Mental health support

The past 5years have been a rollercoaster of emotions and traumatising events for me and my family.

My two older boys (15) & (12) and I now suffer from Post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and insomnia.

In the last 5 years,

I watched my father take his last breath after battling bowel cancer for the past 4 years he was 47 when he was diagnosed and looking after him in his last few days and watching his last breaths was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I was pregnant with baby number 4 during this time, my first little girl after 3 boys, during labour the midwife broke my waters and it ended in resulting in a cord prolapse, we couldn’t find a heartbeat and the umbilical cord had stopped pulsing. I was rushed into emergency surgery for an emergency c-section but the outcome didn’t look good.

By some miracle after 14 minutes of no heartbeat and presumably dead they managed to revive her and woke up to a live baby, with no doubt in my mind I knew my father was watching over her and managed to save her one way or another.

At 9 weeks old my daughter stopped breathing, we were rushed to starship on the plane where she was on life support for around a week and put into an induced coma until she started breathing on her own again.

At 15 weeks she had a relapse and the exact same thing happened almost scene for scene. This time when she was waking up from her induced coma I felt someone put their hand on my shoulder and I turned around to see who it was, there was no one there but I knew exactly who it was.

After all this my husband and the father of my 4 children woke up one day and said, “I don’t love you anymore” packed his bags there and then and left.

Struggling as a solo mum with four kids and one being a sick baby I couldn’t cope with anything, this was now the second hardest thing I’ve had to do. I became suicidal and just wanted to give up but my children are the reason I didn’t.

After 3 years I met someone and things all seemed to be going well. I knew he was battling a mental illness and after going through it myself and having my best friend commit suicide I decided I could help him.

The first month I spent getting him on medication, going to the mental crisis team and just trying what I could.

He had a drinking problem and in January he got really badly drunk in front of me and the older two children. He was falling over, hurting himself, had cut his ear somehow on the rose bush outside after falling into it, and then he started getting verbally abusive, I couldn’t take it anymore and told him I can’t do this and that it’s over.

He was yelling and swearing so I shut him outside and called the police. Then he found an extension cord outside came up to the window holding it up and smiling at us. He then tried to hang himself in the tree out the front mainly for attention. We were watching from inside and managed to run outside and get him down, we spent hours trying to calm him and talk to him. Little did we know that he would stand up and grab the tyre swing in the tree and quickly pick it up and swing it around his neck.

He lost his footing and the rope was tight due to the weight of the swing we couldn’t get it off, by this time he had blacked out, we are still haunted by the gurgling sounds, my son (15) had to run inside grab a knife and cut the rope.

My partner started breathing and the police turned up and took him to hospital.

The next month was horrible, mental health meetings 3-4 times a week for him, medication changes, pyuschologists, drug and alcohol counselling everything you could think of.

But where was our help?

The children and I got offered nothing but counselling with a 6 month wait list and only a few sessions.

We didn’t sleep or eat for 5 days straight.

We were clearly traumatised and in shock and disbelief and lost with what we should do.

But no one was supporting us.

Acc rang to say we don’t cover mental injuries only physical so we can’t fund any counselling for you and your boys.

Should we keep helping him?

Should we leave him?

Seeing him with the injuries to the neck were hard enough.

He is doing really well now, no drinking and getting all the support he needs. He’s changed a lot. But he is still damaged from his past and childhood and I can’t cope with looking after him anymore, I decided to call his mental health workers and told them I was going to break up with him and when so they could go around to his place and make sure he wasn’t going to do anything stupid. We are no longer together and due to another allergation made against him I’ve decided to cut all contact with him full stop.

I’ve decided I need to heal myself and my children now whatever that may be.

These funds will be used for us.

I’ll pay for counselling instead of waiting 6 months for 6 free sessions.

I’ll pay for my children to learn ways to cope through what they saw.

Ongoing medications, maybe even a much needed holiday.

Just anything I can think of that will help us move on from this.

If you have any suggestions we would love to hear them too.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, horrible story and anything you can do to contribute to us, $1, advice, or a even a prayer, it will all be greatly appreciated it’s time for us to get better now.