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Getting off the roller coaster and learning to cope

Ellie Friesen

We were married in 1949. It was no quick courtship. I already knew that something wasn’t right, but I thought that it would improve after marriage. Wrong!

We were married three years, and our first child was about a year old when my husband’s mother committed suicide. She was in her 50s, and had been in and out of mental institutions. Various reasons for her illness had been mentioned but no diagnosis given. We felt rejected, frightened and alone. My mother-in-law was a devout Christian, but we felt no love from Christians, except from one lady who visited us.

Around that time, I became aware that my husband’s mood swings were becoming more frequent and more severe. I was a registered nurse but had never heard of the diagnosis “manic depression” (now called “bipolar disorder”). I was pregnant with my second child and was working as charge nurse during the evening shift on the women’s surgical ward. I reached for our “medical book” behind the nurses’ station and read up on “mental and emotional diseases”. It didn’t take me long to go down the list and realize, by the process of elimination, that my husband was manic-depressive. There were only about four lines describing this illness. The last line read, “and there is no cure”. This was in 1955.

I was devastated. I phoned our family doctor and told him what I had discovered. He was a very kind man, as well as a personal friend. He didn’t pooh-pooh my findings and did his best to help with various medications, none of which helped. He didn’t know much about the illness and can’t be faulted for what he didn’t know.

We rode that roller coaster for another 13 years (during which time another daughter was born) until a major crisis occurred – my husband’s desperate cry for help in the form of a serious suicide attempt. He hovered between life and death for several weeks; then I was told that if he survived, he would be a “vegetable”. This came from a neurologist whom I never saw, but who phoned me with the news. We were also assigned a psychiatrist, who confirmed my diagnosis of “manic depression”. My husband was discharged 43 days later from a medical ward. He continued to see the psychiatrist, who treated him with uppers and downers (elavil and valium), which didn’t do any more good than a cold drink of water would have done.

The roller coaster continued for another four years until, in desperation, I phoned the psychiatrist at home and told him something had to be done now or the children and I would leave. My husband was consequently admitted to Sciences Hospital at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and I was given the assurance that night that they could cure my husband. I believed the man who said this (he was probably a resident psychiatrist) and went home rejoicing.

In two weeks time, my husband was discharged on lithium, and the awful roller coaster life stopped. There were still some problems but not insurmountable ones. In 1972, we moved to a smaller community and adopted a different lifestyle, and the monkey on my husband’s back was gone.

By that time, however, our oldest child, a son, was already seeing the same psychiatrist and receiving the same ineffective treatment my husband had received earlier. My husband made a long distance call to the psychiatrist in Vancouver and insisted on treatment for our son. He was hospitalized at the same institution in Vancouver and placed on lithium. Unfortunately, my son hasn’t always complied with the treatment, possibly thinking that with his education he could control the disease without medication. He has found out the hard way that this is false. He is now faithfully taking his lithium and is again a happy, productive man.

How do I feel about my experiences? At times, I am angry. At whom? I don’t know:

The medical and psychiatric profession didn’t have any answers at that time. The church, some family members and some friends let us down. My professional colleagues and supervisors let me down. They didn’t understand.

On the positive side, our family doctor remained our friend until his own death of cancer.

How did I cope and what kept me going?

First of all, I wasn’t the only one coping. My husband had his own business in Vancouver. He was a barber for many years, and serving the public day in and day out was stressful to say the least.

Several key factors helped:

My faith in God. When I was at home during the day, I was able to tune into King’s Garden, a Christian all-day radio program from Seattle. The help I got from that program of unseen and unknown people far surpassed anything I received from visible friends, family, church and colleagues at work. My tenacity in the face of adversity. I was, and am, blessed with this personality trait. The dictionary describes tenacity as persistence or stubbornness. So be it. My sense of humour. I don’t have a conventional type of humour, but I have learned to laugh at difficult situations and at myself. Heartache, job difficulties and low self-esteem have all chipped away at my sense of humour, but Proverbs 17:22 states, “A joyful heart is the health of the body.” When we feel as though we’re drowning in misery, God throws us a rope – our sense of humour. This helps us to regain our perspective, take charge and make healing choices. My sense of fulfillment in my job. I loved nursing and worked as a float nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, which meant I had very diverse experiences, often during a single eight-hour shift. My last years of nursing in an extended care hospital were very rewarding. While at work, I was able to divert my thoughts from the possible turmoil at home. The support of some family and some friends. The tragedy for many family members of people with mental illness is that their silent cries for help and support often go unheeded. My involvement in church-related activities (choir, ladies’ meetings, care groups, retreats). Music has always been a part of my life, and a comforting Christian message in song often speaks to me more than any sermon. Often while I’m driving, I have Christian music playing. Socializing. We both enjoyed having company and going out, and we cultivated our gift of socializing.

I always hoped that things would improve, and they eventually did. I have come to realize that it is important for people to be persistent in lobbying for help for their ill family members. My aim in life now is to be an encourager to people with mental illness and their families. I would like to see the church more aware and more willing to become involved in the lives of people with mental illness and their families. I would like to see the medical profession be more caring in attending to the needs of this group of people. I would like to see all of us become more sensitive to the pain and suffering of those around us.

Ellie Friesen is a member of Willow Park Church in Kelowna, B.C.

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Last modified March 28, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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