I’ve not said much on this thread this far because I’m Aspie and my brain came preconfigured with a saying-the-wrong-thing chip. However, I’ve taken time to dwell on it, and if it’s ok I’d like to give you two pieces of advice based on hindsight from when I was in a vaguely similar situation.
1) Try not to jump to conclusions. You’ve a long road ahead with ups and downs, false hope isn’t helpful but nor is false, er, lack of hope. I thought I’d lost my mum at one point a few years ago, but she came back. The human brain is a quite, quite remarkable device. It’s inordinately difficult I know, but try to have some focus and not panic.
2) Look after yourself. I’m the world’s worst for “I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine, *bang*” because I lack the objectivity to be a good judge of my own psyche. The lesson it took me years to learn is that rather than my problems being a burden / worry on anyone else, or even just relatively unimportant, the crux of the matter is that if I fall over then I’m no bloody use to anyone else. You can only support your family if you’re firing on all four, this is really really important. It’s critical. Do something else, ride your bike, go camping overnight, have a long bath with some music on, whatever works for you, but you must do this if not for yourself then for the benefit of everyone around you. And don’t you even dare feel guilty about it. The bottom line is that you cannot run a marathon at sprinting speeds, and you need to be on your game.
Apologies if this comes across as insensitive, as I said earlier I have an underactive empathy gland so I’m a bad judge of what’s appropriate. But what I do know is that I wish to gods that someone had given me this advice a few years ago.
Hope everything works out for you.
