Hi everyone,

Thanks so much for your advice, I appreciate it more than I can express. I've been feeling quite desperate and scared to be around her.

My partner's mother started taking her meds the other day and seems to be a bit better. She seemed almost 100% two nights ago and then seemed a bit out of sorts again last night. Apparently she has been quite nasty to her daughter but nothing too irrational.

@moremi, yes what I meant by not looking like herself was that she has a strange look in her eye. When I first met her she was well and had a very warm look to her, but somehow she seems to harden up when sick? she has twitches as well, mainly the sides of her mouth. I can't tell whether it's a tic, her smiling, or her trying to smile to cover up the fact that she is so scared of everything. Which is very sad.

@cocobeans, luckily she lives very far from us. It's a 24-hr flight and quite pricey so I don't think we'll see too much of her. Bit worried about the wedding though. I'm prepared to live a life with her in it, I know it's not her and she's sick and I want to support my fiance, but she has to be on meds.

@MissLaura, it's a sad story actually. My fiance and sister were raised almost single-handedly by her. They recognise she has a problem and get extremely frustrated by it. I can tell it hurts them a lot. They say she has been diagnosed as bipolar but his sister also acknowledges some paranoid schizophrenia in there. They both want to place a distance between them and her now, after this holiday, because she won't admit she has a problem. I find that so sad though, because it's no one's fault, and the idea of them not having a mother in their life is very sad as well.

@touchingsaturn, thanks for everything you said there. She doesn't seem to respond to anyone telling her to take meds. I don't know, I find it completely overwhelming. I've never seen anything at all like this ever. I don't know whether to laugh or cry and I really want to back away from the situation but at the same time support my guy who is struggling himself with dealing with it.

She leaves for home on Monday. I'm really hoping she is fine by then as she is taking her meds consistently. We're going away for half of this weekend and taking her with. I hope she doesn't find the trip too stressful ... is there anything that might trigger her getting sick?

Thanks so, so much guys for all your help. I really can't tell you how much better it feels to touch base with people who know what they're talking about and who understand what I'm talking about. It's hard to talk to my fiance about it because I can't tell him his mom petrifies me, so you have all made me feel not alone anymore.