Paranoia is Really Hard

There is a fine line between paranoia and gut instinct.  It’s the difference between the “feeling” you develop when you intimately know your partner and obsessive worry about every twitch.  At times, I’m not sure I know the difference.

I know Marty, I know almost every nuanced movement, I know the yawn, the stretch, the moan and the slump.  I watch and sometimes I assume and I almost always wonder, “Is this a sign”. 

When you do this for a time, when you are another person’s life line, when you know someone so well, when you have seen illness come hard and heavy you get paranoid about all of those twitches.  That means when Marty yawns my heart rate speeds up and the adrenalin starts to pump just a little harder.  Is it a yawn or is it a precursor to something worse? 

There’s the line, there’s the decision point, which is what makes this really hard for someone who embraces and feels anxiety like it’s your skin, for someone who struggles to keep the demons of worst case at bay.

I confess, I don’t really know how to differentiate between what is a real symptom and what is simply hyper-vigilance.  Experience helps with perspective but experience also means I have seen what can happen with Marty and how fast, how amazingly fast she can go from fine to on the edge of extremely not fine. 

It is the thought, the fear of the consequences of inaction that haunts me every day.  It is the thought of the very real awful results of inaction that deepens anxiety and causes me to doubt.

Early on in our journey I worried about being one of “those” caregivers, one of “those” almost hypochondriac types of patient/caregivers that jumped the gun at every cough, sneeze, burp or fart.  I did not want to be that guy, I didn’t want to be the old man that health providers avoided because we were always there with every little thing.

My doctor told me to forget about that and not worry about what others might think.  He said I knew her the best and I should follow and advocate for my “gut” for my “feeling” because I was the one who knew her best.

He was right and Great and Wise has been the supreme advocate for following my instinct.  He never fails, when he makes a diagnosis or recommends a course of action, to ask, “What do you think?” or “How do you feel about that?”  The doctors listen to my gut.

I remember one trip to the ER when Marty had been showing very early signs of sepsis due to an undetected UTI.  The doctor did the all of the appropriate diagnostic tests and came back and said, “You do know your wife.”  Duh.

My knowing my wife is not the problem.  My learning to be a strong advocate for Marty is not the issue.  My evolution to a proactive as opposed to a reactive caregiver is not in question.  As a caregiver you have to be all of those things. 

The issue is how do you know the line, how do you distinguish between paranoia and the real coming storms that will certainly come back to visit us.

Truth….I don’t have a clue, if I did I would have my anxiety levels in check more than I do.  If I had a clue I wouldn’t catch my breath at a yawn or a stretch or a cough or a sneeze.  If I knew how to tell the difference between real illness and my worry about a real illness I would ….. well I would be a lot smarter than I am because most of the time I worry way too much.

When someone I know experiences a bad medical issue or trauma, I, as someone who is filled with Gandalf like wisdom and insight offer advice, of course I do.  My best advice is one day, one issue at a time and don’t borrow trouble.  

At some point in time I might listen to myself.  Naw….that would make way too much sense.

Ten Years Later

It was Sunday.  I was sitting in the ICU/day surgery waiting room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas with son Matt.  The waiting room was deserted and we were waiting for the rigidly enforced visiting hour to see Marty.  It was seven days since her surgery for the ruptured aneurysm, it was seven days she had been lying in a coma in the ICU.

The 2005 Masters Golf tournament was on the small television in the empty waiting room and Matt and I watched as Tiger Woods struggled to keep his lead and win his 4^th green jacket.  To golf people it was a huge weekend, one of only four major tournaments, to me, probably to Matt, it was a way to tamp down some of the anxiety and fear that had become omnipresent since Marty’s brain hemorrhage.

I don’t remember who Tiger was paired with that day, I know they eventually went into a playoff and Woods won.  What I do remember is Tiger sinking an amazing chip shot from off the green on the 16^th hole.  He aimed at least 20 feet to the right of the hole, hit the ball and the ball curved around to the hole and almost came to a stop, just short of the hole and then rolled in and hit the bottom of the cup.

In the quiet of the that empty waiting room Matt and I both jumped up, clapped and for one brief instance left Parkland Hospital, left the weight of why we were there, left the anxiety of what was going to happen to Marty next and reveled with a younger red-shirted Tiger Woods as he fist pumped after a miraculous shot.  

The excitement on TV was almost palpable and it was the first time in a week I had felt something other than acute sadness, fear or anxiety.  The excitement quickly abated and amazingly I felt a twinge of guilt for feeling those few seconds of happiness.

It’s just plain weird to feel guilt because you feel something good, something other than fear or sorrow, but that’s the way it was for those first few days, weeks and even months.  If it felt good to be with our kids or my family, I felt guilty for feeling good, if someone said something funny and I laughed and for a second and forgot about where Marty was, I felt guilty.  

Simply put, if I wasn’t miserable, if I wasn’t grieving, if I didn’t try to feel Marty’s pain, if I felt happy for a moment, I felt guilty.  Dumb, huh?

That has changed over the last years as we moved from the hemorrhagic stroke to the ischemic stroke, as we moved from one rehab facility to another, as we found care givers and doctors and nurses who made our life better, as I matured in the care giving process. 

I have grown and while I still feel a tiny twinge of guilt when I am off enjoying parts of life that are cut off to Marty I know Marty wants me to feel and be happy.  And besides, we have found a way to be happy together with each other with other.  We have found the rhythm of our new normal.

Ten years later to the day when Matt and I reveled in Tiger Wood’s golf Marty sat in her wheelchair beside me as rain fell intermittently against the windows at our house on Richland Chambers.  We sat side-by-side, her in her wheel chair, me in my recliner and we watched the Masters Golf Tournament, together. 

I suspect Marty was not invested in this golf tournament; I mean really, its golf on TV. Tiger didn’t pull off a miraculous shot to stay competitive and there were no singular moments of thrill aside from a 21 year old from Dallas winning his first major.  

This time, ten years later, Marty and I sat together, not in a sterile uncomfortable hospital environment, not worrying about the next life changing medical crises, but sitting with each other enjoying a moment together.  

It was a moment that reminded me of seconds of arm raised exhilaration and then the inevitable fall back to the weeks of unmitigated fear and anxiety.

Human beings adapt amazingly well.