Where did we go from there: Misha Herwin

 

“So where do we go from here? At what point will the Kafkaesque tenor of our lives return to something approaching normality?

Who knows? Up until this point the journey has been both fascinating and harrowing. All I can do is wait and hope.”

This is what I wrote a year ago, when I posted about Mike’s sudden descent into delirium and the pressure I felt from the health professionals to put him in some sort of care. The implication being that I wouldn’t be able to cope with someone who spent the nights raving and whose behaviour at times was akin to that of a three year old the midst of a temper tantrum.

Their prognosis was bleak, but I simply couldn’t abandon a husband of over three decades without at least trying to see if we could find a way of living together.

And over the past twelve months this is what we have done.

There were ground rules. The first being that I had to be able to sleep, so there would be no more shouting all night, because if he did then I would be too exhausted to cope and that would lead to the one thing he dreaded most. For Mike the greatest fear was being sent back to hospital and from there into care, so he pretty quickly complied with rule number one.

From there on things slowly but surely improved. So much of his behaviour in rehab had been provoked by fear and diminished as he felt more secure. So much so that when we moved house down to Somerset he settled in without any problems.

The move, sharing a building but not living with, my daughter and her family has made me feel less stressed which again impinged on my life with Mike. If I am calm, then he tends to be so. Another factor has been the excellent medical care he has had here and a GP who has given us time to talk about the problems and issues he faces and suggest ways we can access help.  

None of this has cured Mike’s dementia, which most probably was aggravated by the delirium. He still has short term memory problems and finds making any sort of decision virtually impossible and when he gets tired in the evenings he can be unreasonably grumpy. Nor does he find it easy to keep himself occupied. He has, however, exceeded my expectations and I what I have to do is to challenge him to do more rather than run around doing everything for him in a way that infantilizes rather than stimulates.

So I’m learning. Learning new ways of being together, new ways of ordering our lives so that he has time with me but that I also have time to do what is important to me.

It is, and no doubt will continue to be a balancing act.

In the meantime, I’ve posted a picture of one of Cliveden pier, one of our happy places, where we can sit and drink coffee and watch the sea.