Good morning Marianne. And I’ve been thinking about what to speak to you about and there was sort of a series of events and I kind of have to relate the events so that you’d understand the stressors and things like that. What I really wanted to highlight by speaking about this was how destructive stress is on the human body.
So the first part of the story, I suppose, that I have to clarify is that before my parents passed, my dad had a rare form of motor neuron called Kennedy’s disorder. And my mom had been suffering with alcoholism for over 20 years. Then in 2017, my partner was involved in a horrible road traffic accident on his way to work where a young man died. I was of course incredibly stressed, but I was doing everything I could to delay his terror. And over the next couple of days I noticed that I wasn’t able to go to the toilet and that my stomach was becoming more and more swollen up. After a few days, I suppose of acclimatizing to the new reality of the world, my stomach seemed to sort of heal itself, but it was very instant and it was very apparent and it was just uncomfortable and horrible and it just, it felt like such a metaphor for how I was feeling internally.
After that, our neighbor’s son was killed in another tragic road traffic accident. And I always remember we attended his removal on a very harsh August evening. As I filed past his coffin — now, I had known this young man to wave to since he was in his early teens. So I suppose I’m being a relatively close neighbor, you’re bound to — but I felt more, I guess for his mom and dad as a parent myself, Oh, I just got into such an absolute state, I just, and they must have been going, “What is wrong with this one? So she wasn’t his best friend or anything like that”. But, that was when I was finally able to cry about the first accident. So even though it was a hideous evening, I suppose it was probably beneficial in the long run.
Anyway, that happened, and that was okay. Although my dad’s health had been deteriorating and my mom’s drinking had continued and they got back together, they’d spent a number of years apart. They were very acrimonious all through my childhood and I had a very difficult relationship with both of them as a result.
They were quite abusive because of their own problems. So, his illness was progressing or I hate that word about an illness. I suppose it does progress if you’re thinking of it as an entity. Anyway, he got iller and killer, and finally, his jaw was hanging open because he had early onset Dementia as well, he was very childlike at the end. But the healing part for me, of course, was the flashes of childlikeness in his eyes, that he was much kinder during those times than he had ever been in my entire life to me. He was really sweet to me and it didn’t feel like, he used to go through periods before of using emotion as a sort of manipulation, but this didn’t feel like that at all. It felt like this was the little boy who really liked me. So that was hugely healing, even though it only really came right at the end.
The last time I saw him sort of up and about was a couple of weeks before he died. We visited him and my mom had become his primary care there and it was incredibly stressful for her. He had had a food pipe put into his stomach, and right after he saw me, it was David, my partner, who pointed it out to me, and I think he’s absolutely right. I felt it myself, but I didn’t want to articulate it because it was such a strange concept because he had so little value on me all my life. But right after he saw me, he pulled his food pipe out and went in the hospital. So a couple of days later this was, so of course, we tore up to see what was going on, and he very deteriorated. They had sedated him and they put a new pipe in.
Yeah, I have spent a lot of time sitting by him and crying and I realized, he had come to it where he just, I think this was his last little bit of control. He was deserting over his life. Anyway, the long and the short of it was he had only 10 days in hospital, which is the way he would’ve wanted it. He did not want to be in a hospital. He did not want to be in a nursing home. And then he just passed away, more so really of malnutrition than anything else. He was starved to death at the end.
So we had long before that had happened, booked a trip over to Scotland and first of all, just before, I think it was even, it was right after the funeral, I started getting this sort of painful rash around my hairline and I would look for all the world. I felt like somebody had poured, boiling hot water onto my face. It felt like scalding and it was really ugly and painful and angry looking. And I said, What the hell is going on here now? And I couldn’t figure out what was going on. And as our time abroad progressed, it was really ruining everything for me. I was trying to have a little break for myself after all the shit show of the funeral and everything like that. And Dave kind of was Googling and he kind of said, “I think that’s stress. That’s your, the histamines in your body are gone bonkers. He said, We’ll get you antihistamines in the morning”.
Well, sure enough, we got antihistamines the next year and within sort of 12 hours, it began subsiding. So, that was another direct reaction to absolute stress. Was this, it’s quite unbelievable and also I’ve learned so much about what stress is actually capable of doing to you. Anyway… strangely, five weeks after my dad died, my mom just dropped dead all of a sudden. And I didn’t really have, I mean, I lost my mind a little bit for a few hours when I heard the news, but I don’t think I had any, I mean clearly. I was knocked out for six days. I was in an absolute daze and I had a very difficult couple of years, but there weren’t any, I don’t know whether it was just that the precursor of my dad’s death had so cut the feet out from under me.
I didn’t really get the rash or the swelling when my mom died. Not even when I returned from my mom’s funeral, I found out one of my best friends had been buried the same day as her. She dropped dead of an aneurysm and that didn’t do that to me either. Now again, I lost my mind a bit for a few hours, but no, it didn’t do it then.
But it just wasn’t quite what actually provoked me to relate the whole incident to you was, my brother, whom again, I have a very, one of my brothers reached out to me and I’ve had a very difficult relationship with him due to his own upbringing and the misogyny with which we were brought up. He doesn’t really have a lot of respect for me. So he tends to be kind of abusive and stuff like that. And I do love him very much. And my partner kind of was aware of everything that had happened between us and is furious actually about it. But I’m not so much furious about it.
Anyway, just before we went off to Nice. Mel, he reached out to me and sent me a heap of photos. And I know I sound dreadfully cynical, but I have a fair idea it’s to do with my parent’s will that he’s reaching out. Anyway, that didn’t occur to me, but at the time I was really, really happy to hear from him and I immediately replied in kind saying, Oh my God, I’m so glad to hear from you and your children are beautiful..and that was grand.
It was upcoming Nice, and then the day before we were leaving, I was very stressed. It was our first trip in a long time as well. So I was really, really stressed, and that blowing up thing happened again. Oh my god, but this time it was worse. I just blew up, every limb in my body was just swollen, my middle was completely swollen, and my clothes didn’t fit me. It was just horrible. Cause we were going after the sun and I just didn’t know what to do. And I said, Dave, he said, “What is going on with you?” And I said “I wondered Dave. I said, Mel reached out to me” the minute I said, “Mel”, he went up, “that’s what it is.” He said, “That’s what it is”. He said, “I know that’s what it is.” So anyway, we got to France and I got a ton of these sort of draining supplements out of, first of all the pharmacy. And then I discovered them in the local supermarket and I took a heap of them and some stuff to relax me. And gradually, over the course of first few days, it just all went down. But I just feel like it’s so important to have systems in order so that when awful things happen, they don’t totally hit a wall. I suppose awareness maybe is one way. I don’t know if maybe meditation is another way or something like that, but just raising even awareness just to be aware of what, when you become incredibly stressed, the effect it is having on every facet of your existence.
It’s difficult and life is difficult and there are so many challenges, and being a grownup is hard. And we just need to be aware of being kind of caring for our mental so that our physical health is good.
My Anatomical Journal 