It's going to take a while before I can get a handle on the AC remote. I'm not even going to try to tackle the sleep feature on the AC at all. I can pick some technical things easily, other things are impossible.

My husband knows he has a problem with alcohol, anxiety, and his temper. I know that he suffers from depression. He doesn't cycle. After I was diagnosed with MS, he had a hard time dealing with things, and I got him to see a pdoc. He tried Prozac for a month, went twice, and quit. He went to one tdoc appointment and refused to go back. I recently made an open-ended offer to make an appointment if he was interested in going back, but he refused and wasn't happy I offered. I try to be supportive, but try not to be too intrusive because that can set him off. When he gets agitated I try to stay out of his way. It's more of a case of me adjusting my behavior to suit his than anything else.

He works very hard and usually burns out at jobs within 4 years, but has been at this one for 5. He is not happy, but neither are all the other experienced guys because of how the company is being run. I think he behaves himself at work and brings his frustrations home with him though. He tends to let things go until he blows up. Sometimes I worry he'll lose it and quit one day. He recently got into a huge fight with a very close friend he also works with. He was more than justified, but he has told his boss he refuses to work with the guy. I don't think it will be a problem, but it is an unfortunate situation. I hope they make up.

My father is is a BPI alcoholic. He turned 69 in May. He has slowed down a lot, but not entirely. His baseline is depression now, he drinks less, and he has a slight bit of some form of dementia now (probably due to his drinking). But he is still capable of very self-destructive periods of mania and experienced one as recently as last year. He has bankrupted himself and his business over the past 2 years or so during manic episodes. I don't know if it's because of the dementia, but when I was living him prior to my suicide attempt he was manic and became physically abusive at one point, and he hadn't been like that since his mid to late 50s.


The barium swallow will basically just identify what my swallowing problems are. I've had one before. They gave me graham crackers with different consistencies of barium to eat and they took X-rays while I tried to swallow them. It has it's limitations though. Unless they have come up with something new, they aren't able to see how well you do with thin liquids because you can't get barium in that consistency, and they can't see how you do with crumbly things like crackers because everything you eat has to be coated in barium, and those are two things people have a lot of trouble with.