Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars
Author: Welby O'Brien

Part One: Reaffirm

This first section is laid out as a list of common questions you definitely hear spouses and loved ones asking on a regular basis when they are trying to educate themselves about PTSD and learning how to cope with the PTSD.  It also goes into a lot of detail about how to best love a veteran with PTSD.  Welby does a great job of answering these questions in a clear and caring way.  She doesn't offer expert advice.  She offers advice based on her experiences and those of the people she knows who are in the same situation.  She uses a very conversational tone that keeps the reading from getting dry and engages the reader.  This section of the book is a great tool for folks new to PTSD, vastly experienced with dealing with PTSD, and everything in between.  Not all of the questions will apply to everyone.  Some of the questions are directed at spouses, some at siblings and parents.  Some are even directed at people considering whether they should get into a serious relationship with a veteran with PTSD.  The nice thing is that the table of contents lists all of the questions and what pages they are on.  It makes this section a very useful reference tool as your situation changes.

The Good:  The stories and advice offered are from someone who is speaking to her peers - not as a therapist or expert to her 'pupils'.  The tone of her writing engages you respectfully and doesn't assume you are stupid while still explaining the basics better than a 'For Dummies' book.

The Bad:  I showed segments of this section to some of the spouses I know and a few were turned off by the way she recommended treating veterans.  One even equated it to 'treating my veteran like a puppy'.  Her contention is that Welby's choice of wording in some cases made it sound like loved ones should treat their veterans like they are constantly in an emotionally fragile state and in need of a constant 'pat on the head'.  While some of this can be accounted for by cynicism from frustrated loved ones, there is an element of truth to what they say.  If you treat someone like you expect them to be fragile, it could lead to an unhealthy level of dependency upon this affirmation from loved ones to function day-to-day.

The Unexpected:  I was very surprised how much of what she talked about seemed like common sense to me but my wife and I had never actually sat down and talked about.  I found myself, as a veteran with PTSD, highlighting passages that I wanted to sit down and discuss openly with my wife.  It created a basis for incredibly productive and healthy discussions and cleared up some misapprehensions we both had about each other's behavior and beliefs.


Part Two:  Replenish

This section of the book is aimed directly at spouses and people in serious romantic relationships with veterans with PTSD.  The whole focus is to underline how important it is to take care of yourself.  If you are not taking care of yourself and depleting all of your considerable energies on caring for your veteran, you are doing yourself and your veteran a disservice of epic proportions.  If you are exhausted and stressed and burnt out, you can't effectively care for a veteran with PTSD.  The basic format is set up as specific situations followed by checklists.  The idea is for loved ones to be able to self-evaluate how well they are taking care of themselves and whether they are ignoring their own needs without realizing it or our of habit.  Just like Part One, the scenarios and page numbers are listed in the table of contents.

The Good:  This section highlights, what I would say, is the most common problem that couples have.  Spouses run themselves into the ground taking care their veteran, feeling guilty if the veteran's problems don't come before their own.  The veteran watches this behavior and can see the deterioration in well-being, making the veteran feel incredibly guilty that they are such a burden.  That this section unabashedly espouses taking care of yourself first...Something that every person in a committed relationship with a veterans with PTSD should constantly be aware of and ACT on.

The Bad:  The checklists contain healthy and unhealthy behaviors.  If people is burnt out and confused, they may find themselves wondering, "It this a healthy behavior or not?"  Granted, most of the unhealthy behaviors are pretty obvious, but it would have been helpful to identify clearly which was which on the checklist.

The Unexpected:  It became very obvious from the tone of the writing that this was written to spur deeply honest and unflinching evaluation of behavior and patterns of behavior.  The whole tone reminded me a lot of what we, as veterans with PTSD, are taught to do in Cognitive Processing Therapy - identify troublesome behavior and discover the underlying cause.  Many of the patterns of behavior exhibited by the spouses of veterans are habitual and not a conscious response to the actual situation.  This section works diligently to teach spouses how to self-evaluate their current state of mind, physical health, and the behavior they direct at their veterans.


Part Three:  Reflect

This section of the book is a collection of other useful information to help loved ones keep their ultimate goal clearly in front of them:  Loving their Veteran.  It covers everything from stories, to personal mantras, to advice on forming and facilitating group discussions, prayer, and more.  For lack of a better way of putting it - now that you have the tools to love your vet, here's how to effectively put them to use.

The Good:  There were a lot of 'Keep It Simple Stupid' (KISS) examples that are easily put into practice and a lot of information that is critical to know if you want to be successful, long term.

The Bad:  It seemed kind of disjointed, unorganized.  I am not sure why some things were included and why some things weren't.  It would make sense to include a useful list of online resources on the major subjects covered in this book, but that was mysteriously missing.

The Unexpected:  The Tsunami analogy was apt.  It is amazing, once triggered, how quickly our emotions and behavior can overwhelm our loved ones.  This segment gives an actionable plan to recognize the pending tsunami and learn to ride the waves, rather than get crushed by them.


Conclusion:

All in all, this has been the best and most readable resource for helping loved ones and veterans better understand each other and themselves.  Welby O'Brien has done an excellent job ensuring that her advice is clear, concise, actionable, and inclusive.  Many other books and online resources that I have seen and read have a tendency to exclude certain parties, whether it be parents, siblings, or unwed partners.  There is one overtone that becomes very clear in the course of reading this book:  Welby sees having a relationship with God as necessary.  While this will be welcomed by the vast majority, this could be a potential turn-off to some readers.  The wonderful thing about the way Welby writes is that she fully accepts that not everyone shares her views and invites the reader to take only what they need from her book.  The critical thinker will notice that she doesn't specify God as being Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu.  Don't be dissuaded by this overtone and lose out on an exceptional resource that will help you have a more fulfilling relationship with your veteran.

Yesterday, I posted my latest blog entry (you can see it here).  I had been having a rough few days and I talked about it extensively.  I talked about how the Phillip Phillips song, 'Gone, Gone, Gone' is what had gotten me through the moment and allowed me to find peace.  As is the usual when I reference someone in my blog entry, I add them to my tweet in the hopes that they see it.  Honestly, I didn't think, with how crazy P2's twitter feed is that anyone would even notice my post.

And then it happened.  I started getting a lot of traffic from Twitter.  People started retweeting my post, favoriting it and reaching out to me to comment on my blog.  It was an amazing and overwhelming response. I never thought that so many would connect with my writing.  It was an amazing feeling to know that I was able to reach so many and illustrate the human side of what it means to have combat PTSD.

With this in mind, I wanted to thank the fans or 'Philatics' who have demonstrated an amazing capacity for compassion for a stranger.  Your passionate comments and support are a testament to the type of music that Phillip Phillips makes - it only draws to highest quality of individual.

Again, thank you all so much for your amazing display of support.  I promise, no matter how bad it gets that 'like a drum, my heart won't stop beating'.

Yours in Health and Happiness,

Max Harris

I startled awake and felt the familiar pain of bile burning the back of my throat.  As was becoming the norm, I had woken up from the nightmare choking on my own vomit.  I scrambled out of bed and ran to the bathroom.  I vomited repeatedly into the sink.  I dry-heaved for an hour, unable to clear the bile from the back of my throat.  When the gag reflex receded, I continued to salivate and spit for another hour.  I finally dared to look up and didn't recognize the person staring back at me.  My face had a gaunt, almost skeletal quality to it that I hadn't seen before.  My eyes were swollen and red, the blood vessels in my eyes inflamed.

"I thought things were getting better"

That's a common thought that runs through my mind every time I start to physically recover from my nightmares.  It finally sank in yesterday that the nightmares seemed to be their worst after the deepest and darkest moments of my latest episode have receded far enough for me to see and recognize the insanity that others call 'hope'.

I was too exhausted to sleep after that moment.  I somehow didn't let on at work that I had this horrible experience Friday night into Saturday.  I was afraid to go to sleep last night and slept fitfully until something woke me up.  I had only been in bed for an hour or so, but my heart was racing and I didn't know why.  Determined to fight this feeling of complete helplessness, I ran for my iPad, plugged in my earbuds and turned on the Phillip Phillips.  Something in one of his songs vibrated through me and I finally felt at peace.

I'd listened to this song many times before, but the lyrics never really registered until last night and I knew I had found an anthem that would put my mind at ease and always remind me that I wasn't going through this alone.  I had the love of my wife, friend, family, and even strangers to keep my head above water - even when I didn't have the strength to keep myself afloat.  So this one's for all of you - You Know Who You Are.

So, it appears that my therapist's advice really sank in.  I woke up yesterday with a clear sense of purpose and a vision of where I wanted my life to go.  I decided to conserve my energy at work (yeah, still a work in progress) and devote that conserved energy to my advocacy and my family.  I started moving things forward and saw results.  Here's what's happening right now:

This past Monday, I met with my individual therapist and we talked about how I feel trapped by my current situation:  I am not able to make a job change easily because my family depends on my income and health insurance.  I can't get to the gym consistently because my work schedule is erratic and I come home from work emotionally spent.  I don't have the time I would like to pursue my advocacy endeavors because of my work schedule making it nearly impossible to meet with my colleagues.  It has made me feel more and more depressed and more and more demotivated.

When I explained all of this to my therapist, she understood how this could adversely affect me but brought up one point that stuck with me and made me think:  It is your choice, whether you realize it or not, to stay in that job.  It is also your choice to put all of your emotional energy into your work even though you don't get paid to be emotionally invested in it.  She asked me, "What do you think would happen if you chose to save that emotional energy for the other things in your life?"

Wow.

Why is it the simple things that always seem to be the hardest to change?  Being emotionally invested in my work has been ingrained in my since childhood.  I told my therapist that and she came back with, "No, that's your job.  Advocacy is your work.  Put your emotional energy into that and I bet you will feel better and have more energy to find a way to get to the gym and to be there for your family".

Huh.

It's a foreign idea, but makes a weird kind of sense to me.  She followed this up by explaining to me that I have the ability to choose what I devote my energy to.  I can't control the fact that I am currently unable to change jobs because of my financial responsibilities.  What I CAN control is who benefits from my energies the most - my job or my advocacy for veterans.  I have felt trapped because couldn't see any way to take control of the situation and it was causing me to become extremely depressed and unable to see any positive outcomes.

So now comes the hard part.  I have to change my behavior - a behavior that has been an integral part of my professional identity since I first started working.  I have to learn how to redefine what my work is so that I can devote my emotional energy to my advocacy, my health, and my family.  It is definitely not going to be easy but it will be worth the effort.

I was asked to address this issue by folks on the Facebook Page.  It is a delicate subject and I wanted to take the time to really think about how I feel about the whole situation, so it took me a few days to write all of this down.

Over the past few years, there has been a very strong push to create an adjunct court system for veterans called the Veterans' Court.  Supporters of the concept argue that veterans are not treated equitably by the court system and that the punishments/sentences meted out are much more severe than, in many cases, the crime dictates.  They also argue that there are often mitigating circumstances that cause many of these veterans to break the law, PTSD being one of those circumstances.  While I agree that veterans aren't currently being treated equitably by the court system, I think that the concept of a separate court system for veterans sets a dangerous and irresponsible precedent.  Before punching your computer in anger, let me explain.

Being Singled Out for Stigmatization:

As anyone in the veteran community knows already, veterans with PTSD (and veterans in general) are often stigmatized by the public.  It's called the 'Rambo Effect'.  The ignorant believe that you and I, as law abiding citizens, are exponentially more likely to go crazy, cause mayhem, and commit mass murder.  When you spell it out like that it sounds pretty stupid.  If we created a separate court system to address veterans crimes, do you see this stereotype improving or getting worse?  How does anyone think that being singled out as different and warranting special treatment helps?  For generations, minorities have been getting the short end of the stick in the court system.  Do you see any initiatives to create 'Black Court' or 'Latino Court' or 'Gay Court'?  All of these minority groups (in this day and age, veterans are an extreme minority) accept, understand and value the court system we have and strive to affect long-term change by changing the system that already exists.

A Crime Is A Crime Is A Crime:

If a veteran with PTSD turns to illicit drugs to numb himself or gets in a heated argument with someone and commits assault and battery, how is this different from anyone else with PTSD doing the same thing?  While I understand that, as veterans with PTSD, what we experienced is truly horrible, a bad decision is a bad decision.  Don't get me wrong, I am not condemning their actions.  I understand how easy it can be to head down that road.  The first time I was on prescription pain meds after the PTSD, I almost got hooked.  If I would have gone down that road and gotten in trouble for abusing prescription medication or worse, who do I have to blame for that?  Me.  No one else.  Just me.  I don't think it's a good idea to create a system that would unintentionally encourage a lack of accountability.  I have heard veterans say, "It wasn't me, it's the PTSD", completely deflecting blame for undesirable behavior off on their disorder.  Creating this system would encourage this.

So, If Not Veterans' Courts, Then WHAT?

From my experience with vets who have gone through the court system, it seems that veterans get held to a higher standard of conduct than the average citizen.  It the curse of honor and duty.  Do we not hold ourselves to a higher standard than civilians?  If a civilian and a veteran pulled a punk move and hit their respective wives, which one would you be angrier with?  Which one would YOU hold to a higher standard?  I know I would hold the veteran to a higher standard, fair or not.  So, what is the solution?

EDUCATION.  Plain and simple.  All of these lawyers espousing the creation of the veterans' court could be spending all of that time and effort educating other lawyers (especially public defenders about the issues facing veterans - especially PTSD).  If the argument is made that a veteran has a service connected diagnosis of PTSD or related behavioral disorder is not fit to stand trial but should be sentenced to court mandated medical treatment, how many veterans' lives would be irrevocably changed for the better?  Veterans are notoriously bad about not keeping to their treatment regimens.  I should know.

What I am saying is that veterans with behavioral disorders should be afforded the opportunity to get treatment first, before they are thrown in jail.  Jail is a really bad place for someone with untreated combat PTSD, for obvious reasons.  That being said, if a veteran IS afforded the opportunity to get medical treatment, is deemed fit and released from care, any further violations of the law should be treated like anyone else.

Now we just need subject matter experts to stand up and educate.  We need those same experts to testify at trials.  The argument shouldn't be about the severity of the punishment meted out, it should be about whether these veterans are competent to stand trial in the first place.  God knows, before I started getting treatment for my PTSD, I sure as hell wasn't.

As I do my best to avoid landmines on this subject, I need to put this disclaimer out there first and foremost:

I am not a doctor.  I can only share my experiences with medication for PTSD, dos and do nots.  Never stop taking your meds without informing your doctor of that decision first.  If you are concerned about what the medications could do to you physiologically, express those concerns with your doc and see what you can do together to mitigate those effects.

OK, now that we have that out of the way, let me take you on a little trip back to 2004 when I first got home.  As soon as I got into the VA system, I was put on meds.  I was put on trazodone for sleep (the nightmares were nightly for months after I initially got home), Citalopram HBr for mood, and Gabapentin for jitters.  I took them religiously for two years.  I honestly think that the compassion of my teachers and staying on my cocktail were the only reasons I made it through college.

In March 2006, I met my wife,  I made the classic mistake that all properly medicated people make at some point in their treatment.  I felt so good, I went off my meds.  I stayed off them until December 2007, I think.  There may have been little spurts where I took them, but it wasn't consistent.  I had graduated from college in May 2007 and the stress of having to find a good paying job was killing me.  I found a job at a local bank and without my meds, I went belly up and out the door in six months.  I went back to the VA and they put me on my meds again in December 2007.  In May 2008, my wife graduated from Massage Therapy school.  Somewhere along the way I had stopped taking my meds again.  Part of the problem is that my PTSD was really out of control and I was having issues with loss of my sense of the passing of time.  My wife would ask if I had taken my pills and I would tell her I had because I really thought I had.  My head was a mess.

In June 2008, we moved down to Georgia and things got really bad really fast.  I had not access to a VA hospital that I trusted and, therefore, had no meds.  We had moved down because there were supposedly a lot of jobs to be had down there.  Unfortunately the economy was in full recession mode and there were no jobs to be found.  I worked temp work here and there but my wife couldn't practice massage therapy because the state of Georgia never, in six months we were there, sent her a licence.  Our finances were at a straining point, my PTSD in full episode (all I did was play Call of Duty 4, 12-16 hours per day).  In December 2008, I took a contracting job in the Middle East out of pure desperation.  We moved my wife back home to be near family and I went over to Qatar.  I lasted about a month without my wife before I had to bring her over.  The separation was too much.  Keep in mind, I am still off my meds.  Shortly after my wife got over there, we moved to Manama, Bahrain.  And that's where my PTSD got dangerously bad.  Without going into details, I was the worst I had ever been.  I was drowning.  Out of desperation, my wife put her foot down and we went home in September 2009.

I knew I was screwing everything up and I was determined to get myself straight.  I went back to the VA and got put on meds.  I started attending group sessions.  I got a job at a local grocery store and still work there. I haven't gone off my meds since.  It's the only period since I have been home that I have enjoyed a true sense of stability.  Over time, the docs augmented my cocktail with Lorazepam (for anxiety), and Wellbutrin (additional mood med).  The reason the changes were made was because I was noticing changes in my behavior that I didn't like.  The previous meds didn't seem to be working the same as they had been.  So the doc evaluated me and changed it up.  Brain chemistry changes over time, so there will the potential need to 'tweak' the cocktail.

So what are the lessons to take away from my mistakes?

• If you are on meds, make sure you take them every day!
• If you do not like the way your meds make you feel or don't feel like you need them anymore, talk to your doc first.  DO NOT stop without supervision.
• Stay involved in process, be aware of how the meds make you feel.  If something feels off, tell your doc.

Now, I can say that meds are not for everyone.  Some people will do better with natural alternatives.  Some won't benefit from either.  No two veterans are alike in their emotional needs.  Regardless of what decision you decide to make, I ask that you consider how your potential change in emotional stability and change in demeanor could adversely affect the ones you love.  It's not fair to put our loved ones through the emotional meat grinder because we are too proud to admit we actually need our meds/natural alternatives to stay stable.

So, there you have it.  That's my lowdown on PTSD and Medication.  I encourage you to educate your loved ones on the meds you are taking, including side effects.  Having extra eyes looking for disturbing changes in emotional and physical health will help you stay healthier too.

It's amazing how being laid up for a week can adversely affect your outlook.  Even though I am feeling physically better, I am feeling progressively more depressed and that concerns me greatly.  People who are ill for prolonged periods are prone to mild depression.  When you add PTSD into the equation, thinks spiral down a whole lot faster and a whole lot farther.

What's frustrating as hell is that I KNOW this and I can't seem to snap out of it.  I am doing everything I can to stay focused on doing things that are productive and fulfilling for me and it seems to be helping a little bit.  While I know I focused a lot on the things I am dissatisfied with over the past few days, I haven't come up with any good plans to address those issues.  I am going to read over everything I wrote in my last blog with my wife and see what we can come up with.  Sometimes I get my thoughts out on here and forget that I haven't shared them with my wife.

All I know is that my wife's love and support mean everything to me and help me regain proper perspective when I get in these funks.  Maybe, if I remembered to share with her all that I blogged about she would be better equipped to deal with me.

Yep, still in a funk.  At least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  My ear is finally healing better and as soon as I am allowed to go back to work, I think that the majority of my depression will lift.  If it doesn't lift, on to plan B.  When I figure out what plan B is, I'll let you know.

Introspection...Ally or Enemy?  It's a question I have been asking myself a lot over the past few days.  It seems that every time I have too much time on my hands to sit and think, I get evaluate everything that's going on in my life.  I look at my home life, my work life, being a husband, being a dad.  I examine every facet of my life, ad nauseum.  In some cases, in excruciatingly fine detail.

I have to wonder how healthy this is for a person like me to do.  I seem to get less and less out of it the longer I look.  While, I know that there is a lot that makes me very happy in my life, there is also a lot that has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.  I wonder if I will ever be able to realize my full potential, and sitting on my duff recuperating from a physical health issue doesn't lend itself to feeling positive about what the future holds.

What I have begun to realize is that I  desperately need more out of my professional life - and soon.  I think about all of the things I could be doing with my time to advocate for changes in behavioral health care, to educate people about PTSD, to work to reduce the stigma associated with PTSD.  It makes me sick to my stomach that I am spending my time in customer service in a grocery store.  It's depressing and demotivating.  I am an accomplished speaker, an even better writer.  Yet, here I sit, wondering how I got myself stuck where I am.  I constantly think about hunting for work in Veteran Advocacy.  I look online all of the time.  I think about the good I could be doing and I feel trapped by the need to make a living to support my family, unable to get out from under the thumb of crap wages and a shitty economy.

Yep, that's introspection for you.  It allows me to make important realizations - realizations about things I need to change in my life.  Yet, when I am in a position where I don't get to choose when the introspection ends, I get caught in the quagmire of depression and catastrophic thinking.  I am on pain meds, so I can't drive anywhere, I can't work.  I am stuck here at home with one of two options:  sleep or think too much.

So I sit here and think.  And contemplate the edges of a sword that never get dull from overuse.

This is the danger of isolation for veterans with PTSD.  It suffocates our will, douses the flame of hope.  Too much introspection is not a good thing.  It's like painting yourself into a corner, with no one around to notice you have until the last stroke has already been painted.

Boy was that a depressing trip.  I think I need to make sure that I get to CPT group tomorrow, despite my inability to drive myself.  I need something to shake the cobwebs loose, something to turn my sight outward.  I need to focus on getting a hold on the depression as it sinks its claws ever deeper into my psyche.  I need to focus on my wife and my daughter, how much they need me to be here for them.  I'll find a way, I always do.  I think I just needed to get those poisonous thoughts out of my head.  To rattle those insidious doubts from their nesting places in my mind.

I know I can make it until tomorrow, and that's all that truly matters when the going gets rough.

It's amazing how quickly medical problems can add up to turn coping with PTSD into trying to walk through a minefield.  I'm struggling to understand why all of these random health problems seem to keep happening to me, but it's getting old and particularly challenging to deal with.  While I am not out of the woods yet, I am starting to feel a little better.  That being said, the stress of this past week has taken an incredible toll on my wife and I.  I am physically exhausted as my body continues its struggle to heal.  My wife is beyond emotionally exhausted after having to resume the role of full-time caregiver of our daughter (and me).  What makes that even worse is that these were physical issues on my part that were not (as far as we know) related to my PTSD.

Here's the synopsis:

• On Monday, I felt something pop in my left ear and I was left with vertigo, nausea and ear pain.  After missing work to go see the doctor, I was diagnosed with a middle ear infection.  I was given ear drops and told to contact them if things got worse over the course of the next 10 days.  I returned to work on Tuesday.
• On Tuesday, I don't know if I was distracted by my ear pain or not, but I somehow managed to butterfly the tip on my left pinky finger on a deli slicer at work.  One ER visit later, I had six stitches in the tip of my finger.  That night, I had horrible nightmares and ended up waking up choking on my own bile.  I spent the next half hour vomiting and dry-heaving as I tried desperately to clear the bile from my back of my throat.
• Wednesday I had off.  I spent the day out-of-sorts as I struggled to cope with the intensity of the previous night.
• Thursday started off well.  I returned to work again and made it through the whole day without incident.  After coming home from work, the pain in my ear started getting worse.  I started to get a ringing in my ear and experienced mild loss of hearing as well.  I resolved to call the doc the following morning.
• When I woke up Friday morning, the pain and hearing loss was progressing rapidly.  The pain radiated out from my ear and down my neck.  I took the earliest appointment that my docs offered.  That afternoon, I was seen by the docs and they became very concerned when they looked in my ear and saw that it was a mass of blisters and pus.  They were concerned with the spreading of pain that the infection may have spread to the mastoid bone in my head.  They sent me out for an emergency CAT scan and it fortunately came back negative.  I avoided hospitalization but had steroids and antibiotics added to the ear drops.  Later that night, the pain continued to grow worse to the point of being unmanageable.  My wife had to take me to the ER where they evaluated my situation and put me on IV antibiotics and pain-killers in an attempt to get ahead of the infection.  They succeeded and sent me home around three in the morning with heavy pain meds and stronger antibiotics.  When I got home I was still so wound up from the adrenalin response to my pain that I wasn't really able to get to bed until my daughter woke up and cuddled me into submission.
• When I woke up a few hours later around 8:30, I went to fill my scrips I had gotten from the ER.  The pain meds they had given me were wearing off and I had to go to work to fill the scrips at the pharmacy. By this point, my patience and control of my anger and PTSD was wearing really thin.  I got home, took a scheduled dose of pain meds and faded into oblivion for about two hours until I felt multiple pops in my ear and pus started running out of my ear.  Fearful of the pus causing a secondary infection, I cleared as much of the pus out of my ear as I could by using swabs to wick it out without sticking them in my ear canal.  The relief of pressure was significant and I could hear a little better.  I was still in a substantial amount of pain, but I felt like I was finally starting to turn the corner.  I was so out of it on pain-killers and my wife was exhausted.  I quickly called my parents and asked if they could keep an eye on Caley so that my wife could get desperately needed rest and so that I could convalesce without having to try to keep an eye on a rambunctious two year old.

As you can see, it's been a long week.  While I am proud that I have been able to keep a lid on the anger (barely), it has been substantially more difficult to keep the catastrophic thinking and anxiety at bay over the course of this week - especially when I thought about my job security.  At some point a company is going to decide they've had enough and I live in an at-will employment state.  I kept on thinking, with how unreliable I have been because of health issues over the past year, they would be justified in letting me go.  While that outcome is improbable, the catastrophic thinking was pushing to convince me that I was going to lose my job.

Sooo,,,Now that I have turned the corner with my health issues and finally feel like I am on the road to recovery, I now have to contend with the emotional/PTSD fallout from everything I went through this past week.  The anxiety and adrenalin are still going strong and it is hard to keep a lid on them and not freak out. But I am still here, somehow.

I can't even imagine how hard this past week has been on my wife,  She just can't seem to catch a break and enjoy a little bit of stability, what with the PTSD and the random health issues.  It makes me feel incredibly guilty.  While I know that the physical issues are completely out of my control, it doesn't change how guilty I feel that she had to experience that emotional distress, take care of me and our two year old, and work to bring in money to keep us financially stable.  Seeing her that distraught and still fighting made my heart clench in my chest.  She just never gives up.  She fights until she literally can't stand up anymore.  It's disturbing to think of where I might be right now if it wasn't for the amazing fortitude of my wife and the strength of her love for me.  It's why I will always be dedicated to her, working as hard as I can to see her happy and fulfilled, despite my problems.

Tomorrow is Superbowl Sunday.  All I keep thinking about is how we need tomorrow to be uneventful and restful, for both our sakes.  So, here's to hoping.