psychosis

The fall, winds of change

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Even though autumn is my second favorite season, I always feel sad to see the end of summer. I don’t feel like I enjoyed summer as much as I should’ve. The end of summer brings another change, and not just with the seasons.

Tomorrow Arabella has her last court date. After two years, she will now be off of probation. She spoke with her lawyer, and told him she has since been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Hopefully she will be able to have her charges dismissed. Her crime was classified as domestic abuse, without consideration she was in a manic state with psychosis. She didn’t have the diagnosis at the time of her criminal offense, her mental illness was just beginning.

The first couple months out of jail was a rough ride, but once she finally got a proper diagnosis with the proper treatment she has become the daughter I’ve always wanted her to be. Perfect, no. But finally getting her life back together. She has been holding down the same job for the past two years. My son Alex recently told Arabella he forgave her for hurting us and his hatred towards her. She is a different person now, a better person who wouldn’t think of hurting anyone. This past week she started dating someone new. He seems like a nice guy.

Alex starting dating someone too. He is with Arabella’s friend, the girl who went to rehab a couple months back. This past weekend Alex was playing with his band. By the time Paul, Angel, and I got to the show his new girlfriend was wasted. She was hitting on everyone. She met Angel for the first time and it didn’t go well. Angel tried to tell her she was Alex’s sister but Angel thought his new girlfriend saw her as competition. This girl was drunk and out of control in front of Alex while he was playing. At one point, she could barely walk so we sat her down with some water.

When Alex got done playing, he was upset and wasn’t sure what to do. We thought perhaps their relationship would be over. The next day, Alex told us he gave her an ultimatum. He told her if she wanted to be with him, she had to stop drinking. He told her in return he would quit drinking too. I have been really concerned lately about my son’s alcoholism. Since he started with this new girl, both of them took drinking to a whole new level. She wanted them to do shots first thing in the morning. He has been black out drunk several nights in a row for weeks, maybe longer. I don’t always see it.

It won’t be easy to turn away from alcohol in our culture. When Alex plays, fans often buy the band drinks and shots. The last week or so his eyes were opened. While playing he had the opportunity to see what hard core alcoholism looks like, how it can destroy people and relationships. He said with or without his new girlfriend, he was going to give up drinking because he doesn’t want that to be a part of his future.

I see a lot of change in the air.

The appointment, part 2

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

July was the month of appointments, none of them mine. Matt had an appointment scheduled for his physical. I had a long list of questions to take with me. My mom never allowed anyone to take part in Matt’s care. She wanted full control and everyone had to do what she told them.

I expressed concern to the doctor how many supplements Matt was taking along with his medications. Matt was even taking a multi-vitamin with iron, although he had no medical purpose that I knew of to be taking it. I asked the doctor if Matt should be taking dozens of supplements. Was it possible his previous liver issues were due to taking too many supplements? The doctor said it was likely.

Then I discussed with the doctor the strict diet Matt was on. I told her I would like Matt to try a diet with no restrictions. The doctor asked Matt if he would like to have some ice cream. I told her Matt has no idea what ice cream is because he never had it before. As kids, we never drank milk. There were many foods Matt never had before. I wasn’t sure how his system would respond to a new diet. I was fearful he might have an allergic reaction of some sort. The doctor decided to draw some blood just to check if Matt was deficient and needed vitamins.

The blood draw was difficult for Matt as they couldn’t find his veins easily. The doctor said she could order allergy testing and even a brain scan to see what was going on if I wanted. But I told her I didn’t want to do anything invasive to Matt if what we were doing was working for him. His anti-psychotic meds are working. I didn’t feel the need to do a brain scan to prove he has schizophrenia or another disease or disorder.

The doctor told me the group home called her and pleaded with her to talk to my mom about Matt’s care. I went home and cried. I was overwhelmed with sadness that Matt was forced to live this way for so long with no one stepping in to tell my mom she was going too far. I came to the conclusion that he wasn’t sick, she was. It rang Munchhausen by Proxy warning bells in my head. It made me question everything I ever believed, everything she taught me as truth. I felt anger towards my mom for the abuse. I am so ashamed of my family. I feel nothing but disgust, yet I have to be the bigger person to make the decisions about everyone’s care. Was I making the right call??

Weeks passed, Matt started trying new foods. He ate ice cream cake for the first time at 49 years old. He really liked it. He didn’t have a reaction to it at all. Then he tried pizza. My mom found out that Matt was off his special diet. She became very angry and yelled at the staff member who gave it to him. I was afraid something like that would happen.

The last time we visited Matt he looked happy. I have more compassion towards him. I feel sad I couldn’t have changed things before. But my mom was the guardian and wanted to be in complete control. I couldn’t do anything about it before, but I can now and I am.

Green light, red light 5

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

Another crisis was averted when Arabella rescinded the release order she signed the day after her voluntary commitment. Paul and I decided it was time for us to visit Arabella.

We arrived during adult visiting hours in the evening. Once again we had to lock up all of our belongings including our cell phones and sat in the waiting room with a sad lot of people. Like in an elevator, no one looked long at each other. We all got swept by the metal detector screening us for weapons. Then with a buzz the outside door unlocked and we silently walked down the long hallway into the cafeteria where we waited for our loved ones to arrive.

It seemed like we waited a long time for Arabella to arrive. Everyone else arrived before her. We watched while the others embraced with a smile and sat down as if in a regular restaurant to have normal conversations. Arabella arrived in disarray clutching a notebook with the word password written on it. She said password was the password and if we could read it, we could look inside. She cautioned us that the hospital was bugged. First we had to bug the system to debug the system. It was strange because they were having issues with their phone system which Arabella slid comfortably into a delusion that everything was bugged so we had to go to a different algorithm.

Arabella said she was a genetic freak. She was born of one woman and two men. She had an extra chromosome. She said she was colorblind, men can only see primary colors and women can only see secondary colors. She said she liked apple juice because she ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. When she ate she knew all the answers to all the problems of the world.

She said she needed Bryan to come to the hospital because he was her soulmate, her other half. Her bloodwork wouldn’t be complete without him coming in the have his blood drawn. They were storm chasers and she could leave now because it wasn’t storming. She spoke of science, DNA, physics, time travel, and biology. The things she was saying had an iota of truth but was jumbled and didn’t make a lot of sense. She was unable to hold a conversation with us.

But the most troubling thing was that she was slurring her words off and on. We noticed that when we were talking on the phone several times but thought maybe it was from being sedated. She held her mouth funny at random times and words almost seemed to whistle through her teeth. She said she couldn’t talk because no one ever showed her how to talk right. She also said no one ever showed her how to brush her teeth and she had gingivitis.

We were very concerned about her new symptoms. Then she started singing. They said sometimes she would sing loudly in her room. When visiting time was over, the patients had to line up on one side and the visitors on the other. Arabella went her own way and started to take one of the signs off the wall. We told her she couldn’t take the signs off the wall.

We left in shock. Our daughter was still gone. Would she ever be the same again?

Green light, red light 1

/ Outrunning my demons / 5 Comments

Arabella’s tonsillectomy on Valentine’s Day went smoothly. Four days after the surgery, we did end up taking her to the ER late one evening because she was bleeding from one side. I felt rather iffy about taking her in. I wanted to try ice chips and some other things first but she was having nothing to do with it. She was freaking out and said if I didn’t take her in, she would drive herself. I ended up taking her in more because of her mental state than her physical state. She was starting to spiral. It didn’t turn out to be anything serious.

Other than that, everything was relatively uneventful. For a week, she had a really sore throat and could barely talk. Once she started feeling better, she did nothing but talk. At first I thought she was just making up for lost time. She was awake a lot more than normal. She started asking if she could have a pet snake. I told her no. She went to the pet store to look at snakes, did a little begging but the answer remained the same.

The next several days she didn’t seem to sleep at all. She spent much of her time playing video games, watching TV, and texting friends. She seemed rather agitated if anyone tried to get a word in edgewise and dominated conversations. She started to talk about strange ideas. She said she had Dissociative Identity Disorder and that cartoon characters were her different personalities. Then she said she had autism. She said she was just trying to understand herself and while she wasn’t sleeping her brain was processing a lot of information quickly.

She was awake when I woke up in the morning, awake all day, and pacing the floor in the evening. She was awake when I checked on her in the middle of the night. She told me her best friend Bryan was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and she was the reincarnation of Mary Magdalene. The Bible, YouTubers, and TV shows were talking to her in subliminal messages. She was able to go to a different algorithm in an alternate world.

She set up an appointment with a new therapist. She left on time wearing inappropriate clothing with unwashed stringy hair. I was feeling hopeful about it but later she said she didn’t go. She couldn’t tell me why she didn’t go. I was concerned it might be a probation violation. By that time it was almost a full week of mania and delusions which were progressively getting worse. One of her friends reached out to me saying she was worried that my daughter needed help. She was texting some people nonstop about her delusional thoughts.

Any hopes I had of her living a relatively normal life were completely dashed. The first six months after getting out of jail, she was doing really well. Everyone was getting along. She was taking showers and wearing makeup. She got a job and was scheduled to go back to work after her surgery. Then after surgery everything started falling apart. I don’t even know why.

She said she was cutting herself to try to get out of her body. But now her skin was see through. She had x-ray vision and was able to see into people’s souls. She had super powers. It’s all very hard to explain because it makes so little sense to me.

By Friday morning, she was a lot worse. We knew we had to do something. When I went to check in on Arabella in the morning, she screamed and swore at me wanting me to go away. She was very agitated and didn’t want to talk. I could hear her in her room angrily yelling and swearing on a one sided conversation.

The first call we were going to make was to the psychiatrist’s office which wasn’t open yet. In the meantime, we got ready to leave in a moment’s notice.

Gone

/ Outrunning my demons / 2 Comments

The first indication there was something really wrong was when she came over in the middle of the night on Tuesday and knocked on our bedroom door waking us up. Arabella yelled outside the door that she needed to go to the ER. She was terrified she was starving to death. Her body was eating itself. Arabella is obese. No one in their right mind would think she was starving to death. She went to the ER. We tried to go back to sleep but didn’t have much luck.

Arabella came over very early Thursday morning because she had to tell me something. She told me that an old friend of ours who we haven’t seen in over 10 years raped her psychically while she was unconscious as a child. She could tell he was also raping his daughter (someone she never met) from looking at his Facebook pictures. She was ready to call CPS. She told her sister this and her sister said it wasn’t true and that she couldn’t ruin this nice man’s life by making false accusations.

Arabella then said that Angel was controlling everyone. Angel turned everyone against her except for the other family she moved in with for awhile. We were all deceived. But she also loves Angel because she has Stockholm Syndrome towards her. Angel could force her to laugh and smile. She could cause other people to hurt her.

Arabella told us she has Multiple Personality Disorder. She also has PTSD and when she does she has the ability to go into other people’s bodies and think their thoughts and feel their emotions. Through this she can understand other people’s lives.

Friday morning Arabella came over very early once again and excitedly stated she decoded the Bible. She understands it now. She talked animatedly about complex theological concepts sometimes hitting the mark, sometimes not so much. She said that Mary was raped. She would not allow us to speak. She said she was born again and is a new person. She didn’t feel like she was herself anymore.

Besides being out of touch with reality, I was very concerned at this point she was not sleeping or taking care of herself. She said sleep was something that mortals like me needed. My daughter was gone and there didn’t seem to be a single thing we could do about it because she is an adult. She is finally trusting me again and I was afraid any efforts on my part would break that trust and I would once again be a threat. Everything felt surreal. I can’t believe this is happening and I keep second guessing myself.

Later that afternoon, I just happened to look at my find friends to see when my husband was coming back for lunch. I noticed Arabella was at CPS. I tried to talk her out of reporting our old friend. I panicked and called their office. Angel also called their office several days before warning them that her mentally ill sister believes someone has been sexually assaulted but was not. She was also accusing other people of sexual assault whom she has never met because of her ability to go into the minds of others.

I think my daughter is schizophrenic. My brother is schizophrenic. My cousin is schizophrenic. Little did I know the worst was yet to come…

Residential care

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

The first couple of weeks at residential were really rough. I was afraid that Arabella was going to get kicked out of the program. They told us while she was on the waiting list if she did any self-harm, such as banging her head against the wall like she did at her second inpatient stay, they would release her. She knew that because she was part of that conversation. She hated it there at first. She didn’t have any friends. They purposefully kept her alone to increase her tolerance in a safe environment.

We received nightly calls from her which were not always good. She begged us to send her expensive gifts overlooking the cost of treatment. She bragged about her arguments with staff and how she broke the rules. They had a hard time waking her up in the morning like we did. It wasn’t going well because she didn’t want to be there. She argued with us and hung up on us on multiple occasions. I was always waiting for a call that we should come pick her up and there was nothing they could do for her.

The first call from the therapist was rough because she said that Arabella made allegations of abuse against us which they had to report to social services. Nice! What were they going to do anyway? Take her away? I jokingly said to my husband that maybe then the county would pay for her residential treatment. But nothing ever happened.

Arabella caught on fast, but she couldn’t focus. She was easily distracted which lead to a diagnosis of ADHD. She improved greatly in the program after she was treated for this. I felt like this was a turning point in her treatment. She wanted to be there after that and wanted to get better. She could finally focus on studying and new hobbies.

Some other strange things happened while she was there. Arabella went into a dissociative state and freaked out scaring other patients. She didn’t know who she was or where she was. In this dissociative state, Arabella ate plastic which prompted more testing for pica. Dissociation can be a symptom of borderline. After this she had every single diagnostic characteristic of borderline. I wondered if this had anything to do with her eating nonfood items before. I was completely puzzled.

Before this I did not know she experienced dissociative episodes. She admitted to dissociating in the shower. She also said that she had episodes in her room where she looked down at herself and thought that she was a very bad person that didn’t deserve to live or a very good person. I found it very hard to understand and didn’t even know it was possible or likely without experiencing major trauma.

After the treatment for ADHD and after her dissociative episode ended, there was a time of tremendous growth. She started working on learning and applying skills. I guess what I’m trying to say is that we were very fearful at first about whether or not this treatment was going to work. We had a lot invested in it and not just financially. I think our fear in early treatment was normal, we just didn’t know what to expect.

I think the residential DBT program was a lifesaver. It gave her (and us) more tools to work on some of her mental health issues she was struggling with. But we were also worried about how things were going to be when she got home. Would the skills carry over? Would she be able to live independently or would she need lifetime care? Again, we just didn’t know what to expect in recovery.

Autism heard

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Matt was a normal baby, very bright actually. He knew the alphabet and was saying simple words at age 2. But that all went away.

Even his birth was not a normal event. After crushing back labor, he entered the world with broken bones.

One day the words went away. He stopped talking. He started having nightmares. He screamed instead of sleeping. But I was too young to remember that.

How could such a brilliant mind be stunted? As an adult he can neither read nor write. He cannot solve simple math problems.

For a long time, Matt did not even talk. But the strangest thing happened. He started talking again. But not in the same way that you or I do. He got his pronouns all mixed up. Matt eat..he never referred to himself as I. He also has a speech impediment that makes him difficult to understand by those who did not know him well. This seemed to frustrate him in his younger years and he hit his head with his fist.

The things he said didn’t always make sense to us.

For awhile he repeated the same song in a monotone voice…hands on the table won’t come off, now the hands are stuck on the beard. He would scream if he saw a man with a beard.

But a man with a beard never hurt him.

He was also terrified of tires. He would kick the tires and throw stones at them if people showed up in their cars.

He also heard sticky noises. He would smack his lips to mock the sounds he was hearing. It was a disconcerting sound like chewing with your mouth open times ten.

He also heard the sound of girls laughing at him. Back in the day, he was sent out to recess with the rest of the kids. The older girls teased and mocked his bizarre behaviors. I was there and saw it but was helpless to do anything about it. I didn’t fit in with the other kids because they made fun of my brother. He was an easy target. It made me angry all of the time. But I wasn’t allowed to feel anger. Anger was wrong and it upset Matt. Angry emotions set Matt off and he would hurt himself, my mother, or me. So I withdrew to survive.

Recently Matt was taken off of his anti-psychotic medication due to liver strain. He started to hear voices again. This time the voices were telling him to hurt my niece. But not just hurt her, to kill her.

Fifteen years ago, Matt hurt my daughter. The voices told him to do it. He started to obsess about her, so we limited their contact at the time. It was on her 4th birthday. We didn’t think it would happen…

Afterwards, he muttered to the voices for hours and couldn’t be brought out of it. He didn’t respond when spoken to.

For many years after that my brother was not allowed around my children or any children. He became home bound and isolated from the general population. If it happened again, he was going to be locked up with the violently mentally ill. He started a new medication and silently gently the violent whispers faded away.

My mother asked lately if he was misdiagnosed. Is he schizophrenic too? Or is this some unusual symptom of autism? The doctor said that at this point it really doesn’t matter since it will be treated the same way.

Matt was violent before he hurt my daughter. If we were vigilant enough, we could see it coming on. His jaw would clench, his face contorted, his pupils constricted, and his ears turned bright red.

Sometimes after he hurt someone he seemed very upset about what he had done. Other times he would laugh. It was such an evil laugh that a few asked and we wondered if it was possible that he was demon possessed.

He struggled to differentiate between reality and what the voices were telling him. The voices are very frightening to him.

I think he always had auditory hallucinations, but couldn’t verbalize it to us.

It made me wonder…what if other violent autistic nonverbal people also hear the same voices but can’t tell anyone? How terrifying that would be. What if they think they are being hurt or are hearing a voice that tells them to hurt someone or themselves?

If I would go back to school to get a Master’s degree or PhD in Psychology, I think I would devote time researching this. I couldn’t find a lot of information online. But what is there to find if those who suffer cannot communicate?

This has been incredibly hard for my mom. She can’t mention my niece’s name around Matt. He obsesses about her. He is angry if he thinks that she likes the same things he does and talks about hurting her.

It is hard for us all. I love my brother and don’t want to see him suffer. I love my niece and I don’t want her to be hurt.

How long will it take for the medicine to work?

 

The same old demons, shaken and stirred

/ Outrunning my demons / Leave a comment

Once again, I don’t particularly feel like writing. But here I am sucked into this strange compulsion to tell my story.

My youngest daughter, Arabella, was planning on having a friend up north with us this past weekend. We had to cancel those plans. The old Matt was back in town.

When Matt went off of his medication, the voices came back…the ones that told him to hurt little girls. He said that he wanted to kill our 10 year old niece. He said the voices scared him.

Matt was going to be up north this weekend. Arabella wanted to bring a friend that had long glossy hair down to her waist. She was the kind of girl that Matt might want to wrap his fingers around. He might want to pull her hair and make her cry. Or maybe he would sink his nails into her skin. I imagine those things because those things are possible.

Arabella didn’t understand why I changed my mind about letting her have a friend up north. She never saw the old Matt. She didn’t understand not being able to have friends over like I did. She was angry at me.

At first, I felt a great sadness over the whole situation. But it is strange how soon it became normal again. The agitated Matt…the man with fire red ears and constricted pupils muttering like a mad man. The Matt that flapped his hands together against his chest and paced the floors. The same Matt that hurt me…my family…my mother…my friends…my oldest daughter.

Isolation…but this time it won’t be me. Luke will have to spend some time away. He can’t risk his daughters being hurt.

I feel his pain.

I know what it feels like to see someone I love hurt by someone I love…the conflicting emotions of anger and compassion.

Matt’s needs were always and will always be more important than that of us, his siblings.

All of the old feelings popped up again. It probably didn’t help that I was already diving into it by reading old journals.

I was stirring up old demons while being shaken by the new ones.

I feel bad that I probably won’t be able to see Luke and his family much this summer. I hope that this passes soon now that Matt is back on his medicine again.