“Hi, Pat,” he started. “My approach is to treat conversations confidentially. However, you should know that I will always alert a parent if I am seriously concerned about their child.”
“Okay . . . ,” I replied uncertainly.
“Will is a delightful kid. I’m not worried about him, but I wanted to give you some thoughts on the situation. Obviously, what’s going on with your wife has triggered his anxiety.”
“I know. We’re all worried about her.”
“Right, but Will is actually okay with his mother’s sickness. That’s not what has him skipping school.”
“What? I don’t understand.”
“Here’s the thing,” said Matthew, “and don’t take this the wrong way. Will has already given up on his mom. It’s not that he doesn’t want her to get better, or that he doesn’t think that she will, but he doesn’t understand it.”
I waited, still not following.
“As far as he’s concerned, he has already lost one parent. That’s why he’s always calling and texting you. He wants to be sure that he doesn’t lose you, too.”
Sudden clarity flooded my thinking. It was so obvious once Matthew explained it.
“He told you that?”
“Well, not in so many words, but yeah, that’s what’s going on here.”
“Can you help him, give him ways to deal with it?”
“Yes, of course. His anxiety is normal for this kind of situation. We have a lot of tools that he can use. We already started using some of them yesterday.”
Hanging up, I exhaled slowly and thought about Will. Separation anxiety made perfect sense. I smiled, grateful that we had identified the right person for him. My mind turned immediately to Jamie, reaffirming the need to find someone for her, too. But my first priority was securing Mia’s new psychiatrist.
Later that day, Mia and I went to our first meeting with Dr. Rojas. The waiting room had all the familiar trappings: the friendly receptionist, the leather sofa, the soothing white noise.
We sat in silent anticipation for several minutes, and then Dr. Rojas emerged from the hallway. He greeted us warmly, shaking Mia’s hand first. He was short in stature, with kind eyes and a gentle disposition. He moved confidently, and I later learned that he had served in the army. More than anything, he radiated serenity.
Mia and I settled into a couch against one wall of his large, well-appointed office. Rather than sit behind his desk, Dr. Rojas took a chair next us. “So, how is Mia today?” he asked, smiling broadly as he emphasized her name.
Mia summarized the stages of her illness. Dr. Rojas asked clarifying questions periodically, but he mostly listened. He did pose the standard queries about hearing voices and having delusions. To my relief, Mia answered them honestly, acknowledging that she still had paranoid thoughts. I spoke only when he asked about current medications. Mia couldn’t seem to name them on her own.
“Seroquel wouldn’t be my drug of choice,” he stated, “but I’m hesitant to switch now, given that things are finally under control. So, let’s stay on the current protocol. But let’s also add one baby aspirin per day.”
I must have given him a strange look, because Dr. Rojas added, “Pat, your wife has had what amounts to a heart attack, but the organ that was affected was not her heart. It was her brain. Unfortunately, we don’t know nearly as much about the brain, but I guarantee you that she has swelling. Taking baby aspirin won’t hurt, and it might just help.”
I thought about his analogy. “So, Dr. Rojas, do you think this could be a onetime thing? Like maybe we can prevent another heart attack from happening?”
“I do think that. I agree with your first diagnosis, that this was brief reactive psychosis. The stress from Mia’s job, and the disrupted sleep that followed, was too much for her brain to handle. It has suffered greatly, and it will take time to heal. But once it does, she’ll be fine.”
He turned to Mia. “You’ll have to find ways to cope with your anxiety,” he instructed, “but I don’t think you have a chronic condition. It doesn’t align with the rest of your history.”
We spent over an hour with Dr. Rojas. He was thorough and patient, and I hoped that Mia liked him as much as I did. It was a good sign when she took the lead in arranging the next appointment.
Normally, after a meeting of that gravity, Mia and I would have spent more time talking about it, but now a silent car ride was all that followed. By this point, Mia had been out of the crisis center for a week. Each day, I kept hoping that she would start acting more like herself; and each day, I remained disappointed.
One challenge when interacting with Mia was that she had become hyperfocused on the exact words being used in an exchange. And if you weren’t precise, it would infuriate her. We might be out walking the dog, and she would ask, “Do you know if the front door is unlocked?”
I would respond, without much thought, “Yeah, I think it’s open.”
“The front door is not open, Pat,” she would retort, giving me a nasty look. “I can see it from here.” And then she would be mad at me for hours. The correct answer would have been, “Yes, the front door is unlocked.”
She was vigilant in listening to each word to be sure she was processing everything correctly; she didn’t know if she could trust her own thoughts. But trying to speak so accurately for even a half hour was exhausting. It was impossible not to resort to common idioms, no matter how hard we tried.
In addition, we started to notice how many everyday expressions referred to mental illness. I would be talking to Mia and say something like, “Sorry I’m late, the traffic was insane.” And then I’d feel terrible about it. Or I would quip: “I wish the weather would cool down; it’s driving me crazy.” I hesitated to even open my mouth.
Another challenge was that her short-term memory was suffering badly. All of her medications compromised retention, especially the Ativan and Restoril. She couldn’t remember things that had happened literally ten minutes prior. Coupled with her paranoia, this meant that she continually thought we were playing tricks on her.
Mia was like Dory from Finding Nemo. Given how quickly she forgot things, her phone became an essential part of her existence. She was constantly entering reminders and adding to her to-do lists. One day, she arranged to call our sister-in-law Jen at 6:15 p.m. But instead of entering it as a onetime event, she must have accidentally hit the “every day” button. So, Mia would see an alarm pop up at 6:15 p.m. every night and call Jen, not remembering that she had already spoken with her the prior day. This went on for weeks.
The paranoia was another issue. As I’ve said, Mia saved that for me. It wasn’t as bad as when she was psychotic, but anything out of the ordinary would throw her off. A stranger walking her dog down the street? She was plotting against us. Someone checking the sprinkler system for the house next door? He was a potential thief casing the place for a robbery.
Driving was yet another problem. Because Mia was on so much medication, Dr. Martinez had instructed us not to let her use the car. Luke or I had to chaperone her everywhere, and she hated it. She resented being continuously under our watch and wanted her freedom back.
Things were hardest at the end of the day, when we were alone in our room. Before she became sick, nighttime was when we connected as a couple. But now, we were two strangers, ignoring each other while brushing our teeth. I was afraid to ask what she was thinking, fearful that any prodding might upset her more.
Before her illness, Mia and I had never fought, but now we regularly turned out the lights with a cloud of unresolved conflict hanging heavily over us. I became accustomed to lying in the dark, wondering if my partner would ever recover. I felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness, like a single parent whose spouse had left or died.
At last, the day came for our dreaded appointment with the treatment center to discuss Mia’s rape allegations. We didn’t meet at t
he crisis center. Instead, they sent us to a conference room in one of the adjacent buildings. It was a typical industrial meeting space with plastic chairs collected around a cheap table. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.
Three women were waiting for us when we arrived. I recognized two of them from my visits, but the third was new. She seemed to be in charge, calling the meeting to order and reviewing the reasons for it. She then asked Mia to provide the details of her complaint.
Mia talked about being treated badly, pushed around and held down on various occasions. This wasn’t surprising; I had witnessed a couple of these instances myself. Mia kept looking my way, expecting me to jump in and start attacking the staff, but I couldn’t do it. From what I had seen, the folks in the crisis center did what was necessary. I was thankful for their help.
In the end, the meeting didn’t amount to much. Mia never accused anyone of rape, and I remained silent. When she realized that I wasn’t going to participate, she ran out of steam. The woman in charge asked Mia to sign a few forms, essentially testifying that the meeting had taken place. The whole thing lasted less than thirty minutes.
Back in the car, Mia was furious. “I can’t believe you took their side!” she hissed. “You’re supposed to be supporting me!”
“What are you talking about? Of course I support you.”
“It didn’t look like it in there, Pat! You didn’t say a word.”
“I only know what I saw when I visited you, and I didn’t see any crimes committed. I would certainly have spoken up if I had.”
Mia seethed quietly in resentment. When we arrived home, she went straight to our room and shut the door. I felt bad knowing that she was so upset, but it would have been wrong to accuse the GTC of malfeasance. Besides, I was becoming acclimated to Mia’s bitterness.
That weekend passed in much the same way as the previous one. Luke, the kids, and I lived as normally as possible, and Mia locked herself away. On a positive note, Will hadn’t texted or called from school on Friday. He had seen Matthew only twice, but already things were improving.
“Hey,” I said, stopping by his room and trying to sound as casual as possible, “seems like things are going better for you?”
“Yeah, thanks. They are.”
“So, Matthew is helping?”
“He is. He gave me several things to try. One was to write down all the stuff that was worrying me.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, he said just write it all down whenever I started to worry. And once it’s written down, I don’t have to keep running it over and over in my head.”
“Wow, does that work? I never would have thought of that.”
“Me neither, but the more I do it, the better I feel,” he said. “So, I’m going to keep doing it.”
On Sunday morning, I was surprised when Mia approached me. We hadn’t spoken more than two words since the GTC visit. She told me that she felt one of her migraines starting and wanted to know if she could take her prescription for it, a drug called Relpax. I had no idea, so I called Dr. Rojas. He advised me that it shouldn’t be a problem.
It made me nervous, but Mia’s migraines were debilitating. It was almost impossible not to use the medication.
On Monday at work, I began to feel optimistic. Mia was constantly mad at me, but at least she was stabilized. And we continued to find great therapists, having met both Dr. Rojas and Matthew Brown recently. I missed the healthy Mia terribly, but I firmly believed that time would bring her back to us.
Therefore, it was deeply unsettling when she shut the door to our bedroom as soon as I arrived home from work that night.
“Pat, I need to tell you something,” she whispered. “There are people listening outside the windows.”
“What are you talking about, babe?”
She gave me the sign to be quiet, putting a finger to her mouth and then pointing at the nearest window. “They’ve got hidden listening devices,” she murmured. “They don’t want us to know.”
I was used to her paranoia, but this was different. When Mia had paranoid thoughts, she divulged her suspicions to me. She solicited my feedback, and she would listen intently to my answers. But at the moment, she was fully vested in her belief that we were being stalked.
A month earlier, her bizarre warning would have scared me, but I found myself more puzzled than anything. She remained on huge amounts of Seroquel; by all accounts, she should be gradually improving. My thoughts immediately went to the migraine medication. Could it have interfered with her recovery?
Within ten minutes, I had comforted Mia to the best of my ability, escaped to the driveway, and called Dr. Rojas. He thought it possible that Mia was suffering a short setback, and that it would improve with sleep. He instructed me to give her an extra dose of Ativan right away and keep her under surveillance, assuring me that the Relpax shouldn’t have caused any problems. Fortunately, we had a meeting scheduled with him the following afternoon, where he could conduct a full assessment.
We stayed in our bedroom. I gave her the Ativan first and then, about ninety minutes later, the rest of her medication. She fell asleep easily. When she did, I pulled Luke aside to update him on the situation.
I left for work before Mia woke up the next morning, hoping that her sleeping in was a positive sign. However, I soon received a call from Luke. I was in a meeting at the time and excused myself to answer.
“Dude, Mia is on another planet,” he said, emphasizing the last word.
“What do you mean? How is she behaving?”
“She’s trippin’, bro. What she’s saying doesn’t make any sense, all paranoid and crazy and shit. It’s like you described it, man. She’s gone.”
My heart sank. “Okay, just keep her in the house and keep her safe. I’ll be home soon.”
Hanging up, I reached out to the wall for support. I felt like someone running an endless race whose legs have finally given out. All the surreal moments over the past three weeks began racing through my mind.
How can this be happening to us? I thought, fighting back tears. What the hell is going on?
Rather than a short setback, this seemed like a major relapse. The tears were for Mia. I was doing everything possible but still failing her. The medication wasn’t working; the expert advice was leading us nowhere.
Arriving home, my worst fears were realized. Mia’s psychosis had progressed from paranoid delusions to the other symptoms I knew all too well. “Concrete thinking” was back, where she misinterpreted things that were said by taking them literally. “Centers of reference” had also returned, where she believed that songs on the radio were written specifically for her.
And, once again, she was seeing clues to mysterious puzzles everywhere.
12.
The Resurgence
The Cure
“Pictures of You”
4:07–4:38
My brother, Brad, was the best man at our wedding, and he gave a thoughtful toast, essentially marveling at Mia’s kindness and wondering how I ever persuaded her to marry me. It was funny and moving, and he delivered it perfectly. He was a tough act to follow.
Fortunately, I had been preparing for months. Unbeknownst to Mia, I had secretly written a toast in Spanish. A native speaker helped me practice it. By our reception, I could recite it word for word fluently. I followed my brother to the stage when he finished; everyone expected English to come next.
“Antes de empezar, quiero decir unas palabras en el primer idioma de Mia.” Translated, this meant: “Before I start, I want to say a few words in Mia’s first language.” The speech included lots of references to Miami and fishing, too. The audience, half of whom were Cuban, roared with approval. They were impressed, I think, because it lasted over five minutes. They all loved it, especially Mark and Luke. I could hear them hollering from the tables below.
After the Sp
anish toast, I gave one in English. It talked about how I used to dream about the right girl for me. I made reference to one of my favorite movies, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. There’s a scene where Robert Redford describes what he is looking for in a partner: “I’m not picky. As long as she’s smart, pretty, and sweet, and gentle, and tender, and refined, and lovely, and carefree . . .” He walks away, his voice trailing off as he keeps listing adjectives.
That was how it felt when I was younger, like I was searching for someone too perfect to be real. But then I met Mia, and she was everything that I had dreamed about. Some people might have felt embarrassed or uncomfortable, standing on a stage and admitting these things. I felt invincible, proudly facing the crowd of people that meant so much to us.
But there was another memory that meant more to me. It came after the seriousness of the ceremony and the clamor of the reception.
We left early on Monday morning for our honeymoon. We were looking forward to a week in the Caribbean together. But as I sat on the plane, I realized that it was way more than that: we were looking forward to a lifetime together.
And it hit me—I would never be alone again. Sure, we might be separated for a few days here and there, but Mia was my eternal companion. This beautiful, talented, and kindhearted person would always be there for me. Of course, we would go through difficult times, but we’d go through them together. We would always have each other to lean on.
I thought that at the time, anyway.
***
Mia was fully psychotic again. Before too long, we were sitting in Dr. Rojas’s waiting room. The white noise was helpful, as it captured and held her attention. As we waited, I kept thinking about our first visit. It had only been a week, but the situation had deteriorated dramatically.
“So, how is Mia today?” asked Dr. Rojas after we had settled into his office.
Mia didn’t answer his question and focused instead on counting the ceiling tiles in his office. She kept repeating that the number eight must have something to do with it.
Safe, Wanted, and Loved: A Family Memoir of Mental Illness, Heartbreak, and Hope Page 15
