As they told us could no longer work from home at all (I had been doing Tuesday and Friday at home), I was becoming more and more overwhelmed. Driving to the D five days a week was not what I had signed up to do. I had a huge report due for one of our largest customers that involved working with my VP and he was asking for more and more data that required more and more time. We were falling behind our timeline to get done. My 12 hour days had moved into the weekends where I had been able to just work 7-8 hours. I was making mistakes and knew it.
In the mean time, it was becoming more apparent that my Mom was in the early stages of Alzheimers. I was trying to find time to do some quick research to learn more, talk to my sister and Dad, and figure out what we should be doing for her. While I knew the basics about AD, I really didn't know the details. Someone at work recommended I read "Still Alice". I listened to it driving back and forth to work. I cried. I learned. Wow.
The Friday before that big client report was due, I met with my VP in the afternoon and we went over some of the report and I walked out with a new to-do list but not before I told him I could work all day on Saturday but I could NOT work on Sunday. I repeated that several times. I needed a break and I knew it. I was so exhausted. I left work that night at 7 pm. On a Friday.
The next morning I was in my home office (aka the end of the kitchen) working by 6 am. I had a couple texts and emails from my VP and worked with very few breaks until 8 that night. Neither of the kids were home so the house was quiet. I was still making stupid mistakes and knew it but was too exhausted to care. The software I was using is incredibly quirky so the mistakes would be impossible to duplicate and weren't so big as to sway the data in any meaningful way. I knew this. The perfectionist in me hated it. The tired me didn't care.
Sometime late Saturday night I got a phone call from Austin that went to voicemail. He was at the hospital and they would be transferring him to a psych ward for suicide watch as soon as they could find him a bed at one. This was what I woke up to.
I suppose my saving grace was that this wasn't the first time. Back in late February, the same thing had happened. He spent a week at Havenwyk Hospital where they had diagnosed him as bi-polar and an alcoholic. I strongly disagreed with both. ADHD, yes. Anxiety, yes. Depression, maybe. Borderline mentally impaired, yes. It probably sounds bad to say that the first time he went didn't upset me very much. I was very sure that it was my overly dramatic son seeking attention from his overly dramatic new girlfriend who supposedly has such bad anxiety she is unable to drive or work. I had already learned she uses the hospital ER for pretty much everything and LIKES the attention she gets there.
This time felt different. I could actually hear pain in his voice in that message. He was trying to tell me he was going to be okay and needed to go. But I could hear pain. A mother breaks a little when she hears that kind of pain in her child. I suddenly got quite fragile.
In spite of saying I wasn't going to work on Sunday, I needed some distraction until I knew where Austin would be admitted. I started cranking out data while emailing my VP and director to let them know my son was being admitted to a psych ward. I wrote that while I didn't expect to need time off work, I honestly didn't know for sure. I was being the good worker bee and letting them know up front what was happening. We were four days out from that presentation of the report for one of our biggest clients.
A couple hours later I got a call from Austin saying he had been transferred to the psych unit at Pontiac General. I wouldn't be able to see him until the next evening. He sounded calmer but I also knew he was probably heavily medicated at that point. I logged off the work computer and left for the barn to see my horse. I hadn't been there in a week. She is MY therapy and the barn is a place where I go for solace and work. The physical kind. My brain was already on overload but using my body in the tasks of grooming and riding always feel good followed up by the barn cleaning that never ends. You can't leave without sweeping the floors!
Just before I left for the barn, I got a text from the VP expressing his concern for my son and an offer to do anything he could to help. I drove off thinking, "Well that was nice of him". Exactly ONE hour later, just after I put my saddle on Mata Hari, I get another text from him. This one says, "I'm reviewing some of the numbers on the deck (report) and there are some issues with the j-code analysis". Keeping in mind that I had repeatedly told him I couldn't work on Sunday and had just told him my son was on suicide watch in a psych hospital, I just melted when I read that.
Someone said I hit my wall. I could physically feel myself drain from the top of my head right out through my hands and feet. I slid down my own body to the floor of the barn. I didn't cry. I didn't get mad. I think I muttered, "What the hell" as I was draining and then I shut down. I'm not sure how long I sat on the floor. Nobody was there. At some point a bee buzzing around my head brought me back around and I looked up at Mata Hari who was standing quite close in the cross ties with her nose just above my shoulder. She knew.
I pulled myself up after another couple minutes spent reviewing what had just happened to me. I felt so weak. Like I had just had surgery weak but without any pain points. My brain felt rather foggy but also quite clear. The whole sensory package was just plain weird. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. I put my forehead to Mata Hari's and we just breathed. This isn't unusual. I do this often. It calms us both before I ride. I did it way longer than usual and had my hands around her head for support. My legs felt like jello and I certainly couldn't ride like that. I slowly pulled myself away and began the process of untacking my horse. My very light dressage saddle felt like it weighed 100 pounds.... By the time I had put everything away and taken my horse back out to her pasture, I had started twitching. Neurons were firing at random and muscles were jumping on their own. Another crazy weird sensation when I still felt so incredibly drained and weak. The scientific side of my brain was finding this all quite interesting while the exhausted side was just trying to get me home.
Like many people, I do some good thinking when I'm driving. The twenty minute drive home kicked my brain into it's normal "fix this" gear. I knew what had just happened to me was not good. I'm smart enough to listen to my body and it had just screamed at me. I showered and ate something trying to shake off the weakness and twitching. And then I logged on to my patient portal for my PCP and asked for an appointment ASAP. It was Sunday late afternoon so I knew I wouldn't hear back until the morning. Then I texted Deanna. Deanna is technically Madison's therapist but Austin has seen her and Scott and I both went to see her for help in how to tell the kids we were getting divorced. She knows enough of our family story that I felt seeing her for this would save me some time in explaining background. She replied and scheduled me for 9 am Tuesday. And finally, I emailed my VP and Director telling them that I would be taking Monday off for PTO.
Monday I hunkered down all day and didn't do much of anything other than answer Austin's calls from Pontiac General Hospital's Psych Unit and then go visit him later that evening for my 30 minutes before Scott and MaryAnn showed up. We had a good conversation and I started formulating my plan that he needed to move back home from his girlfriend's mom's house...
Tuesday I was at Deanna's office in Ann Arbor bright and early. As I related the events of the past few days, she immediately said I needed a vacation from work. I wasn't doing any of the the things that normally help me to handle stress because I simply hadn't had TIME to do any of them. I left Deanna's office and drove to my doctor's office. I wasn't able to see my PCP but rather one of her partners which was fine, I had seen him before for my hips. After a brief discussion, he also agreed I needed some time off work. Three weeks. At least. Whew. The weight on my shoulders got lighter and my blood pressure ticked down a notch. Now I only had to juggle Mom and Austin for a few weeks. Work would and could go on without me for a few weeks.
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