Anyone have any advice?
Hello Reddit,
I’m a full time unpaid carer for my fiancé and I’m hoping someone can help me develop the internal tools I need to work around my partners personality changes since starting clopixol last year. Also sorry for the long post, my world is very small these days as a result of my duties and I don’t have the chance to talk to many people.
So my partner has been really REALLY unwell, cyclically, for almost as long as we have been in a relationship. She has always been a wonderful, creative person who I felt was in touch with her emotions if not slightly affected/stunted by the death of her father when she was young and her cold, blunt, alcoholic, nigh-on sociopathic mother. I had to give up my career about 5 years ago when things got worse and she tried to kill herself a number of times (many times when she was meant to be in the care of her mother, who simply refused to ‘disrupt her own life’ (that’s an actual quote, fml..)
Last year my partner experienced the most pronounced and concerning fall into psychosis yet. She tried to kill me several times, whilst believing that she was being ‘downloaded’ information by angels and so much more.. she ended up being sectioned and sent to PICU. It took more than 4 months for her to come back, and it was a hell of a fight (HOURS every day) just to advocate for her within a psychiatric system that is fully privatised (even though we are NHS patients) , charges £20,000+ per patient per month, hires unqualified and untrained agency staff and has one incredibly overworked psychiatrist covering multiple wards at any one time (Thornford Park in Newbury. Don’t ever let a loved one go there if you can help it at all, and be prepared to fight to the bone if they do).
She came out last October having climbed the anti-psych med list like a ladder, eventually stabilising on a mix of clopixol depot and oral aripiprozole alongside lithium. This gave her drug-induced Parkinsonism that I immediately flagged but it still took until January for them to change the medications (removed aripiprozole, prescribed procyclidin and propranolol in place ). My partners prolactin levels are through the roof. She doesn’t menstruate properly and hasn’t done since last year.
More than anything, the change in her personality is nothing short of cutting. She has become incredibly self centred and cold. At the same time more demanding and punishing when I can’t meet her impulsive/compulsive demands. There’s no empathy or real care outside of herself. What makes the situation much more difficult is that her mother (described briefly above) is stoking the flames and encouraging arguments between us because I have made an effort to limit my contact with her (she’s a toxic alcoholic and reminds me of my own mother when I was growing up. Thankfully mine is sober now). My partners mother is a control freak who doesn’t want to have to deal with her own daughter directly and so tries to squeeze me instead. I’ve learned that When you draw boundaries with these sorts of people, it usually incurs a cruel response.
The benefits system in this country (UK) requires that you impoverish yourself before applying. Fair enough. So that’s what we did, survive on savings until we had nothing. Now I’m just so grateful we have an income. The demands from my partner are getting more and more untenable, she is insisting that she goes away for 6 weeks to the Azores for a ‘self development’ holiday and her mother is actively encouraging it hoping I will take a stand against it, manoeuvring like this is some sick chess game. I’ve said that I can’t afford to go with her, why doesn’t she look for small, part time, minimum-stress jobs to save up for it over the next year. Instead she is just clearing our account out every month to give to her mother (who promised to save it for her 🙄) once bills and rent are paid. It might only be a couple hundred pounds but it’s honestly the difference between me being in constant anxiety or knowing I have enough to pay for an emergency dentist appointment for either of us or something. This was difficult to work through, and her mum convinced her that I was trying to financially control her. Told the CMHT the same thing so now as her partner I’m unable to correspond with them at all. As a result, I asked her to get a plan together: bookings at a local clinic for her antipsychotic shots, a plan for managing and safely storing her oral medications, positive correspondence from DWP (long holidays are not something they like apparently) and also supporting letter from her doctor. I asked because I wasn’t able to do it myself (as a result of her mother’s actions) and yet I was still accused of being controlling.
I’m clear that I don’t think it’s a good idea for her to go somewhere alone for 6 weeks without any sort of care plan, especially as I have to keep her medications in a pill safe currently as the last time she threatened to overdose was only 2 weeks ago. I’ve also said that I can’t stand in the way of her will and wouldn’t try to.
I feel like I’m completely stuck. I’m not an angry man, I’m not a controlling person. This caring role smacked me straight in the face, and I stayed with my partner when she got ill because I love her more than anything. In the last 5 years I’ve had to give up my career, 99% of my friends, my hobbies, interests, my LIFE in order to be what my partner needed me to be. Now I am being made to feel that nothing is good enough. Worse, anything I say is twisted and used against me, even my silence is categorised and weaponised.
There’s so much more I could say, but this is long enough, regardless of how cathartic it has been to put down in words. Does Anyone have any advice that isn’t just “leave”?