More about Ashe

H. just told me that her psychologist said this was all my fault.

She doesn't agree and was upset by this.

I agree and am upset by this.

Ashe's story

My girlfriend H is very ill.

It all started nearly three years ago. She was experiencing some nervous system disorders. Visual disturbances, trouble walking, et cetera. We went to the ER and the doctor there told us that she had Multiple Sclerosis. She had an MRI done that showed lesions in her brain.

Her first neurologist was convinced that she had a conversion disorder. She was offended. He said that it was something that was usually caused by some sort of childhood trauma.

We found another neurologist, conveniently located in our home town (see below re: our having in fact just moved away).

We had actually just moved a little over an hour away from our home town. She'd never lived that far away before. We're in our thirties. It took several months in this economy, but i finally found a job here, working in a call center, doing hateful, miserable, depressing work. Things weren't going so well for her physically, and i had to take a lot of time off from work. It got down to the wire and so, rather than lose my job, i decided that i should quit instead. I've spent two years since then just trying to do things for her, take care of her, take her to her appointments, to work, help her get around, doing dishes and laundry and cleaning and things (most of the latter bits i'm afraid i am actually quite terrible and infrequent about). She was actually in a wheelchair for some of this time, on and off. She'd also never driven a car, so i have to provide her transportation everywhere she needs to go.

In the meantime, her second neurologist had also been having doubts about her diagnosis. Certain things just didn't fit.

Fast-forward a little over two terrible, agonizing years... she'd reached a devastating crescendo in discomfort and pain and practically unmanageable symptoms. She just wasn't responding positively to her drug regimen. In addition to the usual symptoms, she was also now having spasms, convulsions, and pseudo-epileptic fits. Her neurologist was trying - gently at first, then later on becoming more definite about it - to get her to go to a huge hospital on the extreme northern end of the state we'd just moved south out of. In a fit of panicked desperation, i told the staff that she needed help, in rather tense terms. They made us an appointment, getting us in immediately to this big hospital. It would be terribly costly for us to make the trip, but we did it.

That's when we found out: her original neurologist was basically right. She really didn't have MS at all. She had a somatization disorder. She started therapy soon after.

She's said she's always heard voices in her head. Now they occasionally take over. Sometimes one of them makes her hurt herself. Lately, she's been seeing people who aren't there, and getting a horrifying, paranoid Fear that monsters are going to attack her. She can't take any stress at all. Unfortunately, due to her missing tons of work, her bosses have been somewhat unkind to her of late. This naturally just exacerbates things. It's a vicious, vicious cycle.

I'm actively looking for work again, too, because i know that it will definitely take a lot of strain off of her, but i'm still just terrified of what might happen while i'm away. I mean it will absolutely be my fault if she has a psychotic episode and hurts herself or runs away or does something dreadful.

That's the spot i'm in. Welcome to my nightmare.

Itching

Itching. Unrelenting, agonizing, itching.

Pacing. Uncontrollable pacing.

But the itching. The itching....

monsters

Lately there hasn't been any self-injury. H's psychiatrist and her psychologist now both seem to agree that she is additionally schizophrenic. I hope they're having fun. This seems to be manifesting itself lately through fairly extreme psychotic paranoia. She loses her ability to reason and becomes convinced that, for example, there are voices (often just as she is drifting off to sleep), or that people - or alligators (i couldn't make this shit up if i tried) - might very potentially burst through the bedroom window and chew out her throat. Sometimes she sees her stuffed animals move. Occasionally she thinks i may have take some vague steps against her. It's like the world's most extreme case of severe anxiety.

And no, i am not exaggerating. At all. This crazy-assed fucking shit is true. This shit really happens.

It occurs to me that if anyone should stumble upon this blog and read any of this, they would almost certainly conclude that this is some kind of episodic fiction, possibly deceptively so.

It is not!

However, i am wondering of late whether she may be extremely susceptible to suggestion. I wonder what would happen if her mind-doctors told her, out of the blue, that she was suffering from some made-up mental disorder with a custom, telling set of symptoms. Something that has never actually been observed. Or even something fairly common, but that she definitely couldn't have. I wonder. If it were that easy, maybe they could work their way to suggesting her better. Ha! Right. Nothing is that simple.

This is really beginning to get difficult.

Oh, and there's this

Also: i may be living with a schizophrenic. It gets even weirder still as we plunge down this rabbit hole: it could be that one of her alters is schizo.

Read that again.

Yeah. Yeah that's right. She could well be someone who happens to have several independent personalities, and one of those personalities could possibly have their own mental illnesses, even issues that H, the host, does not herself share.

I'm waiting for the one where one of her alters also has DID and her own set of alters. It seems like that might be next. Then, maybe one of those alters, oh i don't know, gets fucking cancer or something. I dunno.

I appreciate your envy.

No window-crashing allowed. Or expected, really, if we're being honest.

Today: another break with reality. She picked up a wizard's staff i got from a Ren Faire years ago (long story) and went back to the bedroom with the intention of, i guess, fighting off any potential window-breachers lurking outside, about to pop in on her.

Yeah, uh, that wasn't happening. I grabbed it and put it back. The last thing i need is for her to confuse one of our little dogs with a terrorist threat.

She later said that lorazepam is not really reducing her overall stress level.

The impending threat of toy-nappers

So today was hella weird.

Yeah, this past week she cut her self twice. Whatever. That's old hat now. It's never incredibly bad. It's never life-threatening. It's freaky and it will never stop freaking me out. I think it was just Monday when i repeatedly whacked my head against the heavy wooden coffee table as hard as i could. My head still feels... different, somehow.

But today... wtf. We were watching The Office on DVR. I don't know what happened. Suddenly she was terrified. She thought somebody might come in the windows. She thought they might steal her precious T-Rex. It's her most important object, she told me. (She's 36 years old. I don't think i've mentioned that yet.) I explained that they don't fetch as much on the black market as do things like guitars or HDTV sets. Do you think that mattered at all?

I picture the villain(s) dressed in black turtlenecks, like a bad guy's henchmen from Magnum, P.I. or something. And even though our apartment is on the ground floor, i bet they rappelled down the side of the building, used a diamond-tipped glass cutter to cut a perfectly circular hole in the pane so they could reach in and unlatch the window, all stealthy.

Also: i had to bring her ginger ale out and pour it in front of her so she'd be sure i wasn't poisoning her. Great. I even offered to take the first sip.

A dose of lorazepam later and she's better. But if it gets any worse, she'll have to be hospitalized yet again.