Pat's Story: A View from the Other Side
© Pat S.
It has always been my hope in creating this column that it be a place to generate understanding of and for agoraphobics and also of and for those who live with them. What follows is a slightly edited story that came to me from a woman named Pat S. who cares for her agoraphobic mother in Mobile, Alabama. It is a mix of love and frustration and compassion. I hope that it will touch you as much as it has touched me.
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The Other Side:
I found your website today while searching for some help with my frustration in dealing with my mom, who is agoraphobic. Your "elephant" analogy ( http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/agor... ; http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/agor... ; http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/agor... )is I think the most difficult part of the situation. Most people just say, "Oh? Order a pizza delivered! Oh? With the internet, you almost don't have to leave! Oh, I wish I could stay in the house all the time and not go to work!"
My family members do not really want to accept that Mom doesn't leave the house, hasn't voluntarily left the house in many years (first her house, now mine). She offers polite demurrals to invitations ("Oh, not today, it's too hot out for me to go to Walmart/lunch/see the baby") and they accept her response without acknowledging that she hasn't been anywere in years. When I point out that Mom hasn't left the house, or in fact has come to the table for dinner only once in the past 2 years, my siblings laugh, "oh, that's Mom for you" and move on. Imagine for a minute the stress in dealing with Mom last month while waiting for Hurricane Ivan: Could she and I stay, and survive what was threatening to be a Category 5 hurricane, living as close to the coast as we do? The storm surge predicted would have flooded my two-story house. But could she survive evacuating to a motel? In the end, we evacuated, but we are both weary from the 4-hour drive and the 4-day stay until power was restored. Mobile was spared the worst of Ivan, and our home was safe.
I insist that my mother take Paxil, and have to monitor that she actually swallows it despite her complaints -- but even so, while she doesn't have actual panic attacks now she continues to be traumatized and lives in fear that it will happen again.
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