Just Another Damn Thing to be Strong About

Tag: schizophrenia

  • 7 Years Ago

    Sometimes when I read my past Facebook memories, I laugh. Other times I wonder if I was smoking crack and have amnesia now. I can see how I used humor to fake my way through pain and trauma. Every once in awhile I read a memory that is so raw that it kind of takes my breath away.

    Seven years ago, I wrote that my son was hospitalized for a psychotic break. I didn’t write about the events that lead up to it. I never really do because those breaks are so terrifying that I chose not to relive them. That particular break happened on an airplane. We were coming back from Maryland where he’d been turned down from a study at the National Mental Health Institute. I had been hoping that the study would be the answer and bring my sweet, funny boy back. He had marijuana in his system, so he was rejected. I was so upset. I couldn’t believe he had sabotaged the opportunity. I didn’t think I could live with the voices anymore. I wanted help.

    We sat next to each other on the flight home and I could feel the tension in his body. He was whispering to the voices to go away, that he was sorry, that he would kill himself to make them happy. He would kill himself to make me happy. His eyes were glittery and dark. He gritted his teeth and bit his fist and punched his head. He didn’t scream until we were off the plane. He kept opening the car door on the highway and screaming that I should just kill him and put us both out of our misery. I took him straight to a hospital. I thought that was as bad as it would get. I didn’t know that was just part of the ride.

    The fear of the psychotic periods is always there. I’m always watching for the voices to take over. I can’t hear them, but I know them. And I’m afraid of them. I don’t know how to fight them, but I’ve never been willing to flee them. So instead I became their friend, doing anything I could to keep them at bay. That didn’t work either. Instead it gave them power that I can’t even write about it. I guess that this is an actual trauma response called fawning. Great. I’m freaking Bambi.

    Seven years ago, I thought I HAD to do it all–be positive, make everyone laugh, be a mom, be a partner, be a teacher, take care of everything, and everyone. I posted seven years ago that I didn’t have anymore to give. Yet, I can see that I’m still doing that–giving more than I have. I’ve been working on my health, but being a classroom teacher in a classroom full of other trauma survivors has been a set back. It’s brought out the damn fawn again.

    The snow days and long weekend have been a reset for me. I have to go back and finish my contract, but at least I have enough tools to change my response. And I am awakening to the idea that I am not trapped. I have choices. Maybe my students will learn that. Maybe they won’t. I just hope that when this post pops up in seven years, I will read it and think–“Yeah, that was then, but look where I am now.”

  • It’s getting fishy

    School starts today. I am lying in bed, seriously thinking about just not going to the district kick-off. It’s agonizingly painful for me to go and make small talk and be pleasant and cheerful and listen to things I really do not care about. It’s a job. Why can’t it just be a job? You show up. You do your thing. You leave. Why do we have to do this big rah rah cheer thing? It’s not the Olympics. Sometimes it feels like that though. Like a hundred mile race though the desert 🏜 with no water, hidden pit vipers, and tiny terrorists aiming paint guns the whole way. Before I went to bed last night I was thinking about the Hunger Games. The school year is an arena, each equipped with its own sort of torture. All victors get ten weeks of summer and maybe a retirement check if they can keep their heads in the game long enough. I tell you right now. I see the finish line and I don’t know if I have anything more to give to get there.

    To my credit, I am starting the year off in survivor mode again. I was trying to think of WHEN I haven’t started the year off without a crises. It’s been a long time. My son is still missing. I took a walk through his room last night. He left his wallet. He has no ID. He left his phone charger. He can’t communicate. He left his pot. That’s when I got scared. There is no way in hell he’d not come back for his pot. So then I started freaking out for real. What if he CAN’T come back? Like if he drove off a cliff or into the river. I’d know that by now, right? He could be stuck somewhere with no gas. I hate to think of him in this heat with no water. I know how bad he is and I am starting to despair. The voices may not be real to us, but they are to him. And I know the voices. They live in my house and they are bastards. They are taking him down. And I know after the angry voices, come the suicide voices. And while I know suicide is a reality of living with schizophrenia, that’s not how I want it to go down. I did make a police report, but that’s have never helped before. He will come home. Or he won’t.

    So I am lying here thinking about all this. I wish I was at the levee right now with my ducks and geese and trout jumping just below me. I’d sit on my tailgate looking down at the concrete assessing what to paint before the sun gets too hot. All the easy stuff is done. I guess the fish face next? And for a little while maybe I wouldn’t think of anything else.

    But I guess I will do what I always do. Get up and act like I am there for the party.

  • Broken System?

    20663605_10210045654482668_2564497890061079270_n

    My son is still psychotic.  He locked himself in the bathroom yesterday, so that he would feel safe.  He ranted on about not really being schizophrenic. The drugs were poisoning him.  EVERYBODY from his ninth grade math teacher to Donald Trump was trying to frame him for murder, even our dog.  Somewhere in all his garble he decided that if he worked for DEA, all the problems of the world would be resolved.  I know better than to engage in his ramblings, but sometimes I can’t help myself.  So when he said the thing about the DEA, I said something like, “Shayne, you can’t work for the DEA, you can’t even put on pants.”  He unlocked the bathroom door and went to his room and put on a pair of sweat pants.  The pants belonged to my father.  My mom bought them in the 70’s when velour was a thing and my dad weighed like 200 lbs.  When Shayne wears them he looks like he is playing dress up.  So he stood in my doorway, in the ridiculous pants, his eyes wild and glitttery to prove he could put on pants.  Then he decided I was going to kill him, so he left.  That’s when I called the doctor at Denver Medical.  I told her he wasn’t ready to be released and she should have listened to me and it was on her if something bad happened to him or someone else.

    I realize that makes me about as irrational as Shayne.  But I am so TIRED of being told the system is broken.  I know it’s broken.  I have dealt with every broken part of it in the past five years.  I know emergency rooms are holding tanks when there are no beds.  Patients can be held in stripped down rooms with security gurads watching, with no treatment for days.  We’ve done that.  I know community mental health centers have high turn over and are staffed with young people who have limited experience and usually have no idea how to handle someone as critical as Shayne.  Doctors in those centers are overworked, and underpaid, and leave often.  We’ve done all that too.  Doctors in private practice are hard to get in to and then are med pushers.  Shayne was on four different drugs at one time.  Even if I am not a doctor, I know that drugs interact with each other, and if something isn’t working, adding another drug to the mix isn’t going to fix the problem.  You can’t just fire a doctor and go to another, because you can’t run the risk of running out of drugs, because even if the drugs aren’t working right, having no drugs is very, very bad.  I have been told to call the police.  The police know Shayne.  They’ve brought him home in the middle of the night.  They’ve returned his stuff when he has abandoned it on the side of the road.    They’ve bought him sandwiches out of their own pockets.   But unless a patient is suicidal or homicidal, or doing something illegal, the police won’t intervene.  It is not illegal to be psychotic.  And sometimes being psychotic isn’t even enough for hospital staff.  Shayne’s been turned away from clinics time after time because he isn’t a danger to himself or others.  I have been in every scenario possible and know how its going to go down every time.  I know if I want Shayne to get the help he needs, I have to demand it.  And this time, I’m not letting the doctor off the hook for releasing him when he wasn’t ready.  How many school shootings and homicides and suicides have to happen before the system changes?  That’s not happening to my son, if I have anything to say about it.

    The doctor was a big girl.  First of all, she talked to me herself.  She didn’t communicate through the layers of medical assistants and nurses and office staff.  I’ve come to hate the layers of medical communication.  She didn’t tell me anything, I didn’t already know, but  she said I could call her to let her know what was going on and she would keep my number and call me herself.  Maybe if Shayne ends up back there, she will work harder to do what needs to be done.   In the meantime, I’ve taken over being in charge of Shayne again.  He threw his meds away on trash day, but I have an extra bottle from the doctor that prescribed drug after drug after drug.  I have them locked up and I’m treating my twenty-four year old like a toddler again.  I have learned enough about how the drugs work to know what I’m doing.  I think I can get him back on track myself.

    My big question is this–Is this always going to be my life?  I don’t know if I can sustain this level of care by myself for thirty or forty more years.   The last five have taken its toil.  I can’t ensure that my other child is safe.  And she wants to get as far away from her brother as possible.  Sometimes I wonder if fighting for him is the right thing.  I just don’t know how to stop.  He is my son.  My responsibility.  I can’t just turn that off.  I can’t fix the broken system by myself, but I am done accepting “the system is broken” as an answer for inadequate care.

  • On the Street

    1233148_10200461525805441_1757740866_oI told the doctor in Denver that Shayne wasn’t ready to be released, but he was sent home anyway.  On Friday, Shayne walked out of the house wearing a baseball shirt inside out, shorts, and a red terry cloth bathrobe.  Darian and I told him not to go, but he said he couldn’t stay.

    He has disappeared before.  Once he jumped out of the car at a stoplight because he thought I was kidnapping him.  Another time he ran away from me in Pueblo because he didn’t want to go to the hospital.  A lot of time he leaves because he doesn’t want to do something I want him to do–like he doesn’t want to see a counselor, or take his medicine, or else I catch him smoking pot.  Pot might be legal, but it reacts badly with his medicine and makes his symptoms worse.  Usually when he leaves, there is a period when I am happy to see him go.  His behavior can be exhausting and frustrating.  My anger doesn’t last long.  And I start to wonder where he is and if he is okay.  A week of that and I might as well be crazy too.

    In the beginning days of this illness, I would look for him.  I would put up flyers.  I’d post it on Facebook.  I’d spend all day combing places he might be.  I wouldn’t sleep.  After a year of several disappearances, I decided that when Shayne left, I wasn’t going to look for him. He can survive on the streets, but he doesn’t do it well.  Usually, he is in some phase of psychosis that makes him suspicious of others.  He won’t seek out help, instead he will hide out alone.  He might decide to walk to another city because he’s meeting someone there, like Steven King maybe.  He eats by walking into lobbies of motels and eating the fruit and cookies put out for guests, or the free continental breakfasts.  Sometimes he steals a sandwich from Walmart.  To date, he always comes home, eventually.  When he does turn up, he is dirty, hungry, dehydrated, and sunburned.  And usually ready for help.

    Today, Darian and I went to the grocery store for some milk.  On the way home, I asked Darian to turn into a neighborhood that is off our usual route.  It’s a neighborhood that I used to ride my bike through when I was a kid and I’ve always liked it.  She drove through it and missed the exit I wanted her to take and took the next.  Shayne was walking down the sidewalk.  Darian pulled over and I told Shayne to get in the car.  He did.  He looked okay.  Not too sunburned.  He wasn’t wearing his robe anymore.  He said he lost it.  He probably abandoned it somewhere.  He told me that he’d been taking his meds.  I’d been thinking he could take all the meds at once, and end it all.  Or maybe throw the pills in the river.  Both are real possibilities.

    When we got home, I asked him if he wanted me to cook him something and he said that he was okay and he took a shower and went to bed.  He is still sleeping.  I am not sure what comes next.  Maybe I should take a nap too, because honestly, I am emotionally drained.  I feel like I should be coming up with a game plan, but I’m out of ideas.  I’d like some help, but I don’t even know what to ask for anymore.

     

  • OMG

    background conceptual contemporary creativity
    Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

    I hope this is my last post for quite some time about dealing with inadequate mental health care.  Shayne was released earlier this week, even though he really wasn’t completely ready.  He is still having problems filtering out his hallucinations, is a tad bit paranoid, and still really freaked out about freaking out so badly–sort of like PTSD actually.  But whatever, treat ’em and street ’em is the motto.

    So most times a release from the hospital comes with scheduled appointments to outpatient providers within a few days.  Shayne had appointments at the place in town where he goes for therapy.  He hasn’t been going there very long, but his counselor is solid.  She’s been around the block a little and at least is a little knowledgeable about his diagnosis.  She also made it possible for an actual psychiatrist to work with Shayne, so he can get his medicine at the same facility–that’s good care–professionals working together to provide wrap around service.  So I thought.

    When I took Shayne into his appointment yesterday, the staff didn’t realize that Shayne had an appointment.  I pulled up my phone and showed them my confirmation text.  They looked at each other, puzzled, then got on the computer.  Then the receptionist got on the phone, right in front of us and called someone and asked about a name I’ve never heard of before.  So I said, “That’s not who Shayne usually sees.”  The receptionist told me that he would meet with a case manager since it’s an after care appointment.  A few minutes later, two women who are barely old enough to be adults ambled in with their Sonic cups and stood in the receptionist area, shooting the breeze with each other.  The receptionist nudged one of them and told her that her appointment was there.  The girl literally said, “I have an appointment?”  She proceeded to sit down at the computer screen to read about the appointment.  She looked up and said in my direction, “What kind of after care?”  It was all I could do to not say, “Are you freaking kidding me?”  Instead I employed my deep breathing and spelling Pittsburgh three times method of calming myself.  I don’t want to get into the whole back story in the lobby with an audience, so I just said, “Shayne can tell you what he needs.”  I wasn’t really sure that he could, but he isn’t six either, and I could sense his agitation and frustration.   So she asked him to come back to her office and I asked how long the appointment would last and was told an hour.  An hour reassured me because he was hyper anxious and needed to talk to someone who could help him.  Not that I had a ton of faith in the case manager or whatever she was.  So when Shayne went back, I said to the secretary.  “That can’t happen again.  The person that helps him needs to know what she is doing, or at least pretend to, or he is just going to walk out of here.  He is not going to trust anyone who acts incompetent. He is schizophrenic, not stupid.”  I guess I shouldn’t have expected a response.  But they just stared at me.  No one said a word.

    So I left to take Darian to turn in a job application across town.  The phone rang before we even got a mile away.  Shayne was finished.  I glanced at the clock.  He hadn’t even been there ten minutes.  They have rescheduled him with his normal therapist for next week.  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask why that wasn’t done to begin with, but what is the point?  He sees the doctor today.  This is his first appointment with her.  Please, God, let her know what she is doing.

    In the meantime, I am duck sitting again.  James collects bugs for her.  I gave her some wasps yesterday that I found floating in the rain barrel.  She’s kind of a brat though, so I didn’t go out of my way.  Maybe I will have Shayne gather grasshoppers for her.  It would be ironic if the duck turned out to be a better treatment plan than what modern medicine is offering.