Steve.....

About 2 weeks ago Steve started having trouble sleeping. One night with only six hours of sleep followed with five hours the next day, four the next and finally no sleep the next night. That day he went to North Ogden to pick up his son for his Wednesday visit and then went to his parents house in Perry. When it was time to take Hunter home my father-in-law drove Steve to take Hunter home. After dropping Hunter off Steve made a drastic change from just holding it together to losing it.  It got so bad that Steve's parents and his sister took him to the local ER so he could be assessed by a Crisis worker and then transferred to UNI for inpatient psychiatric treatment. 

Since then he has been transferred to another inpatient treatment center nearby since he needed more care than UNI could give him. He has had two CT scans so far (both came back normal), and when he was first transferred to the new location he was in renal failure because he had become extremely dehydrated. He has since been rehydrated and his kidney function is back to normal. 

They started him on ECT on Friday after having a family meeting on Thursday where we discussed the treatment options with his treatment team (A Social Worker, Med Student, Medical Resident, and the Psychiatrist). It was the Psychiatrist's recommendation that ECT would be the best treatment for him since medication hadn't worked for him yet. He had his first treatment on Friday and it went well. Steve called me tonight (a couple of times) and sound MUCH better. The only thing that I kept remembering from the Family Meeting on Thursday is that the Psychiatrist told us this would happen - he would "get better" and then slide back and that his  progress would be "glacial" 

I am hurting for Steve and that his mind isn't working the way it should. I know that when he "comes out" of this his self esteem is going to be damaged. He will feel bad about this "weakness" and being hospitalized again. I will try to explain to him that it wasn't his fault and that nobody will blame him and it doesn't make him any less of a man. It will take some time, but I hope that I will be able to convince him. I hope he will know how much everyone in my family and his family love him,  how much Hunter loves him and how much I love him.