Mr. Trumble

Krista Trumble was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis when she was a teenager.

Ulcerative Colitis is an inflammatory bowel disease that results in ulcers, long-term inflammation, and eats away at the lining of your intestines. This disease is not normally very serious, except in her case. She was constantly in pain from her disease, and was starting to lose control of body functions.

The only way to fully cure her would be for doctors to do extensive surgery that required a lot of extractions and cuts into her body, which she was uncomfortable with.

Trumble said, “The thought of her body being butchered like that, she would rather kill herself then live the rest of her life like that… she just couldn’t take it anymore.”

One night Trumble had to bring her into the hospital and in order to save her, they had to give her a large dose of the steroid prednisone. One of the side effects to this drug is that the user is unable to sleep for long periods of time.

She was going maybe three weeks to a month where she was only getting around two or three hours of sleep at night. Trumble says, “she was literally losing her mind.” Her stomach was getting better, but due to the steroid and illness she was becoming depressed and feeling suicidal.

The prednisone was doing it’s job in letting her stomach somewhat heal, however she was still in constant pain, “Imagine intense menstrual cramps every day for three or four years, that’s what it was like for her” explained Trumble.

After taking the prednisone, Trumble’s wife was in what is known as a steroid psychosis. This is when a patient prescribed steroids develops psychiatric symptoms such as mania, delirium, and depression. “Every day after [the day she was given the prednisone], before we go to bed it was this hour long discussion of her asking me ‘why won’t you let me kill myself’ or ‘why won’t you help me kill myself,’” Trumble says. “We had that discussion every night for, I don’t know a year or so… it was brutal.”

Trumble was taking his wife to a support group in Laguna Beach where she could meet with other people who were feeling suicidal and other psychiatrists. After these meetings, she told him that she was getting better and was no longer suicidal.

A while later she told him that there was something wrong with her head and that she needed an MRI. She told him that the psychiatrists at the group would not give her a recommendation to receive an MRI.

“What she said is, if she says she’s about to kill herself then they have to check her in and that would be one of the diagnostics is they have to give her an MRI… she thought maybe she has a tumor or something like that” When they do that, they take phones away and they’re not going to let you have contact with anyone for four days. “She warned me about this.”

“That’s something about someone who’s suicidal, they’re going to make you feel completely opposite… it feels like everything’s good everything’s comfortable and life’s good… So she went supposedly to check herself in, and at about the second day I didn’t hear anything from her I had this weird feeling, like I needed to go down there and see her and just make sure.”

He went up to Laguna Beach and didn’t see her car in the parking lot of the hospital, so he went to Mission Viejo Hospital and her car wasn’t there either. So then he went back to Laguna Beach and asked about his wife checking herself in, but they declined to give him that information. So then he started to get really nervous, and after providing some proof of identity, they informed him that she hadn’t checked herself in.

“At that point, I’m driving around San Clemente, San Juan… to all the possible places she could jump off a cliff or jump off a bridge, or run out in front of a train or something like that but I didn’t find anything.”

He went back home and started looking through their credit card records, cell phone bills, and related items to see if she had been making calls to places or put charges on credit cards that were questionable. He didn’t see anything, but as he was leaving the room he noticed a piece of paper with some login information to their SPG account, a guest loyalty program that tracks hotel stays. After logging into that, he discovered that she checked herself into a hotel in Carlsbad. He drove down and found her car in the parking lot of the hotel.

He told the concierge that his wife and him just got in an argument and that he needed to get in the room, but didn’t have the key. They let him go to the room with a security guard escort. He starts knocking on the door, and there’s no answer. They had to use an electronic system to open the door, and when they did they discovered it had been locked from the inside.

“At that point, I knew she had killed herself. I told them the truth, I said my wife’s suicidal she’s probably in there, she probably killed herself. You need to call 911. The security guard kicked the door in, and we found her inside. She had basically ODed.”

“She had a kindle in the corner, and I was curious as to why she would bring her kindle with her. So I logged onto her kindle and discovered she was on google groups and I come to find out that she’s in a google group chat for suicide. There’s these groups, that tell you how to do it so that you don’t end up making yourself into a vegetable where you’re still alive but you’re not able to control yourself. They weren’t telling her how to do it, but they were advising her on the best way to do it. Through her conversations with these people, I figure out that she was using her business credit card to buy the drugs that she needed. One type of drug that she needed, you could only get from a psychiatrist. So her thing was that she was bouncing around psychiatrists getting prescriptions and then switching to the next psychiatrist- but she was really just stockpiling all these drugs to make what is known as an Amitriptyline cocktail, to that would slowly sedate her and lower the rate of her heartbeat.”

“Afterwords, like the whole story of what was going on with her all started to piece itself together”

The Trumbles had a daughter who had just turned two at the time. “I wasn’t concerned about why she didn’t love me enough to stay alive, but we have this daugher now… that part was pretty hard.” For Trumble, the hardest part will be deciding when to tell her. “We tell her that her mom’s body is broken, but eventually we’re going to have to have that conversation. Even in middle school… I don’t know how a middle school age kid would take that, if they’re mature enough to understand that it wasn’t that she didn’t love you, it was that she was hurting every day of her life.”

Trumble never really went to any support groups after her death, “That’s just not how I’m wired,” he explained. He went to one support group with a teacher who used to teach at SJHHS, but it didn’t help him much. He’s also always been very anti drug. Not just recreational drugs, but medication as well. “I never tried to get prescription for anti anxiety or anti depressants or anything like that, I just deal with it.”

“I even got to that point, where I was like I don’t know if I can do this anymore… I just got really reckless in my life.” One day he tried to move a 400 lb shelf and he thought to himself, “okay if I move it up to my bedroom by myself, fine. If I drop it on myself I’m dead. So either way, something’s getting accomplished here.”

After seeing her suffer for so long, “in some respects, it’s like okay she’s not suffering anymore.”

“A lot of people [who are suicidal] don’t realize that yes it’s the end of your problems, but it’s the end of everything else too,” explained Trumble.

Before the death, it was just between Trumble and his wife. When she really started to get sick, her mom would come to the house to help the situation. She still part time lives with Trumble to help take care of his daughter. “I mean, it’s not every mans dream to live with his mother-in-law, but we make it work.”

Things have definitely turned around for Trumble. He says it’s good when there is something in your life that can you can use to pull yourself out, and for him it was coaching football at Saddleback and caring for his daughter. “It’s good to stay busy…  and try to focus on the positive stuff everyday. Eventually you get through it.”

He now has a girlfriend and is very happy. “If you keep putting one foot in front of the other, eventually good things are going to happen. And for me, good things are starting to happen.”