I was pregnant and newly married when I gave up my full-time, permanent job in Edinburgh and moved to England with my husband who was working as a police officer. We were very happy , I was 27 and with a degree, five years teaching experience and a lot of confidence. I was quite sure i’d get another job whenever I wanted one.
I was 27 weeks pregnant when I went for a routine visit to the midwife and was kept in hospital. There was no real imminent danger, they said, just had to take it easy. Neither they nor I realised that I have a blood condition called antiphospholipid syndrome.
The baby was dead two days after i was first admitted and I had to give birth to a dead baby, a boy we named Daniel.
Still not diagnosed I went home and got pregnant again straightaway. This time I lasted until 32 weeks when Alexander was born by emergency Cesarean section. Thankfully he was fine and will be 20 this summer.
I was still not diagnosed and although I had blood clots in my legs I was told “go home and enjoy your baby”. When Alex was 6 weeks old and my husband was away with his work I had 2 strokes one morning.
Luckily I felt “odd” before becoming unconscious and managed to phone my husband who rushed back. I was taken to a hospital, woke up days later completely paralysed and didn’t know anything.
My husband was in the room but I had no idea who he was or even that I was married.
As you can imagine the next few years were difficult but I was encouraged by doctors to try and get on with things and even did supply teaching. We were not well off and my husband worried about money and the future. I could never really explain or understand why I couldn’t control the children in a classroom any more.
I had been so confident and I was now a “bad” teacher who shouted, forgot things and couldn’t cope. This made my husband even angrier and we had some terrible fights.
I remember hitting him over the head with an empty bottle of red wine and drips of wine streaking his face.
It was at this point my little boy (aged about 7) came in screaming “you’ve killed daddy there’s blood on his face”.
I am so ashamed of the violent behavior I started exhibiting but I found it almost impossible to walk away. It’s as if my mechanism’s gone. My poor old husband never retaliated in any way-just ducked a lot,
I woke up one morning to see scratches on my husband’s face and there were terrible bruises on my knuckles
It was a turning point in a lot of ways. I apologised to him and went to see a doctor who was surprised to hear that no one had ever explained to me that I was permanently brain damaged. That doctor saved my sanity and since then I have taken drugs which help and my husband and I have been able to talk to therapists about our (rather strange) marriage.
This inspirational post was written anonymously by a mom who is either a member of my Facebook mums group, a Twitter follower or has been submitted to me via email. I have full permission to share her story. If you can relate to this post and would like to share your own anonymous post please contact me. You could help us share the blogs love to helping others by sharing via the social sharing buttons.
