Waiting...

That is really how I feel like I am living my life right now. Just waiting. For the most part I am waiting for the bottom to fall out. I seem to be keeping my shit together rather well and I can only imagine it is just a matter of time. After all, my husband is locked in a psych ward awaiting transfer to a treatment facility, my 11 week old son is recovering from bronchitis and tends to start coughing after a feeding and throw up his whole bottle requiring a re-feeding of another bottle, and to top it all off it is F***ing tax season.

Who the hell did I piss off?

I was e-mailing with a friend yesterday discussing how things were going and I mentioned to her the philosophy of how I was living my life right now. I just take each day as one step forward and I try not to get too far ahead of myself. I just have to wait and see where this path leads us.

To her that sounded like a foreign concept, but seriously people, if I try to look at the big picture right now I'm pretty sure I will end up in the psych ward along side of Jake. What I try to focus on are the little things I've accomplished. I will worry about the big picture later, like in five years or so when I look back and say how the hell did I do that?

For now, it is one day at a time. Little baby steps.

I have canceled Jake's general liability insurance (after all he has no job so he obviously doesn't need this)

I have canceled his car insurance (he won't be needing it for a few months)

I have bumped down our Directv to the basic package

I will be canceling his cell phone on Monday

I will be bumping our home phone down to basic on Monday (no I can't cancel it, I have this fear that I will fall down the stairs and will only be able to dial 911 and then will pass out and how will they find me if they can't track my address?)

I signed papers on a re-finance of my car loan last night (saving me $115 a month)

I have sold Jake's boat to offset some of the loss on the 4 wheeler

And finally, I have sold the 4 wheeler. Well, one way or another it is sold. If I don't sell it in the next week a friend of a friend offered to pay me $1,000 per month for three months.

So.. we are making progress people. One day at a time...

Update

Today is a good day. I just got off the phone with a counselor from a long-term residential treatment program that may be a good fit for Jake. Up until this point I have not been able to find a program that was 3 - 6 months. Everyone I have talked to before is a 30 day program. For some reason that seems to be the norm in this state.

So... that means that we are having some success or at least progress in that area. Jake got word that he will be transferred to his first treatment program on the 13th. So, we had a few dark days this week as he grappled with the fact that he will be in the psych ward for another two weeks. However, once he got over his anger and moved into acceptance his attitude has gotten much better.

I took Zack to see him last night and he seemed to be in a really good mood. He has quit smoking and is working out now. He said he walks two miles with some of the other addicts and then is doing push ups and sit ups in his room before bed.

I spent most of yesterday in a dark place as well but I am starting to claw my way out. The visit with Jake helped. Seeing him positive about his treatment again gives me a lot more hope than I had earlier this week when I thought maybe we were all wasting our time. No matter how many people told me that he would go through a very angry stage I'm not sure I was really prepared for how ugly it was.

The other thing that is going well is that Zack is starting to feel much better. For the last three nights he has slept from 10 or 11 until 4 or 5. So that is GREAT for the both of us. He wakes up in a good mood and so do I. We are also starting to get the hang of getting ready in the mornings. For all of Jake's faults, he is PHENOMENAL with his son and was a huge help to me when he was there.

He would hold him and feed him and change him so having him to pass Zack to so I could shower or get the bottles washed or whatever saved me a lot of time. When my friend used to tell me how long it took her to get ready in the morning I used to laugh but now I understand. The first day it was like 2 1/2 hours. We now have it down to about an hour and a half or so depending on how many times I look around and think oh wait I need to do that....

DHS

The DHS visit was a joke. I'm not sure how much I can divulge here because I don't want someone stumbling upon here and me causing more problems for myself. So let's just suffice it to say that I am not being investigated. I do not have to drop a UA, Zack does not have to go to the doctor, and she didn't even look at any aspects of my house except to walk in and sit on the couch.

She was 15 minutes late, asked me one question about the circumstances involving Jake leaving the home and told me that she would have to check with her supervisor to see what the next step is since he won't be coming back right away.

Short, sweet, and to the point. All that worrying for nothing.

Winds of Change

"It's okay that mommy has to sell all of my stuff. I don't need it anyway. All I need is you and mommy. Besides when I get out we will just get new stuff. Bigger and better stuff because daddy is going to get a really good job because he won't have to worry about taking a drug test."

Fan F**king-tabulous....

You know, I am not usually one to cuss. In fact if you look back in this blog I have probably only used cuss words a handful of times. But people... this is one of those times!!

Today has been LONG!! Long and FULL of disappointments!! Let's start at the beginning, the very beginning, like oh say two o'clock this morning when my son woke up coughing. I tried to feed him thinking he was hungry but he just kept spitting the milk out. I knew that he had not eaten since 7:00 last night and I could hear his stomach rumbling but he would try to suck and he would just cough and then spit out the milk.

I tried three different bottles and three different flow nipples trying to find something that would allow him to get some nourishment into his little body. Nothing worked. Finally I took a baby syringe and was dripping milk into his mouth. I managed to get a half and ounce or so into him but he was still coughing and spitting and I finally decided enough was enough.

At three thirty I put him in his car seat and called my mom to tell her I was taking him to blank. It was about that time that he started to cough and everything that I had gotten him to swallow came back up.

So off to the emergency room we went. The verdict, Zack has bronchitis. They gave him a nebulizer treatment and we got him to eat about four ounces there and so they sent us home with a nebulizer. We got in the car a little before six and we were about 5 minutes from the hospital when I heard him choking. I pulled over real quick and saw that he had thrown up all four ounces down his front.

Okay... no luck there. So off we go to find a 24 hour pharmacy to get his medicine. I tried the ones in our town but had no luck so I had to go into Des Moines to find a Walgreens. We got out of Walgreens at 7:00 and I had to get Zack to daycare and be at Jake's court hearing by 8:30.

So I rushed home and changed and made it to the daycare at about 8:00. I basically threw him at the teachers and gave them a brief play by play of the nebulizer and such and off I went. I arrived at court right before 8:30.

Court was supposed to begin at 9:00 and they had told us to be there early so Molly and I sat in the waiting room and waited. And then we waited... oh yes and then we waited some more.

TEN THIRTY they came and got us. TEN THIRTY people!! I rushed around for NOTHING!! When we got into the court room we were talking with the lawyers and found out that the treatment center in Mt. Pleasant where we wanted Jake to go won't take him because he's on medicine. SO, now he gets to go to MECCA which is not as great.

Strike one.

And he may have to go to the MECCA in Des Moines, which is not as great as the one in Iowa City.

Strike two.

And the state will only commit him for 7 - 30 days even though his doctor said he needs 3 to six months. As the lawyers told us it is either this or nothing which would you prefer.

Strike three.

FAN F*CKING-TABULOUS!!!

So now I have to find a place that we can transfer him to once he gets out. AND I will have to figure out how we are going to pay for this place that we transfer him to. However, like I told Jake there is no point in him just doing the 30 days and then coming out and relapsing. That would just be a waste of everyone's time, effort and money. If we are going to do this, we need to make sure that we do it right.

So, about 11:30 I finally make it to work on my two hours of sleep. I got in and had JUST sat down at my computer when I noticed the server was beeping and our e-mail wasn't working right. So I went over to see what was wrong and noticed the e-mail system had crashed. So I tried to fix it with no luck and ended up having to reboot the entire server.

As soon as I finished that I decided I needed some lunch. I went to lunch with a co-worker and as soon as I got back I got a message that Zack had a fever and that they had only gotten two ounces in him all day (it was almost one by this point) and so my mom had gone and picked him up.

I called the doctor and they told me that I needed to take him back to the hospital so off I went to meet my mom in the ER once again. As I was walking out the door someone stopped me and said the e-mail was not working again. I caught one of the other tech guys and asked him to look at it as I bolted for the elevator.

When my mom pulled up to the ER I immediately noticed that all two ounces Zack had taken this morning were down his front so I was glad we were there. They gave him some anti-nausea medicine and then took some blood and gave him another nebulizer treatment.

After all of that we were able to get about three ounces in him and thought we were doing good until the nurse came back and told us that his potassium levels were high. SO... they had to take blood again and this time they were going to put and IV in so that if his levels came back still high they didn't have to poke him a third time.

It was at this point that I lost it. He cried and I cried as two nurses held him down to place the IV. They got the blood they needed but ended up bending the IV and had to remove it. Then it was more waiting.

Finally about 45 minutes later they came back and said that his levels were okay and they were discharging us.

At this point all I wanted to do was fall into bed. BUT NO... the DHS lady is coming tomorrow and so my mom and aunt thought that I should probably clean up my house before she got there so about 6:30 they showed up to help and they didn't leave until 9:30. At which time things had been picked up... but not really cleaned. (YES... my house was THAT bad!!)

When they left both back seats of my mom's tahoe were full of clothes. Katie and Jess are coming tomorrow to do the actual cleaning while I am at work. Someone just shoot me now!!

Why I love my job....

So... at 3:00 this afternoon my boss pulled me into his office and closed the door. All I could think of was oh shit my job performance has been slipping and he's going to talk to me about it.

After he sat down he said I want to talk to you about what's been going on. I want you to know that if you need anything don't be afraid to ask. Do you need money? If you need to take time off don't feel like you can't because you don't have any personal time left. We will still pay you and this will not affect your raise, etc.

Holy hell!! I have no idea who tipped him off. I'm guessing either someone from my work reads my blog or they picked up on it from one of my 10,000 phone conversations this week. I can only imagine what my cell phone bill will be!!

So... needless to say I will NOT be looking for anything different any time soon. I have always told everyone that I had a great job and I have never looked for anything different because I like where I'm at but this REALLY solidifies that.

Any job that is willing to put the well being of their employees ahead of their own bottom line is the job that I want to be at!!

Angry

That's where I am at today. They say there are different stages to processing any crisis situation. The stage I have now made it to is anger. Anger and frustration.

Last night I got home and there was a card in my door from DHS. They are investigating my home because of DH. I don't have to be drug tested and it's not a formal investigation or anything it's just that any time meth is involved they have to go to the home and make sure the children are ok.

So... now I have to take him to a doctor to make sure they approve of the fact that he is fine and then I have to deal with being scrutinized. It makes me very angry that I have to fight to keep my son.

Last night I also went and visited DH with his sister. I know that it is still early in the process and I know that it is going to take awhile but he asked about his four wheeler. That makes me angry. Of all the things he is fighting to keep you would think that a four wheeler would be VERY far down the list. Yet he asked if I was going to sell it.

It makes me very angry that I am on the outside fighting to keep my family together and fighting to keep my head above water with all the debt I have been left with and he is worried about a god damn four wheeler.

Speaking of debt... over the past couple of months our debt has gone from $9,000 at the beginning of December to $23,500 now. Why you ask? Well he wrecked a jeep, and then he wrecked another jeep and then he stole from me and then he didn't work and we had to borrow money. OH... and then he decided he needed to go out and buy a four wheeler!!

It makes me very angry that I am here swimming in debt because he couldn't get his SHIT together and he is there, watching TV and sleeping all day.

You get mad you get strong
Wipe your hands shake it off
Then you Stand

One day at a time... I can do this.

Changes

Last night I committed my husband.

Wow... it seems really strange to say that. I went to the court house, I got a court order, and some friends and I tracked him down and had the police haul him away. Boy doesn't my life suck?

As for why I'm saying this here. First of all this has always been the place where I find solice. I am able to write down what I'm feeling and for the most part feel pretty un-judged about it. If people don't like what I have to say they don't comment and if they do then they leave wonderful feedback. Speaking of which, please leave comments if you can. In fact tell your friends to tell their friends to leave comments. I could use all the positive feedback I can right now. This is going to be a long road.

Secondly, this is my life and my story. I know that a lot of people don't agree with me airing my dirty laundry but people it is my laundry. I have ALWAYS lived by the motto that you can't be embarrassed of your life. If you are than you should change it. I take each day as it comes and I make each decision one at a time. Once I make one I do not look back. If I have regrets than I should have made different choices.

People have often asked me how I live my life like this and I can't exactly explain it. I just know that dwelling in a past that you can't change has never done anyone any good. You can only change the future.

So with that said, let's start at the beginning....

Hi, my name is Heather and my husband is a drug addict.

I have known this for pretty much the entire time I have been with him. Ten years, six months and 6 days. I found out in the way a lot of people find out who have their heads in the sand. DH was busted. I was 16 and he was 15. He got caught smoking pot in the school bathroom.

From there it has been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. There have been periods of time where he has been clean. Some as long as six or nine months. But inevitably he always goes back and each time he does the drug he chooses seems to get worse and worse.

Remember back last May when I told you DH got laid off from his job. He didn't. I lie well to cover up for him. I've had 10 years of practice. What really happened was that he failed a drug test and when they asked him to take another one to prove that the levels in his system were coming down and that he was going to get and stay clean he refused.

Remember what I said about finding out only after they get busted. That was the same here. As is often the case with me. I begin to notice signs but never have any real proof and so I brush them aside until I am slapped in the face with something real and overwhelming.

This time was about two weeks after I found out I was pregnant with Zack. It is amazing to me to sit and look at my little boy and know that he was born healthy despite the hellish time I had the whole time I was pregnant. The summer was filled with days he would be home and nights where he wouldn't. Things would be good for a few weeks and then all of the sudden he just wouldn't come home one night.

When we graduated into the fall things started to get better. I was showing and the pregnancy seemed a little more real to him. However sometime in the early winter it all went terribly wrong again. I found out he was stealing money from his family and then in early January about a week before Zack was born I found out he was stealing from me.

Since that point things have quickly spiraled out of control. I spent much of my time in the hospital alone. DH always had "errands" to run and somehow they always took longer than he had planned. I suppose I knew then what he was doing but everyone had told me how much having a child would change him. So I figured I needed to give him a couple of weeks to bond with his son and then see how things went.

My husband missed the entire fourth week of my son's life. That's how it went. Every weekend from the time Zack was born DH disappeared for at least one night. Then the weekend after Zack turned three weeks he just never came back. One day passed, then two and three and four. Finally before I knew it was Friday.

I went to dinner with my mom and when I got done I found myself SO angry that I knew I had to find him at all costs. It took a couple of phone calls and a couple of people who ratted him out but I found him. However he went into someones house and refused to come out so I ended up going home.

The next day he was home. That was February 10th. I was at his mom's house getting ready for his nephew's first birthday party. He missed it. In fact he missed most of that weekend as he slept off all of the drugs in his system.

After that I took his jeep. It had the front end damage and so we didn't think it should be driven anyway. For some reason I have always thought that if I just restrict where he goes it will make it better. It doesn't. All it does is prolong the inevitable.

That next weekend it snowed. He had to have his jeep back to do snow removal and once he had it back he had no intention of giving me the keys ever again. By Saturday night he was gone again. I got home at 8:00 from his nephews second first birthday party and promptly fell into bed. When I awoke at 10:00 he was gone.

He called the next morning about 6:30 claiming he had been stuck in the mud while he was chasing coyotes and since his phone was dead he couldn't call anyone. This was the incident which found him ripping the transmission out of a jeep we had had for two weeks. Since the transmission was broken I chose to believe the story and he came back.

I honestly don't remember what happened on Sunday to make him leave but I'm sure he had some excuse about where he had to be or what he had to be doing. I think he told me he wanted to go work on his jeep. Either way he didn't come home and it was Monday night before I saw him again.

Once again I ventured out and made some phone calls and once again I tracked him down. AND OF COURSE... once again he ended up in someone's house and wouldn't come out so once again I came home. The next day his boss needed him to come to work so I dropped Zack off with a friend and out I went trying to find him. I finally tracked him down and was told that he would be home. At 6:30 he finally showed up.

The next day I decided that there needed to be some changes. Our plan was to commit him then and to this day I am kicking myself for not doing it!! Instead his sister came over and tried to convince him to go himself to get treatment. He refused saying he could do it on his own and she thought she should give him a try.

So DH stayed home. He stayed at our house and I told him the following two phrases.

"I have gone to these people's houses twice now to track you down and bring you home. I will not do it a third time. If it happens again I will send someone bigger and badder than me."

"If I catch you at their houses again I will have you arrested or committed, it is just a matter of who gets to you first."

And then I prayed. I prayed that I would not have to follow through on my threats and for three weeks it looked like it was working. For three weeks he was home. All last week he picked up Zack from daycare and it looked like they were bonding and things were going well and then this weekend something happened.

I will never know what. I am not a drug addict. I have never even been drunk in my life and I have never even smoked a cigarette so I have NO idea what it feels like to have a craving. However, from talking to the counselors I have gathered that it is an over powering feeling and that you don't think about anything else but getting your fix.

From what they have told me it is not that an addict purposely hurts people they just do what they need to do to get their next high and if that means stealing or lying or whatever they are going to do it. So, when he didn't come home on Friday night I knew I was probably in trouble. On Saturday I had to work and then I had a girls night planned. I knew that he was going to be with a friend of ours so I figured he and Zack would be pretty safe when I went out.

Saturday night he gave me another story and off he went. However, every time I called him he answered the phone. It was different than all the other times he was gone and a part of me was hoping that his story about helping out a friend was true.

Sunday was the final straw. The day that I will forever kick myself for. I had to work on Sunday and DH was supposed to watch Zack. Never before has he ever taken him anywhere or done anything with him to make me think that Zack would EVER be in any danger. For DH drugs have always been a night time thing and so I have never really worried about him during the day.

Sunday he decided to break that streak.

Excuse me while I take a brief break to collect my thoughts... writing this down has been harder than I thought it would be. I love my husband, I wouldn't be here if I didn't, but the decisions that he made could have really had some bad consequences. And it hurts. I'm very objective about DH. I make a decision and I move forward. I don't waller, I don't cry and to most people it looks like I am incredibly strong. I have been trained this way.

Don't take my lack of blubbering on to be a lack of emotion. It's just that falling apart right now is not going to help me keep my job, my house, or my son. It's only going to be me... falling apart.

Okay... back to Sunday. Sunday morning before I left DH and I had the standard conversation. Do not even THINK about taking your son anywhere where he could be in danger. Stay home, call me if you need anything, I'll be back by noon. To which all of it was answered, "You know I would NEVER do anything to put Zack in danger. I love my son."

Sometime around 8:00 on Sunday morning DH stopped answering his phone and my heart SANK!! Panic ensued but I tried to stay calm. Finally about 8:45 he answered again and he was at home because I could hear the dogs in the background. He told me he had just run up to Wal-mart and he was back. I asked how Zack was doing and he told me that he had changed him into a cute outfit (which he NEVER does) and that he was doing just fine.

By 11:00 I just had a feeling I needed to go home and so off I went. I knew something was wrong immediately. I opened the door and heard a rumbling upstairs. Then DH came running down the stairs and immediately went to the couch and grabbed something up and put it in his pocket. I could tell right away that he had done some drug. I could see it in his eyes and the way he talked to me.

I immediately told him he needed to leave and he did. And that my friends is how we got to this point. He put me in the position that I either had to make good on my threat or be the woman who forever just made empty threats. I started with the police.

Since it's an on-going case I don't want to say too much about the circumstances just that I let them have access to my garage to look at an item of property that may have been stolen. They took it on Monday morning. They have yet to figure out if it is stolen but it is no longer at my house so that is alright with me.

After that I went for the commitment. When DH called me on Monday he said he was going to check himself into rehab. I didn't hold my breath. By Monday night the story I got was that he needed a couple of days to clear his head and then he would do it. Tuesday morning we signed the papers.

After that it was just a matter of finding him. Luckily I have a friend who volunteered to help me. I will never be able to repay the kindness that this friend has showed me. I can only say that he has taken me and Zack under his wing and vowed to help us and make sure that we were safe. At 5:00 he called me and said he was out looking. He had no luck.

Than about 6:00 I got a tip that he was seen at a motel with the word Red in the name. Even though my friend was at home he jumped back in his vehicle with his wife and was out looking again. By 6:45 I got a call that they had found him.

Things after that moved pretty quickly. The police came, the pulled DH out, they took him to treatment. In the room was drugs and a prostitute. He claims they didn't sleep together, she was just there for the drugs. She claims they didn't sleep together, she was just there for the drugs. Druggies are liers. I will never know the truth and quite frankly I don't care. My husband has a disease and what is most important right now is to get him help. We will figure the rest out at a later date.

So, there you have it... all the gorey details. Please, if you have any compassion for me do not take this opportunity to bash DH in the comments. As I have said before I love my husband and he is very sick. As it looks right now he will be gone for a few months getting his ducks in a row and where we go from there is our decision... not yours.

I don't need to be judged for my decisions nor do I need to be lectured for them. I just need to tell people so that 1) if there is anyone else out there going through something similar they know that they are not alone and 2) because it makes me feel better.

For now I'm just going to take it one day at a time. There is a song by Rascal Flatts that I am taking my inspiration from. It is called Stand and there is a part in the song that says

You might bend, till you break
Cause its all you can take
On your knees you look up
Decide you've had enough
You get mad you get strong
Wipe your hands shake it off
Then you Stand

That's where I'm at. I'm picking myself up and dusting myself off and trying to stand strong for myself and my son. Chances are that if DH is gone for more than a month we will have to sell our house and possibly some of our other things but we will cross that bridge when we come to it. We have enough between our tax refund and our savings to make it until about the end of April. That will get me through tax season and let me take a couple of weeks to sort through it all.

One day at a time....