thank you Re: munchausens spouse

[tulip]

hello eagle and sandy.

thank you for your replies.

i spoke with the after hours nursing unit manager last night and she was very understanding and helpful.she offered to speak to the nursing staff and the ward matron for me.she did that today.

they had my husband ready for discharge this morning but thanks to the ward matron and the kindness of the nurses and doctor who the matron also spoke with, they kept my husband in the ward until mid- afternoon.

this gave me three more hours sleep and time to get things done without having him under my feet complaining.

i got washing, garden watering, minor garden storm repairs, basic house cleaning and bill paying done.

the nurse rostered on to look after my husband phoned me this morning and again this afternoon to make sure i was o.k. before i went to get him.

they offered community nurse follow-up which he has agreed to !!!

he thinks it is follow up for physical stuff but they have told me that they recognised his frequent flyer admissions after twice in the xmas season being admitted with contradictory stories.

xmas & new year is when he is at his worst and when he most wants admissions to hospitals for no actual reason.

i am getting better again at saying no to him. i still anticipate that he will blow up though whenever i say it. sometimes it works and sometimes it does not.

sleep is my priority. i will be o.k. with sleep once i get back into a routine. then i will leave my husband to all his doctors appointments in the next few weeks as he has said that he is able to drive himself to them now. if he sticks to that i will use that time to catch up on my favourite tv show called ''outnumbered''. i have seen all the episodes before when it was first on tv a few years ago but whenever they repeat it these days i record it to watch it again.

i have a couple of episodes of it that i haven't had a moment to watch due to my husband's latest escapades.

i like that show because it is funny and clever and it gives me hope that normal families do exist.

i am not officially my husband's carer because he is employed full-time. he is currently on annual holidays. i am retired from work. his last very big dramas were at the time of my retirement mid 2014.

i had been looking forward to it very much after a lifetime of work. i managed to enjoy only a few hours of retirement when he began demanding attention extremely inappropriately. it took me months to even begin to recover from that and just when i was starting to recover he started the whole thing again at the end of november, gradually escalating things until xmas. he usually does really strange stuff on new years eve too but then crashes a bit on new years day.

it is more like caring for a mentally ill child than an adult. he argues with everyone about everything.

i wonder sometimes how i didn't see through his manipulations before we got married. basically he fooled me by pretending to be normal and then after we were married the cracks started to appear.

after he got more and more comfortable in our relationship he just let all his munchausens stuff come out and he stopped trying to hide it from me.

the hot weather here makes it hard to sleep. once it passes that will help.

i know people talk about the importance of ''me time''. i think i will make 2015 the year for me. i am going to try to leave my husband's care to the professionals as much as possible. even though my husband denies his munchausens, he spends a lot of time at the local medical centre asking nurses to check him for various non-existent ailments and asking if a new gp has been employed there yet.

now we have the community nurse to keep tabs on him thanks to the hospital organising it.

i don't feel so guilty about leaving him to others now. i look at these times as opportunities to do something for me. so far it has just been chores but i am going to try and fit in a movie if i can.

even though i am in a semi-rural location , i do live very close to a regional cinema.

sleep for me now. thanks everyone. i don't know what i would have done without this forum over the last few days.

[tulip]

Thanks again everyone for your help.

new years eve was a nightmare with my husband ....true to his usual patterns.

he kept demanding that i drive him in his car to the emergency department at the hospital because he said his temperature was up. his temperature was normal so i said no. he kept up with his demands getting louder and more belligerent all the time. eventually i lost my patience and told him if he wanted to stay in hospital he should have said so before they discharged him the day before. he said he didn't.

i told him it is funny how he always insists on going back to hospital 5 minutes after getting home and also that they know about his self inflicted and made up ailments because his stories simply don't add up.

it is heatwave conditions here and i couldn't take any more so i told him if he wanted to go to hospital for no reason then he would have to get a taxi.i reminded him that he knew if he really needed medical help i would get it for him straight away but this time he knew he did not need it and was making things up to try and sabotage the peace. (he does not like things to work out well and if they do then he does his utmost to destroy that)

he seemed to back down but then at 10pm he started again demanding that i drive him to emergency at the hospital. i said no, it is not appropriate to take the emergency department people's time for nothing.

i expected him to storm out of the house, or run away to his elderly parents or his brother's place or just yell and scream more, or call the police because i didn't do what he ordered me to do.....all things he has done many times over the years.

to my surprise he went to bed and went to sleep.

new years day he spent moaning and saying he was in pain. the community nurse phoned and he refused to speak with her. i managed to talk him around and get him to phone her back and return her call. he did not like what she said when she told him to see his gp in the first instance instead of going to hospital emergency.

he has hardly eaten on new years day but he had plenty of water, soft drink and tea. i wonder if his next ailment will be somehow related to not eating enough.

eventually he went to bed at 11.30pm on new years night and is now  still asleep.

when he went to sleep it was absolute bliss. first i brought the washing in and put it away. then i watched a recorded episode of my favourite tv show ''outnumbered'' which made me laugh.

now the quiet is beautiful....the quiet after the storm.....and possibly the quiet before the next storm.

i hope everyone else is doing o.k.

thanks for your help.

[NikNik]

Hi @tulip , @BeHappy , @Eagle 

Just a quick note to let you know that tomorrow night (20th) we are running a Topic Tuesday session about Respite

If any of you have questions about you can access or create your own respite OR want to share your tips and experience about taking respite, please join us.

It kicks off here at 7pm AEDT

@tulip  I hope things are going well for you.

Kind regards,

Nik