Mental Illness

I love my daughter - no question of that.  She has suffered from a form of mental illness (clinical depression) for 19 years.  No one else in our family has it.  It is a debilitating disease.  Along with the depression she suffers from anxiety.  The medical profession's answer to all of this is to ply her with all kinds of medicine.

Right now she is in rehab recovering from a severe staph infection which she's been fighting for six months.  The staph attacked her two knee replacements.  First thing done when she got the infection was to have the plastic pad in her 'knee caps' removed, then she was on a regimen of drugs infused every 4 hrs., 24/7.  Those drugs caused her to begin to have blood marrow problems.  Then she was on a regimen of one drug infused 3x a day.  At that point she was allowed to go home since this could be done at home.

Then, it was discovered that she had a small amount of infection which had attached itself to the knee replacements.  At that point both knee replacements were removed and 'spacers' put in to keep the knees from collapsing together.  Back to the rehab and infusions every 4 hrs., 24/7.  No weight can be put on her feet except enough to pivot from bed to wheel chair to commode (not necessarily in that order).  Now she has been trained to do that and will be released from the rehab for the rest of her recovery (4 weeks, hopefully)  At that time she will go back to hospital and have new knee replacements.

All of this history to say she is panicked over how to get into her house (a split level which requires going up about 10 steps).  Because of her need to be in control and her tendency to be anxious about all things that are out of her control, she is fixated on how she will get into her house.

Hopefully our advice to her today will bear fruit.

     1.  Your husband will figure it out.
     2.  Call your church and see if 3 men couldn't come out and lift you up the stairs in your wheel chair.
    
Telling her not to worry is fruitless.  She is a worrier.

Sometime I will blog about where I think she went wrong that she has this degree of illness.