I had a big win yesterday.
Mummy was well when she easily could have not been. So I was okay when my chest ache could easily have been a panic attack.
Let me back up a little. Many many months ago when I realized that mummy was sick more frequently than before, I decided to do something. This doing something took all my time, energy, money, sleep & blood. What I was trying to do was, to upturn a system that took us 11 years to figure out, that almost killed us, that gave me memories to fill up my nightmares. With a baby hope that felt like a fork under my bum, I set out to meet a new doctor. He came with good recommendations & was closer home. Every time I shifted in my seat a little, the hope fork would dig deeper into my skin. When I met him, he was rude & unwilling to converse. When I walked back, the fork was lodged in my flesh.
I cried over it in therapy for 2 months.
I had returned to the place that had broken me. Like a nasty quest in Harry Potter, I had gone back to the source of my PTS & come back lost. But hope is like a weed, it grew back when I wasn’t watching. 2 months later, I started again. I spoke to mummy’s current doctor in Pune. Once. Twice. 3 times. 4.
One time I came back with a dummy solution. Things got worse, I was losing my family. We spoke of her having to go back to the asylum. I thought I would have to put her there. Another time I came back with “I’ll see what I can do”. I like the sound of “I’ll see what I can do”, so adult, so alien. Outside the clinic, on the footpath, I broke down, every time. Sometimes I didn’t even make it past the stairs.
Slowly we dawned on a system. It still took me to participate in it; Every week I still waste a whole day trying to contact him, and get out of work conferences to talk to him in secret; but for the first time, when it does, the system works.
Yesterday mumma was triggered, she could have been not okay. But she took a break & got back on her feet. Later she said “Thank God for the feedback system. I felt myself slip today. If it weren’t for the increased medication, I would have been sick right now”
We had a big win yesterday. I am going to nap now.