Denial

How do you cope with being a carer for someone who doesn't believe they need a carer?

My husband has PTSD along with assorted physical repairs and conditions. I've been his full-time carer for 7 years. He has the short term memory span of a goldfish and a marginally longer concentration span. I make up his medications into boxes that store up to two weeks at a time - morning, lunch, evening and bed time. I do this because he takes so many different medications for his differing conditions that he can't remember what he has to take or when. If one of us goes away for a night or two he remembers to take his medications. When we're both at home he frequently forgets, even after I've reminded him.

I call reminding him to take his medications caring for him. He calls it nagging. I've dealt with his PTSD alone for 12 years. I've put up with his verbal abuse due to his over-use of alcohol and because, frankly, he's got PTSD. In the past, if I've brought some "bad behaviour" to his attention (when he's sober and could be dispassionate about it) he's apologised and promised to try not to do it again - and he really made an effort not to be that way again.

He's just coming to the end of a three week, inpatient treatment for his PTSD which has included group courses in identifying PTSD symptoms and learning coping mechanisms. I was ecstatic when he said he wanted to go into this clinic, believing that he would come out better than he went in; that he would have his first psychiatric review in 8 years, have his medications reviewed, and come out with some good coping strategies in place.

But since the change in medications he now snaps at me over small things and he tells me, after he's snapped at me over something, "I've realised it's not me, it's the PTSD". So now, instead of blaming alcohol for his bad behaviour he's able to blame his condition. We leave to go home in five days. I'm terrified of what his behaviours will be like when we get home if he's being so dismissive of them before he leaves the controlled environment of the clinic.

Am I wrong in thinking if this is all he's learned in 3 weeks it seems to me that it's been an enormous waste of time and money.