Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
My father had a stroke last month. It was just 5 days before my wedding. It was so severe it almost killed him and the only reason he is even here is because his co-workers recognized the signs. My father has always been a superhero to me. He was always larger than life. A natural athlete who regularly exercised well into his fifties. A police officer for almost 30 years. Charismatic in a way nobody I ever met has been, and certainly was not passed on to me. He was always the person I went to for advise or wisdom.
I was shocked when I found out at just 58 he'd had a stroke. It has effected multiple areas of his brain. It was bi-thalmic and also a clot flicked into part of his cerebral cortex. He has virtually no short term memory, he thinks things he dreams or sees on t.v have happened and he has a lot of trouble staying awake. He thought I was just 18 when he woke up. I am 26. He forgot I was engaged and moved out. Our dog is blind and has had her eyes removed. He didn't recall this and got that unpleasent surprise upon arriving home from the hospital last night. She is his baby.
He had been at the hospital and rehab for 24 days straight. He has lost motivation to almost everything and my mom is really struggling. I am trying to help but not living at home has made this difficult. This once independent-self sufficient man gives push back for small tasks in physical therapy. The day before his stroke he walked 4 miles. I hate to say this and I don't mean it in callous way, but he's virtually the opposite of my dad. He doesn't feel like my dad. He doesn't sound like my dad. He doesn't act like my dad. I am crying as I type that. Because it's a solid truth that is just killing me. I have no reason to lie to myself. I won't say this aloud to anyone but my fiance' but the stroke has made him so different. I feel like I lost my father. I look at old photos of him and just fall into hystierics. I feel like he's lost and I just want to ask the old him what to do.
Needless to say we cancelled the wedding. It was a destination wedding to Florida. Many people had booked hotels, flights etc...and they were nonrefundable. They went down anyway, and I don't fault them for that though the illogical part of me was furious, espeically when the droves of Facebook pictures went up. Now trying get people to go back down for a second try seems impossible. Nearly everyone on my fiance's side has decided they cannot come. The venue is paid for and we cannot get a refund. He is devestated. His own brother won't try to make the trip a second time. Admittedly, it is a lot to ask but "I wouldn't miss my brother's wedding for anything" was a verbatim quote his brother used before this happened. I tend to take people at their word. Words aren't worth anything anymore. My fiance's other two brothers have died. So this is a particularly hard pill to swallow.
The last phone conversation I had with my dad before the stroke he played the song we were going to dance to at my wedding. He heard it on the radio and was so excited that he called me and played it. This memory just runs over and over in my head, as I sit with my dad now who isn't even aware that we missed the wedding. He thinks we are planning it the first time, and I refuse to remind him because I know even if he isn't acting himself this would hurt him.
I feel so lost. I am tired of speaking to long lost relative popping out of the woodwork to share their temporary pity and be apart of the dramatics. Bringing up the deaths of family members long dead, where my dad has to learn all over again his mom is dead. Gotta love the appropriate bed side manners of my uncles. My mom is exhausted, and although she isn't saying it I know she is afraid that she has lost her best friend as she knew him forever. They've been together since she was 16. She's strong and willing to accept is this is the new norm, but I just bleed for her.
I barely sleep anymore. I am not coping well. Tonight I was up from 12:30pm and and day is breaking outside. I woke up with the whole world buzzing around me. My heart palpitating out of my chest. I am greiving. Begging someone for a guarantee my dad isn't gone forever, which nobody can. People keep telling me they can understand what I am going through. I just get resentful because how can anyone understand this particular fucking Twilight Zone situation?! People are being awful about the wedding and the stroke. Quotes like, "Have you gotten over your wedding? Why can't you just have it here? Do you think he will ever be normal again? What if he stays like this?" are thrown around regularly by my idiotic extended family. I regularly wake up with panic attacks so severe I am hysterical and shaking. My fiance is growing accustomed to coming home seeing me slumped over somewhere just shaking and weeping. When I am not doing that, I am with my dad hovering trying searching for any sense of who he was coming back. Trying to reassure myself he's there. Frustrated out of my mind because I know there's nothing we can do. Enraged I am so angry about all of it and have nowhere to direct it. Guilty because I feel like this stranger is not my dad. Please give me anything you can right now. Just talk. Stories about other people with strokes. Reassurances that I am not a huge piece of crap for feeling this way. Anything.
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Who are your five favorite solo singers?
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I'm trying to figure out if I have the most! LoL :-0)i think I am now at ten plus another wedge to make it so they do not fall between headboard/mattress that runs full width of king bed.Did I win? I'm also sharing pillows with two doggies. Happy really likes getting up onto them and Belle is sometimes up there too.
to feel. You could join a support group for family of stroke victim's or get individual
counseling. I think that might be helpful. Get your mother books or articles on the
web about being a caregiver to a spouse that had a stroke. A book I just got is
called When the man you love is ill.
Thank you for making me feel that I am not a sideshow and for empathizing. Prayers are always welcomed and appreciated Gladdmatt. I will definitely look into the book Tired, and I applaud you for the strength I am sure you are dedicating to your husband. There is a special place for spouses that go through this sort of thing. I am sure of it.
I have been thinking of looking into therapy. I was already suffering pretty severe social anxiety before this, which has effected me strong enough that if I go shopping alone I break out into a cold sweat and have paranoid episodes. My fiancee' has been discouraging it as he has had pretty awful experiences with therapy after the death of his first brother. I need to do something though. I can't talk to my mom about it because she's already got enough on her plate and feels bad enough about the wedding. She's trying to keep the wedding going while helping my dad. I have an older brother, who is handling this with denial, saying dad is just fine.... My fiancee shouldn't have to constantly attend to me or deal with my late night episodes. My best friends mean well but they both are just severely uncomfortable with how to handle it. Maybe a support group is the direction to go. Just have to look into how to find something like that in my area.
Now, as far as the wedding. From previous experiences with weddings, I've learned that when a destination wedding happens without the wedding, it often brings out the worst in people towards the participants. Rather than respond to their opinions, instead put it down on paper, and set it aside. You can do what one couple finally did, which was have the destination wedding with the important people (themselves). What happened was a medical emergency. Leave it at that. (Find a simple way to say this in your words that bring you comfort - practice in front of a mirror until your appearance is natural). The thing about wedding in a destination is that it is special for whatever reasons you and your partner choose, no one else. When it comes to someone saying they will not be able to make it a second time, so be it. Let it go. The important fact is they might have sacrificed financially to make the first trip and not able to afford a second trip in the time you're rescheduling it. A wedding is a single event. If you want a ceremony with certain people present, it can be held at a different time, that works for everyone. Separate the feelings to help you decide how to make the changes to make it work the best - even if it means having a ceremony later on so the brother can be part of it.
A support group is an awesome way to learn ways to see patterns differently.
Your dad will continue to get better and your mom will find her new normal and you will find your way to a comfort level that works well for you. Best wishes for you, your partner, your family, and your friends. You are stronger than you realize!
My granddad had a number of strokes. Some of them he got his mind back. The last one he lost a lot of memories and physical control which he never regained. My ex husband's mother has had a lot of strokes. She lost mobility - got it back. Lost speech - got it back. Lost memory - got it back.
Strokes are as strokes do. You have reacted the worst available way: like you think it's forever. There's no reason to treat it this way. Wait till the guy's had a year and hasn't come back before you start grieving.
Do you not have doctors over there who explain these things to you? There's absolutely no way to gauge what will happen, and you're choosing to take it the worst available way. Why choose that way? Why not choose the best available way? Or even a middling level of hopefulness? Why not assume he'll grow brain back like most people do, slowly over a year or three? Why treat him like he's dead? What is this crying really all about?
And meanwhile everything else in your life is being smashed to pieces while you feed this hypothesis? Is this the first stroke in the extended family, that nobody can take it in their stride? You need to maintain your life, and this is a part of adulthood: keeping the vehicle moving while you change a tyre. :D It's life and you have to learn how to do it, and not crash every time you hit a pothole.
I don't see you getting anyone back down to Florida, I myself wouldn't book that second ticket. Not when you consider how hard it would have been for them to book the first one. So you'll have to have a local wedding now. Normally weddings are held in the bride's home town and the husband's family travel. This way the bride can usually find friends/family who can put the groom's family up for the weekend. It becomes less expensive. Weddings are about families meeting each other, not about a big party or dressing up like a princess. Weddings are not actually for the bride and groom at all. You can have a wedding in your back yard. Start planting rose bushes. Everyone on the bride's side can bring a dish of food on the day. It'll start your married life with humility and a good dose of antimaterialism, which is valuable in this day and age.
Anyway you'll figure it out. But stop digging the grave. Dad's had a stroke, not died of plague. People's brains grow back.
improvements happen in the first year. But you can keep improving for years after
that. It is a shock when it first happens. But in time you learn to accept the situation
and find ways to cope.
My father suggested we have our wedding there due to a love of the island, and the fact that we have a home down there and live in a shit town normally. He and my mother were married in Florida in a courthouse at 21, so I guess he sees it as a sort of repetition of the past. I would have chosen a wedding up here to avoid the complete and comprehensive stress I knew it would cause, but I knew this meant a lot to him and my mother.
My entire extended family can come the second time so your suggestions that we have it in our hometown and put up the groom's family is null and void. It would be exactly the same in Florida as my family had no trouble cancelling and rebooking. I am not mad at the majority of extended family, I get it. Simply his brother as we have agreed to take care of situation financially, and he won't come due to dumb pride.
The wedding is about my fiancee's and my love for one another. You have some really old fashioned unromantic notions about marriage, and if you are married and that's how you felt about the occasion I feel rather sorry for you and your spouse. My spouse and I are couple of hippies living in a one bedroom apartment without much of anything. We work for every ounce of anything we have, so again...you don't know me. How do you know anything about how I should start my marriage?
Also, a grandparent can hardly be compared to someone's father if we are being blunt and realistic, unless they raised you, especially since he is so young. I saw tons of elderly people in the stroke unit. My dad was a healthy 58 year old man, who regularly worked out and ate right. MY father is not a tire***. Since we are jumping to conclusions, maybe you did not have as significant a relationship with your parents, but mine mean almost everything to me. My response to this situation is completely reasonable. You grieve when you lose someone. My father has been gone over a month and this is not something I should treat as fine. I am not used to having him gone. I am used to sitting and having long conversations about life and significance. Now, I freak out overtime he walks near a staircase.
Sure I am not as hopeful as somebody might think I should be. I cannot help that I feel the way I do. Life has had an unfortunate habit of shitting on me promptly every chance it has to be frank. Sorry our loved ones don't all live and turn out fine from experience.
I am not digging a gave. I am hoping for any type of resurfacing of my father. The doctors have given us nothing, which is to be expected. If you know anything about strokes, anything can happen in terms of healing. My father had a rare type of stroke that they had never seen before due to a percheron artery that allowed the stroke to hit both sides of his thalamus. The additional hit on his cerebral cortex is nothing to shake off either although more common. They could give us nothing as they had never seen someone have this type of stroke.
Do me a favor and keep your negativity to yourself. Go sit and wallow judgement somewhere else. I don't care for your view of things. From reading what I have here, you have a very closed view of people. Your assumptions of others are disgusting and you lack empathy.