Autism and Crisis

Hubby had a heart attack.

We were digging exhausted soil out of our front garden so we could replace it with good black dirt.  As he stood holding tightly onto a tall-handled spade, he complained about a pain in his chest, a tightness he described it.

We thought that maybe it was muscle soreness from digging out all that dirt, but we decided to stop at the Maple Grove Hospital urgent care after we dumped the old dirt and just see.

They put him in a wheel chair getting him to the E.R. quickly.  They tested and probed and listened.  The results from the blood test showed that he had experienced a heart attack.  We were both silent because he had always been the healthy one doing the hard lifting, pulling, and pushing whether in the yard or in his garage man cave.  It had always been me with the health problems.

Now, we both have trays of meds in the cupboard over the coffee maker, and now he takes more pills than I do.  Some of them he will only need for six months or so, but hubby taking pills still doesn’t make sense to me.

At the hospital, I started making calls to family.  His kids were alarmed, but I reassured them.  My mother said, “How can you be so calm!?”  Perhaps it was because I usually have a flat affect, though not due to schizophrenia.  The broiling emotion is inside and not expressed, so it usually takes a very close family member to know that I am upset, but even then, it can not necessarily be evident.

I was the one reassuring the kids, my family, his family–the calm one.  But inside, I was numb because the whole situation didn’t make sense to me because it was such a shock.  Hubby, sick?  I am not one to deal with change very well, and this was a sudden change, but it doesn’t always show.

I sat and thought…and rocked.  With hubby in the hospital and now at home, our life routine has changed, literally, and how we think about our daily lives from exercise to food to pills to lowering stress.

Now, I have had to consider my own lifestyle, especially when it comes to stress.  I work a lot of hours and fret about my business sometimes, and I am the boss, so the responsibility rests on me.  Also, I have a lot of people contact, which can stress me.  I started a business so I can adapt my work environment to my autism and sensory processing disorder.  Since hubby’s heart attack, I have cut back on hours and do more reading, writing and art–all following a routine of course.

I have thought about how to deal with crisis, and I know that I should “reach out” to people for emotional support, but I don’t know how.  What am I supposed to say or ask?

So I rock.