing making the whole impossible to reconfigure. There were already cracks and they became stretched so thin the fragmentation was unavoidable and irreversible.
It started out simple enough with a Wedge Lung Biopsy surgery. My sweet mother-in-law and father-in-law came up from Kansas to drive me to the hospital at 5 am for that surgery so that my husband could take the kids to school. Flu season was flooding the hospital and they couldn’t find a room for me post-op so my in-laws got to sneak back into recovery and say goodbye. I remember my mother-in-law rubbing my arm as I cried in pain. A mother’s touch, it was what I needed in that moment and she somehow just knew that. The evening ended in my hospital room with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law visiting. Having to hold a pillow tight to my chest because my husband and his brother are hysterical. Making me laugh without intent. I may have only had a chest tube for 24 hours, but that was plenty for me! Having that tube removed is one of those medical moments I will not soon forget. It whistled as my insides felt like they were sucked out with it.
Interstitial Lung Disease had been my newest diagnosis, originally in 2015. I then had a surgery called a Nissen Fundoplication in 2016 to prevent my stomach contents from being aspirated due to severe GERD. I have suffered from GERD my entire life so there is no telling how long it had been beating on my lungs. 2015’s biopsy was a much simpler procedure. This time they had to take a piece out of the side of my lung. Conclusion: Collagen thickening. Then as usual the tracks to the doctor’s office cover over and the phone stops ringing. What more did I need, I guess? A diagnosis I do not understand how to treat, inhalers, supplemental oxygen…did I mention I was 30!
Anyway my 31st birthday soon passed and a few months after that we made a huge parenting decision. One that cost us family members, maybe some friends, and showed us how ugly and how beautiful the world around us can be. That left me feeling venerable and insecure. Although a lot of people may think I am a “controversial” person; I am also a caregiver/people pleaser. I have always dismissed that side of myself and only now am I understanding I need to face it. So, telling my family what changes we were going to have to make was terrifying. I have always longed to just fit in, I never felt like I did. Now, I have to embrace that I never will. There is a calm or peace with that revelation. Being who I am and improving on myself when I see things inside of me that I want to change.
By October I felt like something in my head was breaking. Due to both my physical and mental health I had been dealing with crippling depression for over three years. The holidays are always hard, but this time they were brutal. I couldn’t manage to pull my brain away from its demons. I wanted distance from everyone. Even if that meant making people not want to be around me. The day before Thanksgiving I made my husbands life a living nightmare. He did nothing to deserve it, but a trigger had been flipped and I was not holding back. Luckily, like the stoic figure he always is, he just waited for me to return to my wise mind before approaching me with any of what I had said to him. I do not always understand his patience with me, but I am always grateful for it.
Christmas came around and we went on vacation with my in-laws. Instead of using narcotics for the pain I have associated with Colitis and Interstitial Cystitis I use cannabis. I live in Colorado where that is an option LUCKILY because narcotics deteriorate my health when used to control the pain. During the trip a member of our family called me out for taking care of my pain this way, not “approving of my lifestyle,” would be the exact terminology that was used. I stood up for myself mildly with saying “I didn’t remember asking permission,” but inside my heart was hurting and I just wanted to escape to my room to cry. Which I was able to do. It wasn’t different. I had literally cried every single day since May and here it was December. I was getting used to feeling like everyone around me was judging me. My insecurities were all consuming. Doesn’t really matter if that was true or not, it was my perception.
I did not start using cannabis until I was 28 years old, so I do feel very misunderstood. The reason I talk about it, is so that hopefully I can make a dent in the stigma with my group of friends and family. The rest of the trip sucked. My lung disease apparently no longer allows me to be at 8,000 ft and I spent the rest of the trip sleeping. Between the depression, anxiety, and low oxygen saturation my body was done.
A couple weeks later my biggest trigger walked in my door as grandpa of the year. It was the first time I had seen or spoken to my father in a year and I was glad to see him. My mother came prepared with all the fixings a grandma who spoils her babies rotten would have. They baked, and baked. The kids were in awe of the crossbows they received from their grandparents and loved playing cards with my dad just as I did in my childhood. I quite enjoy it as an adult. I love my dad, he is a very funny and kind man. He is also an alcoholic. The first night he was here he proceeded to get completely wasted after everyone went to bed and it was just, he and I. He was mean, hateful, dismissive, talked badly about my children, and again broke my heart. Things I did not want to hear from my dad even though I knew very well he was capable of saying these things. Why I was so surprised? I do not know. But I was broken. I finally got my dad off to bed and went downstairs to our spare bedroom and cried for what felt like an eternity.
Then the next day I had to put on the “Manda Face.” Pretend life is fine even if inside you are so deregulated your emotional functioning is at about a third grade level. I did not tell a single soul until two days after he left, that was the day I lost it!
Lost it in a way that scared my husband enough to take me to the hospital where I eventually signed a voluntary 72-hour hold. Did I need the help? Yes. Was I suicidal? Absolutely. I had hit a place mentally where I genuinely thought me being alive was worse for my children than me dying. That they would be better off raised by my husband’s family, that my family wasn’t well, and I needed to break that cycle once and for all. When my babies are not enough to pull me from the depths of hell my mind takes me; something is majorly wrong.
So began the next phase of my downward spiral. I am sharing this story in small pieces because it is complex, emotionally charged, extremely difficult to talk about publicly, and difficult to tell even those I am closest too. The stigma about mental health in this country is heart breaking! I suffer from Severe Anxiety, PTSD, and Depression. I also suffer from Interstitial Lung Disease, Interstitial Cystitis, Colitis, Endometriosis, PCOS, Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, GERD, Gastritis, Cyclic Vomiting Syndrome, Arthritis, Pelvic floor dysfunction, HLA-B27, TMD and chronic pain. I have had approximately 22 surgeries and procedures in the last decade. This is not to gain your sympathy it is to state the facts. This is my reality, it is a reality that I have always lived and a reality my husband and I have fought extremely hard to overcome together.
The way health care is being run in the United States has become a frightening situation for people like me and I am here to tell my story. We cannot fix what we do not acknowledge, and things need to change before we lose more loved ones to the mental health crisis plaguing our civilization.