…”severe bipolar disorder with psychotic features, and an inability to manage her own affairs or business.”
I have never been diagnosed with anything except seasonal allergies.
I’m the founder and CEO of a small architecture firm. Forty employees. I started it in my garage twenty years ago. For the last six months, I’d been struggling at work. Falling asleep in meetings. Forgetting things. Slurring words in a client presentation in August. My board had started asking quiet questions. I’d thought I was burning out.
The hearing in the letter was in three weeks. My husband, Greg, was asking a court to appoint him as my emergency guardian. Which would give him control of my medical decisions, my finances and my company.
I didn’t say anything to Greg. I went to work that day like normal. At lunch, I drove to my doctor’s office. I told her everything. She ordered a full blood and urine panel, and she put a rush on it.
The results came back two days later. There was a prescription sedative in my system. A strong one. One I’d never been prescribed.
My doctor called the police herself.
A detective came to my office that afternoon. I gave her everything. Screenshots of the smartwatch reminders. The message from Greg’s sister. The guardianship petition. My blood results. She looked through it all and said, very calmly, “Ma’am, you’re not crazy. Somebody’s been working very hard to make you look crazy.”
It took a month to put the whole thing together. Greg had been crushing sedatives into my evening tea, on nights before important meetings. His sister, a nurse, had gotten them for him. The plan was simple. Make me look unstable at work. Get me removed as CEO. Then, with a “diagnosis” from a doctor his sister knew, have a court give him control of everything I’d built.
The doctor who’d signed my “diagnosis” had never examined me. He lost his license.
Greg and his sister were arrested in November. The guardianship petition was dismissed. The judge also ordered a protective order.
My board was horrified when I told them. Every single member apologized for doubting me. I stayed on as CEO.
The strangest part, honestly, was how quickly I felt like myself again. Two weeks after I stopped drinking Greg’s tea, I was sleeping normally. Thinking clearly. Laughing at things. It was like waking up from a six-month nap.
I filed for divorce the same week Greg was arrested. It was final in the spring.
I had a new smartwatch installed on my wrist, my own this time. I set one reminder. Every night at 9 p.m. It just says, “Make your own tea.”
