My husband is the kindest, thoughtful and most kind-hearted person I have ever met. Anyone who has ever met him thinks well of him and he treats every one with respect.
Things changed at home. He started calling me hurtful names. Started picking fights with me. Lloyd never liked to fight…in the past he would give up fighting & let me win so the fight would be over & we could make up & make out.
This was not the same man that I knew all for over 30 years. It just got worse.
He was always sleepy. He was disabled from a heart attack in 2004 & 2015, ischemic bowel, chronic pain from osteoarthritis, broken back & other back issues, so I expected some sleepy. He stopped doing chores, cooking for us, stopped showering daily (or even weekly) and often missed out on school functions. His car was needing filled up more often, and our checking account was not adding up, plus the kids quarter collection & tooth fairy money had gone missing. I never knew what he spent money on.
I told his doctor of the personality change. His doctor became my one of my best friends & saved my sanity. He was Christian and told me he prayed for our family.
The very first time we noticed something was very different was a holiday gathering with family. Food, wine, alcohol, soda, tea, water was all available. We were not even social drinkers anymore, but during the holidays we might imbibe in a glass of wine or a mixed drink. No one really saw him drink a lot, but he became very intoxicated had to be helped to the passenger side of the car.
The ride home was less than pleasant. I managed to pulled over just in time. We still had 15 miles to home. Bless the girl’s hearts for not screaming as the rest of the ride was much like an amusement park ride gone wrong. Window down, splatter flying we finally made it.
The girls were scared as they had never seen a person so sick.
He landed on the floor outside the bedroom. I put the girls to bed and assured them that he just had a wee bit too much to drink. The combination of medicines and alcohol made it affect him much quicker, but he would be fine.
He was far from fine. Laying in his own vomit, I was worried and afraid of alcohol poisoning, I debated what to do next. His breathing was so shallow, but he was not blue or pale. I turned his head so he would not aspirate.
I covered him with a blanket and just watched him breathe. I could not move him, so there he slept, the dog had to be kenneled because dad was sleeping in his spot.
I tried to recall how many drinks he had & I only recalled three – which was a drink an hour. Far less than this level of intoxication. Something didn’t add up.
I stayed with him for a long time trying to decide if he needed to have an ambulance or not. He finally roused enough to wonder why he was on the floor and why I was so angry.
He remembered nothing the next day and didnt feel well. We didn’t keep hard liquor in the house and rarely had beer in the fridge. Lloyd enjoyed a beer when he barbecued outside, but it was very rarely. Once before all this, his doctor had suggested wine with dinner. Wine makes us sleepy, so we said no.
His manners were gone, his habits changed, he didn’t seem to care about his family and our needs & happiness anymore. Whatever he wanted or needed always came first. Always grumpy to me. It started affected our marriage & as we approached our 25th wedding anniversary, I wondered if it should be divorce court instead. The apathy was so horrid.
The children suffered. They were saddened by the changes of their father and worried for him. I was torn as to stay and figure out what was wrong with him or take my children & go. The only thing that I kept thinking is “what would he do if it was me?” That’s when I knew that it was time to get tough & figure out what was going on. I knew he would have done anything for me if the roles were reversed.
I started taking detailed notes, videos & explained to the children that we needed to figure out how to help him. If they noticed odd things they had to tell me, even if he said not too.
He woke both girls up on a school night at 2 a.m. to offer them ice cream. He took a washcloth to Janelle’s face and baptised her as he made the sign of the cross one evening when I was at a work meeting. He sleepwalked to the kitchen and I caught him with a pan of dry macaroni and a wooden spoon, but no burners on. He was making mac & cheese. After that I took all knobs off stove & tied the cabinets and refrigerator shut.
His doctor’s office would take my calls at all times, fit him in, change medicines or tell me to bring him to ER.
We had a very rough couple of years before diagnosis where nothing made sense & we didn’t tell anyone. I tried to function normally on little sleep & was slipping into, what I didn’t know at the time, depression.
Our new normal was that nothing was ever normal and our family was in crisis.
Two heart attacks, a life flight, and numerous hospital stays and visits, he was diagnosed three years later.
Journey By Eskew 