Trigger warning: The following narrative of postpartum depression and psychosis may trigger anxiety for some.
In case you haven’t been following along, make sure you’ve read these posts first: DBD Part 1 (Sarah), DBD Part 1 (Me), DBD Part 2 (Sarah).
Many jokes have been made by husbands about how irrational their wives are (I know, right?). Once you experience a wife being delusional and paranoid, these are sentiments to which you aspire.
Some Background and An Overview
When Sarah first told me she was worried our kids were in danger, I was concerned, but as Sarah can be dramatic at times, I tried to talk it out with her. As would become a regular theme of similar discussions over the next few months, Sarah would say a lot of things that while each item may be true or mostly true, the connections and conclusions drawn seemed premature, inconsequential, irrelevant, unlikely, or incorrect.
Sarah and I rarely argued, perhaps because we both find disagreement uncomfortable. So, as Sarah became more desperate in her efforts to get me to match her level of concern, it was especially disorienting.
Sometimes my complacency would cause her to jump tactics and accuse me of wrong-doing. It is a strange mix of emotions to see your wife staring at you unconvinced when you tell her that you haven’t done any of the awful things she pointedly asked. She would sometimes try to encourage me to confess by lovingly reassuring me that she would visit me in prison, that I just needed to tell her the truth.
A Black Friday to Remember
That week has kind of blurred together in my memory, but I remember distinctly after going around and around all the evening of Thanksgiving and into the early morning of the next day being completely exhausted and unnerved by what had happened to my wife. My home had always been my sanctuary and my wife my best (and at times only) friend. Now, I was frightened at being around her. Over the course of hours and hours, we had moved from our bedroom to the front room. Sarah said she wanted to try to go to bed now. I was so shaken up and hurt by all the things she had said and the way that she had spoken to me that I needed some time to calm down.
I looked up at our pictures in our living room of us in happy scenes and cried. I was trying to steel myself to the reality that despite the fact that all of a sudden my wife viewed me with suspicion and anger, I needed to figure out how to endure this to make sure my kids had the support they needed. Our baby was about a year old, so I only needed to make it another 17 years…
As I went into our bedroom, Sarah was sitting up in bed. As I looked into her eyes, she looked at me, her face contorting in a way I had never seen before (but that will probably haunt me forever). It seemed a mix of horror and rage. She started repeatedly screaming “No!” She starting yelling for me to leave.
At this point, I was so exhausted and confused that I was getting ready to leave. Sarah’s siblings were in the house, so I felt comfortable that the kids would be okay. As Sarah woke her siblings up, they saw the same bizarre behavior I did.
As Sarah sensed no one else in the room was an ally to her cause, she backed towards the house phone and said she was dialing 9-1-1. Before she did this, I had been trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew that something needed to happen, but I didn’t know what. So, having the police come to my house became a welcome occurrence.
When the officer arrived, he quickly sized up the situation and asked Sarah if she wanted to visit at the police station. Sarah wanted to keep an eye on the kids, so, we all loaded up in the van and drove to the police station. As we approached I heard her mutter, “Why is it that I’m the one in my family to go crazy?”
As Sarah went in with the screener from the community mental health provider, I paced the lobby with our baby in my arms. The exhaustion of no sleep the night before and the fear of not knowing what was going on with my wife and what was going to happen to our family made me an emotional wreck. I was helpless to keep back the sobs that kept coming. I think I cried more that day than in all the years since my early childhood combined.
Eventually, the screener asked me to visit with her. She said that since Sarah didn’t seem to be a threat to herself or others, she wouldn’t be committed to the state hospital. She told me that Sarah was suffering from a mental illness and so that I shouldn’t take the unkind things she’d say or accusations she made personally. She suggested that we get a full medical evaluation and see a counselor at their clinic on Monday. As I realized that we were on our own again, I felt incredibly helpless. Sarah remained suspicious of me. If not for her sisters being there, I don’t know what I would have done.
When we finally saw a doctor and got the prescription, I was still uncertain if Sarah would take the medicine. After some negotiating, Sarah took one pill and soon fell asleep.
Sarah slept soundly, and then woke up. Strangely, Sarah acted like nothing had happened. It was like she just needed the pill and the nap to snap out of it. I felt relief as I hoped that maybe the whole deal had just been a really weird thing, but that thankfully it was behind us now.
However, as the evening wore on, I noticed Sarah’s eyes getting shifty again, and she acknowledged that she was getting weird thoughts again and thought that maybe she should take another pill. She did and went to sleep.
Stumbling Along
The next day we felt our way through Sarah trying to take a pill when things started to get weird. By that evening, my nerves were shot and I suggested that we just take them on regular intervals (the bottle said every few hours or as needed, so I felt this was a reasonable idea). While this helped to keep Sarah calm, it also made her largely incapacitated. Also, we later learned that the drug effects memory and so she doesn’t remember much of those couple of days.
During this time, I read through the book Matters of the Mind: Latter-Day Saint Helps for Mental Health, an excellent reference on mental illness, to try to figure out what happened with my wife. As I read through the different illnesses, I saw different things that sounded like what I had seen. I was worried that perhaps it was something serious that could potentially be persistent, but I hoped that this was just a single episode.
I was very fortunate to have Sarah’s siblings there. In addition to helping with Sarah, I don’t know that I could have handled the kids that weekend on my own. It was all so overwhelming that I was sobbing all the time. I felt alone and for the first time in my life I wasn’t sure if the future was going to be better and I didn’t know what I could count on.
Mike we love you and Sarah. We love your whole family.