{Panic Attack} My Second Nervous Breakdown

My second nervous breakdown came about 1 month into being home. So after living in a hospital then rehab facility for 2 months, I moved him into my aunts house (she has dementia) where we have full time help. My initial assumption was he would be walking by the time we got home so all they would have to do is keep an eye on him.

Yea that didn't happen

He was an agitated and aggressive mess the first few weeks. For his safety I had to keep him restrained to his wheel chair which pissed him off. Despite a bed rail & bed alarm he managed to get out of bed and get semi-seriously hurt (not sure if this was the fault of the overnight caregiver) so then I had to start sleeping at my aunts on a couch in addition to be here all day every day.

I gave up my job, my hobbies, my friends - To care for this new hateful combative and physically abusive person who was so mentally incapacitated he didn't know any of this was going on.

One day, I'm sure again due to lack of sleep - I lost it.

He kept going on and on about my aunt needs to go to the bathroom.
We had just taken her, he saw her on the toilet (she uses a bedside commode) and kept pulling all her things off the table and pulling the table out from her (she's late stage dementia wheelchair bound) and after about 10 times telling him we just took her I just started screaming at him. I was enraged enough to scare my brother into calling half the family over. Prior to their arrival I ended up on the floor sobbing uncontrollable unable to catch my breath - All whilst my dad is still calling me stupid and trying to get my aunt to the bathroom (he's in a wheel chair too...)

My brother kicked me out of the room and took over with my dad. Amazingly he was able to calm him down, the family members got there, and my xanax kicked in. My aunt, the one who saved my ass the last time this happened, stayed the night so I could go home and get a good nights sleep - and then we resumed the normalcy which is my crazy life.

Lessons learned... Sleep is essential. I'm only 31, I've pulled plenty of all nighters, drunken nights out having to be up early the next day, but, none of those were in combination with the amount of stress, pressure, and depression of this new life. Staying up all night to make sure he doesn't fall out of bed was doing nothing but increasing the likely hood of me having some health disaster. Next, Sometimes you have to walk away. It's very hard for me to grasp that I'm talking to someone who's missing a good portion of their brain - Because he's cognizant and smart on so many other levels, I expect him to understand what I'm saying when I say "She just went to the bathroom" Tag team another family member in, it seems sometimes he's just plain ole' sick of listen to me all day long, and needs someone else to tell him to stop.

Finally, it's okay to loose it, you're human. Should I have been screaming at him at the top of my lungs, no probably not - But I did tell on myself to his psychologist who told me just that, you're only human, just try better next time and gave me some diversion/distraction tactics.

The next four months would yield less and less of these crazy events leading me to lose my shit, that or I've just learned to cope better....