Blog 3279 – 10.24.2024

More About Those Other Voices

Three years ago this coming February my wife experienced a mental health episode after a scarring and painful bout with shingles. Her eighty plus years young mother was staying with us weekdays and with her sister on the weekends at the time. Early in the morning on the first Friday of February 2022, Linda, my wife, was awakened by a voice warning her that I was going to hurt her and her mother so she woke her mom up and took her out the front door of our house and they sat on the wall by the side walk in front our house in their robes as Linda shared her paranoid fears with her mom. After a while her mom convinced Linda that I would never hurt either of them and to just go back inside and try to get some rest. When Linda tried the front door it would not open, the door at the time would sometimes stick, but she insisted that I had locked them out. Later while it was still dark I awoke and went outside and found the both of them shivering in the cold.

Linda was angry at me for locking them out and I could not convince her otherwise. Later she began to say that someone, a passer-by had seen them sitting outside in the cold and had reported her to the police for senior abuse. Linda was sure the police were coming to arrest her immediately. When they did not arrive after a few hours she began to talk of taking her own life. She refused to eat and was obsessed with taking bad about herself saying she no longer deserved to live.

Mom and I were both worried and did not know what to do. About dark that evening I called my son and ask him to come and help me get his mom to the Emergency Room at a nearby hospital. I knew she would not go willingly and I thought the doctors and nurses might be able to help her. Jay held her while I drove and though she struggled and fought us we got her there. I stayed with her all night in a treatment room while we waited on a room to become available for her. The hospital was full of COVID patients and everyone had to wear masks. Linda refuse to wear one and was spitting and behaving like a petulant child. After more than a day they got her into a private room in a COVID lock down area where initially I could only see her through a window. And they began to run every test they could think of. After a week of testing her psychiatrist recommended that she be moved to a Behavioral Hospital saying that they would better be able to get her to eat and to take her meds. She was there two weeks and because of COVID protocols I was not allowed to even visit her. I called twice a day and spoke to a nurse who told me how she gradually started to eat a little and to take her meds.

Then after two weeks they told me to come and get her. I had a time getting her to go with me. She kept asking, “Who are you really?” I took her home and tried to get her to eat but ate very little and she refused to take any medicine. After a few weeks she was getting so thin that my son and his wife who is a nurse convinced me to take her to another hospital in the Houston Medical Center for a second opinion. After a two week stay in that hospital where they ran all the same test even though they said that the would not have to. I was told that I could place her in an expensive behavior al care facility but that Medicare would not pay for it. As we are both retired with only Social Security coming in that was not a viable option and after two failed hospital interventions I figure I could care for her better myself than the so called professionals. At least she could have a measure of independence and be in her own home with her things about her and with someone who loves her.

Linda suffers from auditory hallucinations. She hears voices and argues with them aloud most of the time. She is convinced that I can her them too, but I can only hear her side of the conversation. Her voices are always accusing, judging, and threatening her. They force her to do things by threatening to hurt those she loves especially our new grand baby Emma. Often Linda cannot eat because the voices tell her that food belongs to someone else. She is forever telling me that she cannot wear this or that item of clothing any longer because it belongs to someone else.

Just this week two incidents stand out. Monday was the first day of early voting in Texas so I voted just after Mom came to our house. Sarah, her other daughter that lives nearby, works from home two or three days a week so mom stays with us a couple of days and sometimes stays with Sarah’s daughter Michelle one day a week. Most weeks mom is with us on Mondays and Fridays. Anyway, after Sarah dropped mom off, I left to go vote about eight a.m. I drove to the early voting polling place and cast my ballot. Later in the day we drove again to the polling place so Linda could vote. Mom road with us. She is still registered to vote in South Carolina so she could not vote here. So many were there to vote that we could not park close enough to the door to see Linda come out so we kept moving till we found a place close enough to see the door. Then sudden Linda was there. I said that sure was fast and she was crying saying that “they” said she could not vote because she was a convicted child molester.The “other voices” won again.

The next day Linda announced that “they” said that would be her last day, that she was going to die. She awoke Wednesday morning. They lied, that’s what the “they”, the other voices, always do. They lie, like the false god, puny little ego from whom the myth of a powerful adversary Satan and his host of demons comes. Ego or Satan is the father of all lies. Satan, ego, they, the “other voices” whatever we choose to call them, they only have power over us because we listen to them.

We all hear other voices. My dad used to joke that the only voices he ever heard came from the vicinity of the refrigerator or pantry saying “eat me” and would often remark after downing a large piece of cake ore pie, “That will shut you up.”

I have been doing quite well avoiding foods that are not good for me and losing the fat that lead to a “fatty liver” diagnoses some months ago. Yesterday at the grocery store a chocolate fudge pie spoke to me. It was $8.99 and marked 50 percent off. I listen to it, brought it home, and I ate it all. I should not have listened to that lying voice. It did not really even taste like the fudge pies I used to consume in my youth. It was shouting so loud that I could hardly hear the still small voice saying that I did not need all that sugar and starch.

The “other voices” have one aim to get us off track and keep us there. I hope my wife finds a way to stop listening to those “other voices.” I believe that there is, if will listen for it, an unmistakable ring of truth to the one voice we should always listen to.

The encouraging word for today is: “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

“Listen tight, Pilgrims.”