Gerda Rises Up to Go On

[Gerda]

KmL, I think you are a nurse? I always see you post about medical things, and I have a question for you and maybe Hamburg and anyone else reading this who knows about stuff like this!

I have been thinking a lot about the last 25 years of my life with H, especially because I am reading these books on surviving narcissistic abuse. The incredible thing is that yesterday my brother told me that he had been diagnosed with NPD as a teen! I knew he was troubled, he was in the psych ward, did a lot of drugs, there was a lot of violence and craziness at home, etc. While reading these books, I keep thinking about how I was so familiar with cluster B because of my mother and to some degree my dad and thinking that I may have been attracted to that in H even thought what I thought was that he was the opposite of my family and anything I had known as a child! But my brother telling me that BLEW my mind. I grew up just surrounded by that, and I was known in all the extended family as the sane, clear one, the peacemaker, the one who could carry the whole family on her shoulders and fix everyone's problems. My mother was definitely cluster B, she was totally mad and definitely had an MLC at the exact same year of her marriage as H did in mine. But now realizing that about my brother! Wow. And now looking back at intimations of H's cluster B or NPD or whatever he is throughout our M, and all the light pretzeling I did all these years, and the in-and-out debt, etc., I can't deny that this is not just MLC. I think my H was battling it all our marriage, and finally at the triggers of midlife, he couldn't do it anymore and it was unleashed at full force.

My question for you, KmL -- H's triggers were massive financial strain, our business on the edge of collapse and all that we had built threatened with crumbling -- and then he started sh*tting blood and thought he had cancer. He began training for a marathon and started running 10-20 miles per day and eating no carbs and taking magnesium citrate. He lost around 80 pounds and stopped sh*tting blood but I am sure you are aware of the effects of the magnesium citrate. He felt he was being healed, I felt like he had an eating disorder, but the MLC was in full swing by then. At one point he told a friend of mine who had emergency colon surgery about the wonders of magnesium citrate and the dosage he was taking and she contacted me because he was taking 2-5 times the recommended dose and was taking it EVERYDAY. And sometimes H would have these episodes while running where he became faint and would have to lie down on the running path. He thought it was dehydration and didn't connect it with the mag citrate. My friend did research on mag citrate and found stories of people who had literally gone crazy from taking too much of that. Her doc had given her extremely grave warnings about using it very judiciously and only a couple of times when she was undergoing treatment. She was convinced that H's insanity was caused by the magnesium citrate. I told her it was a lot more complicated than that but I started tracking his use and saw that he would go through a bottle with 50 doses in maybe 10 days. I became really alarmed and shared the research with him. You can predict how that went over.

I know that there is a lot going on with H, many layers of mental health issues, trauma and physical issues. And my faith gives me another kind of take as well. But I wonder what your take is on the mag citrate and the physiological side of the story. He is still taking it at the same levels, I am sure. He is also an alcoholic and is juuling. I know there is nothing I can do it about this but for my own clarity I wondered about your take on that supplement in the context I have explained.

XO from Gerda