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Mental Illness - My Story

This is a difficult story to tell. And it is has a tragic ending. 

Mike, my late husband, was an intelligent, witty, good humoured man who worked as a sports loving English teacher for his whole career. He was a devoted father whose love, care and patience with his children, knew no bounds.

In 1999 Mike, had an emergency operation to remove an abscess from his brain. Critically ill for 8 weeks, he eventually pulled through and life returned to normal. Almost. 5 years later, I began to notice changes in his behaviour and personality. He became withdrawn, uncommunicative and sullen and this impacted on the whole family and especially on our children. I tried to talk with him about this and we got as far as seeing a marriage guidance counsellor, but he refused to seek further medical help despite my concerns. As time went on, other habits emerged: secretive behaviour, heavy drinking and irresponsible spending all increased. 

At his instigation, we took new jobs working together as house-parents in a boarding school.  After 15 years in the south east, we moved the whole family and two retrievers to the North and began what we hoped would be a fresh start: Mike would get out of his professional slump and feel more empowered; I would further my career; we would all have more money and everything would be wonderful. 

But from the start, we did not fit in to this new culture and worse, I began to notice further worrying symptoms in Mike’s daily actions. He became very forgetful ; there were delays in his motor cognitive skills and there would be gaps of 3 seconds or longer before he would respond to a comment or question. Frequently he ‘glazed over’ or would seem ‘out of it’. I had seen these symptoms before – immediately after his brain operation – I instinctively felt there was something wrong with his brain and became increasingly alarmed. I urged him again to seek medical help. Again, he refused to aknowledge he had any medical concerns at all and indeed, he became more and more resentful and angry at my attempts to suggest otherwise. 

After three years precariously working together in this post, in 2008 recession hit and this small school had to make cut backs. We were an obvious saving: two experienced, mature teachers living in expensive family accommodation? Good to go. Within days (or so it felt ) we were made redundant and sent packing to live in our recently bought ‘dream cottage’ in Cornwall. Our 18 year old daughter and 16 year old son inevitably had to move with us.

Our house in Cornwall was in an area of outstanding natural beauty. We had bought it, "as a project", to renovate for our retirement and had some happy ideas about how we would do this over time. However, very quickly our new reality hit hard – the house was isolated and remote; it had no central heating and in other ways was in very bad repair. Our children were horrified to find themselves, “in the middle of nowhere” and we both set about applying for jobs immediately. Well, I did. Mike seemed to have given up.  We used part of our redundancy money to send our son to boarding school (good decision) and our daughter lived with us for a short while before beginning various gap year projects. We all  watched Mike get steadily worse and worse.

I managed to get a Doctor’s appointment for him and, although bitterly resentful at my presence, I went with him to ensure the correct information got across. When I described the various symptoms, the doctor’s diagnosis was, “Depression, anxiety, self-esteem and relationship issues” and thus began a whirligig of medical appointments and half appointments in two countries over 3 years that failed to get to the heart of his acute mental illness. He was sent home with a massive booklet on depression and put on a waiting list to see a psycho-therapist. An NHS waiting list.

Not long afterwards, another bombshell hit us. Having carefully budgeted to afford the school fees, I discovered by accident that Mike had taken out not one, but four loans – the combined sum between them just over 50,000 pounds. I seriously considered leaving him at this point. My love for him was running in short supply but my conviction that this behaviour was “ out of character” and that something more medically sinister was afoot prevented me from doing this. I felt it was my duty as a wife  to try and support him.This was what "for better or worse"was all about.

I continued to look for work and applied for over 200 jobs ranging from housekeeper, cleaner and care-giver in a retirement home (I was told I was over qualified) to Deputy Head and Head of Drama.  After 6 months, our situation was looking increasingly desperate – we were going through the savings fast and had nothing left to pay the February 2009 mortgage with. We went to the bank and to the citizen’s advice bureau who both calmly told us about the process of re-possession and bankruptcy. Mike happily accepted this as an option. I looked at him and tried hard to guage how serious about this he was. To give up like this,  went against every principle he and I had ever had as a couple and against every bone in my body. What was going on in his mind and what should I do for the best? 

A week before our deadline, I received an offer to teach at an international school in Munich. A four month contract. I asked the family – we chatted about it in the car together and everyone said, “Take it Mum”. So I did, and the pay cheque I received in February paid that month’s mortgage.

For the purposes of brevity, this is how the following years…YEARS, mapped out: 

1. After 4 months I was offered a 6 month contract. During this period I travelled back to Cornwall as frequently as I could to be met by various financial and other catastrophes which I attempted to manage.
2. In June 2010, Mike joined me in Germany and I hoped things might be easier. However, on the contrary, this was the start of the worst period of my life as I watched the man I had loved morph into someone I could barely share the room with. I attempted to care for a heavy drinking, undiagnosed mentally ill man; arrange medical appointments for him in two countries; run the home in Cornwall and try and hold down a full time job.
3. Against all probabilities, he left me in October 2011. I had become the enemy. I stopped him drinking, held the tightly monitored purse strings and was, according to him, “Not very nice to me”. He headed back to Cornwall via my mother who, in an angry phone call to me said, “There’s nothing wrong with his brain – he’s just an alcoholic.”

This situation was out of control and it was affecting the whole family. Trying to keep on top of his actions and affairs was like trying to control a box of rats. I did not know what to do or who to turn to for help. How could any decent wife turn their back on their mentally ill husband? But nobody had diagnosed him as such….and maybe he is, “Just” an alcoholic. Everybody knows if you live with an alcoholic you have to get yourself out fast, right? Such were the debates going on in my head and I was in turmoil to know what to do for the best.It was a lose lose situation.

It was not long after his departure that I began to notice changes in my body. I can only describe it as a lightness of being and I began to realise how much stress I had been under. I began to find more space in my head and was better able to make decisions.

Despite a huge emotional pull, I knew I had to divorce him to try and prevent any more financial disasters. Whilst he lived in the house, I made sure there was money in his account but couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t spend it on drink. I continued to pay the mortgage and ensured that a Tesco delivery dropped food every week. 

His care was out of my hands and it was a terrifying prospect.

Enter, stage right, our amazing daughter who despite my initial protests, was able to persuade him to allow her to have power of attorney over his affairs. Having acclimatized to Cornwall, she had fallen in love, had a baby and was living nearby.

Whilst I attempted to become a single woman in Munich after nearly 30 years of being in a relationship with one man, my daughter, now a single mother, dealt with the nuts and bolts that arose, due to his mental illness and alcoholism over the next couple of years. Like me, she took him to the local GP for help but, as before, her pleas fell on ignorant ears.

He began to have more and more collapses, due to alcohol withdrawal. In 2014, following a collapse in the street, he was finally diagnosed with frontal temporal dementia and sectioned in June of that year. 

Our daughter organized a care home for him following this and he lived here until he died, in hospital in April 2016.Our daughter was with him till the end.

6 months after his death, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

As harrowing as this tale is, those years were not exclusively painful. The birth of our Grandson during this time was an utter joy, bringing with it as it did, some sense of hope for the future and a strong sense of reality. Both children, against all the odds, succeeded in beginning adult life with strength, panache and style. He would have been so proud. My work continued (and continues) to inspire me, I travelled the world and  found some good people to call friends.

I have thought long and hard about the wisdom in sharing the details of my story. And please note, this is MY story. Our children have their own voices and their own very poignant tales to tell. Truth is, I couldn’t talk about it for many years. It was just too awful and too painful. I haven’t mentioned (and this is not the time) about the impact of it all on my own mental health. But my cancer has changed all that, and now I find I can tell Mike’s story and how it affected his family without crumpling into a heap. I share it now, and for the last time, in the fervent hope that others will be spared the pain, anguish and utter despair that our family had to endure. Knowledge is wisdom. I got to keep my life, he did not. I owe it to him, the man with whom I shared such a huge part of my life and who was absolutely central to my happiness in raising our family, for so many years, to attempt to create some good from his tragic end. 

Our children and I have begun to move forward from this very sad time. There is happiness and laughter in our lives once again, and much love. Mike’s legacy lives on in them and in our three grand-children. We each lead very individual lives in three countries, but we remain one family. A very modern family. Bruised but not broken. 

And despite the grief I have experienced over the loss of a husband and the father to my children, first to dementia and mental illness and then finally through death, there has been some comfort in knowing that this particular book is finished. I will naturally re-read it from time to time, but the fact that no new chapters of this difficult tale will unfold is a small relief.

Please give some money to Mind Cornwall, so that they can help people like Mike.

Sarah Halliday

July 6th 2019

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