She was afraid she'd hurt the children. She knew she wasn't holding up well under the strain of having five children. "She made me promise to protect the children from her and from the disease. 'Promise.' 'Promise.'"

· · · · ·

Things began to move too fast. In what seemed like a cruel repeat of what happened to Lael and John, Amy and Robert's financial ship was going down.

Amy was spending money like it was water, even writing checks on closed accounts. Then she hid the debt from Robert — thousands upon thousands of dollars.

She was also taking her anger and frustration out on the children — particularly her oldest son, Craig. One day she screamed in his face, "I hate you! I hate you!"

Another day, she bit Rebecca on the forehead.

Robert knew it was the disease talking. But how do you explain that to children? Especially children who had known a mother who adored them.

He had to protect the kids, who couldn't even begin to understand what was happening to their lives.

He asked the state for help and was told he could put the children in foster care for a while. He didn't want to do that. He had Amy hospitalized a couple of times. As a father, he could remove the children from the home. But he couldn't remove her unless she was declared incompetent and he became her guardian.

Then he called his mother for help.

Carolyn and Joseph Bishop were missionaries in Guatemala at the time. He stayed there to continue the mission, she came home to help her son.

They got a nanny, who stayed for three months. Carolyn helped find another, who lasted one day. Eventually, they got things squared away, or so they thought. Robert's mother went back to Guatemala.

The spiral continued.

Finally, Robert had Amy ruled incompetent. He became her guardian. When his folks came back from their mission in 1996, the family moved Amy in with them.

Carolyn couldn't believe how much Amy had changed. She stopped talking most of the time. She stopped getting up in the morning. She had delusions. Sometimes she'd sit out on the porch — even in the bitter cold — and wait for hours for her "true love" to pick her up.

Mostly, she'd sit silently and click the TV remote, watching the images fly past her almost-unseeing eyes. She was obviously depressed, even distraught. She was miserable.