R U OK? Day - Christian's Story

You know me.

I usually blog about the lighter things in life. Funny things my kids said. Stupid things I did. Teething debacles. Days when both the kids and the pets seem to be attempting to out-do each other making a mess. Exploding nappies. That sort of thing.

Most of the time, my blog is a place where the objective is to make a giggle out of a bad mummy moment. If I can't laugh at my messy misfortunes, then I hope that at least you can. (Although, after last night's boot camp it hurts slightly to chuckle...)

What I don't do, is blog about the really serious stuff in my life. I might sometimes refer to things being less than tickety-boo behind the scenes, but really, you don't need to read about the nitty-gritty when it's less-than-pretty. Some things are best kept private, especially when it involves other people.

However.

A while ago I decided to take the plunge, and join a very important initiative. R U OK? Day has been all over the media in the past week. You might have seen it on the 7PM Project on the telly tonight. In a nutshell, it is a campaign to highlight awareness of mental illness, isolation, suicide, and the importance of a connected community.

We live in a society in which the common greeting is, "Hi, how are you?" Yet most of the time, it's a nicety given in passing out of habit. More often than not, the answer is "Fine, thanks", even if the truth is the complete opposite. Even with a stinking cold, or after two hours sleep, if I see someone down the shops and they greet me with, "Hey Sal! How are you?", invariably I answer, "I'm fine! How are you?"

You do it too, don't you? We answer out of habit, telling the world that everything is ok. We don't want to bore people with pessimistic details of our lives; we'd hate to become the negative person that people avoid conversations with; often, we give the quick and easy answer because we simply don't have the time to give the truthful answer.

The problem with this is that sometimes, all someone needs is a genuine, "Are you ok?" It's a hard question to ask when you know that the answer won't be pretty. And it's a damn sight harder to open up and tell the truth.

I'm going to tell you a story about my boy, my husband, Christian, and how I nearly lost him. All because no one asked him if he was ok.

In January 2009, my husband began a new, very demanding, quite challenging job. He would leave the house at 6:15 every morning, and return home roughly 14 hours later. For two years, he only saw our children on the weekends. Even though he was, for all intents and purposes, assistant principal of the school, he did not receive a special payment. In fact, as it was a fledgling school only just getting on it's feet, he took a wage lower than a teacher in a government school. He was promised an executive wage in the second year - third, tops. He took this job with the intention of putting our little family in a secure place financially - eventually, at any rate.

My husband worked himself to the bone for nearly two years, despite continuous warnings from doctors that he would kill himself from exhaustion. Even heart surgery (performed when Maisie was one week old) did not slow him down. When we received a phone call on Melbourne Cup Day, 2010, that the school had gone into administration and would close, the two of us simultaneously lost our jobs.

It was six weeks before Christmas, we had three very young children, a new house under construction, and we were unemployed. Unfortunately, the majority of the school community assumed my husband was in on the secret of the school's financial difficulties, and immediately descended upon him in a fury. As it happened, both my husband and the acting principal were completely unaware of any issues - the school's money was handled entirely independently by the school board. They simply followed the directions of the board.

The situation was not helped by the fact that my husband had, four weeks earlier, accepted a new position at a school much closer to home, with no extra responsibilities. This apparently simply added to the "evidence" that Christian was jumping ship before it sank. However - would he have left his wife at a school about to close? Wouldn't I also have been changing jobs if we knew? Would Christian have allowed one of his best mates, a colleague at the school with nine children, to become unemployed? Would he have done that to anyone?

No.
The fact is, our school closed, and we lost our jobs with no warning. We lost thousands and thousands of dollars in lost entitlements. We had, quite literally, no income for two months. We relied on the charity and love of our families and friends to get through Christmas. And yet...

One week after the news of the school closing broke, my husband had to stay late for a meeting with the parent community and the administrator. He had already endured verbal abuse in the school car park, and a public (and completely untrue) flaying on national radio. (Should I ever get my hands on the woman who did that to him, I will not be responsible for my actions. And yes, I know who it was.)

I had five missed calls on my mobile that morning. I was at Jack's first day of Prep transition, and had my phone turned off. When I called my husband back to see what the emergency was, he could not recall ringing me. I chalked it up to stress, and simply decided to make him a nice dinner when he eventually got away.

He phoned me again at 6pm, and sounded dreadful. He said he had a bit of a headache, and would be home about 8.

At 8:15pm, the phone rang. He gave me no greeting, only, "I don't feel good. I think I might go to the hospital", before dropping the phone.

The story that I pieced together later on, was that my husband had been slurring his speech all that day; that he had been speaking sentences that did not make sense; that his skin was grey; that he had been having shooting pains down his left arm; that his heart was racing and wouldn't slow down.

My husband spent the night in hospital, after suffering what the doctors called a 'precursor' to a heart attack. And I hate to say it, but that was only the beginning.

He came home from hospital and slept for days. He didn't talk. He ate very little. It was an effort to sit on the couch. After a week or so, it was obvious that he could not deal with our children, in any capacity. He hated going outside. Could not speak on the phone. Got completely panicky when around other people.

A week before Christmas, I dragged him to the GP and practically begged for help. I was caring for three children who had already endured the year from hell, and now their Daddy was my fourth baby. I didn't know how to help him. Was I being too sympathetic? Not sympathetic enough? At what point would someone look at my husband and tell me, "Yes, you're right. He is terribly depressed. And you should be worried. You can't cope with this by yourself."

Just as there is no guidance manual given to you when your first child is born, neither is there an instruction book on coping with a spouse with depression. When your husband sleeps for hours in the daytime, gets angry over literally nothing, has no interest in the children he adores, and wants nothing to do with anyone or anything, what do you do? Where do you go?

I suppose I acted on instinct. After I had established that the kids were ok, and that everyone under my roof was clothed and fed, I concentrated on getting us all outside once a day. Sometimes, I had to drag Christian, quite literally.

When he was grumpy, I told him.
When he was negative, I let him know.
When he was too quiet, I asked him why.
Every day, I asked my husband, "Are you ok today?"

Most days, he wasn't. But eventually, he learned to fake it, until one day, he was ok. Properly. Having practised meditation for many years, my husband had an advantage over many others suffering from depression. Even in his darkest moments, he was able to articulate how he felt. He was constantly on the lookout for negative self-talk, and as difficult as it was to stop, he did it.

The doctor described my husband's condition as "the worst physical breakdown he'd ever seen". The only thing that stopped it from being a nervous breakdown was Christian's years of training in self-awareness through meditation. In the beginning, it was me forcing him to live his life. But after a while, Christian's grit took over. We were so lucky that he was able to turn his thoughts around, even when he didn't want to. So many people are not as fortunate.

My beautiful husband is still not completely himself. It has been nearly 11 months since his mini-heart attack and subsequent onset of depression, and he is still recovering. He gets tired much more easily. He angers far more quickly than he ever would before. He still struggles in crowds of people. He strives hard to appear happy in large social situations.

But he has come so far, and I am so proud of him. It has been an uphill battle all the way for him this year, and he has done it willingly. For himself. For our children. For me.

I know that our little family will be fine. We have each other, after all. What makes me so upset, after all of this, is that the whole situation could have been so easily averted. Sure, the school would have gone under regardless. But had someone taken a good hard look at my husband, and asked him if he needed help, or if he was ok, rather than screaming at him, perhaps this might not have happened. Certainly, had the "colleagues" who stabbed him in the back bothered to source the truth rather than enjoy idle gossip, the damage would have been lessened.

Had someone asked my husband if he was ok, perhaps he might have been.