June 04, 2004

A bit of history

My 21 year old son lives with me and has schizophrenia severely. I thought I would write a bit of history about him before going into the bulk of his mental health issues. Although born a happy content baby he did not stay that way for too many years. As an infant people used to ask me if he ever did cry or fuss. He rarely did so and he was a joy to his entire family. Then things started to go wrong. Dan became anxious, depressed, and fearful. When he was 3 years old he broke a basement window on purpose. I guess he wanted to see what sort of damage he could inflict by ramming his big wheel into the window, which obviously broke. My husband was a firm believer in spankings and so this was Dan's first. It was after this spanking that he began showing signs of having trouble.

When he started school he became extremely agitated and had to repeat kindergarten before he could move on to first grade. It was at this point that I thought I would try home schooling him. His level of anxiety remained high in spite of the fact that I tried to make it as calm an atmosphere as possible. Eventually I became concerned that I was not teaching him properly so I found a school that was using the exact same curriculum as I and put him into that school. At first things went very well. The class size was under 12 and Dan appeared to thrive there. But it was not too long before he began to have the same troubles he did while I was teaching him. By the time he was in 4th grade it was necessary to put him into an Educable Mentally Impaired (EMI) program.

At this point my marriage began to crumble. We not only had a child with emotional problems but our daughter was put into Special Ed classes. She only had an IQ of 51 and this was a painful but necessary step. My husband began to get very moody. He did not want to participate in a usual parental role so I was left holding everything together. When Dan did something wrong my husband was too quick to hand out spankings. I eventually gave him an ultimatum. Either stop what you are doing or I would file for divorce. Thankfully he did stop his abusive actions for the most part.

By the time Dan was 7 he began talking about suicide. I was very alarmed and immediately took him to a child therapist. Then began the succession of therapists going in and out of our lives. For a while it appeared that each therapist was able to help Dan but eventually they all ran out of solutions to help he and he was referred to another therapist. This continued to happen for the next 5 years.

At this time Dan talked of seeing a vision inside our house. He said he saw a woman dressed in white walking through our hallways. I cannot tell you the great trepidation that entered into my heart. I now believed that Dan was beginning to get increasingly mentally ill.

By the time Dan was 14 he was put into a school for severely emotionally impaired kids. Unfortunately Dan did not like it there and he spent most of his day in time out. I should mention that Dan had been taking meds to help him from the ages of 10 through 14. Some of the meds made him very lethargic and some made him extremely aggressive. It was because of his aggressive behavior that he was first put inpatient in an adolescent psychiatric ward. This was the first time he had been separated from me and his anxiety level reflected just that. What got him put into a psych ward was the fact that he had tried to take the life of his younger brother who was just 7 at the time. Once Dan tried to suffocate his younger brother by sandwiching him in between his mattress and box springs of his bed. I heard the yelling and immediately intervened. The second time Dan had my youngest in a hold that was choking my son to death. I heard a faint gasp for air and went flying into the room. It was at this point that Dan was hospitalized.

The hospital really was not that much of help. Our medical insurance would only allow him to go inpatient long enough to try him on some new meds. Soon he was home and things were not all that much better.

I will now jump ahead a few years and relate what had happened to get Dan that got him hospitalized in 3 different psychiatric wards for 4 consecutive years. He went through a time period whereby he became extremely anorectic. He had dropped 60 lbs in one summer. I cannot relate how terrified I was. With my background of anorexia food was always downplayed in our home. But to my horror I watched my son go from a healthy weight to extremely thin. At the time we did have him seen once a week by a therapist that specialized in working with young adolescents but it was to no avail. All during that summer Dan was in and out of psychiatric wards like a revolving door. Our medical insurance would only pay for enough days to get him on different meds. Then he would be discharged only to come home to the same mess as ever.

My husband did not know how to cope with the sort of thing we were experiencing so he used anger and physical punishment to alleviate the situation. This only served to make matters worse for all involved. At one point I filed for divorce but dropped the suit when my husband began to go for therapy for himself.

Things with Dan continued to deteriorate. His behavior became increasingly bizarre. I first noted this because there were times when he would not answer to his name. He thought he was someone named Joseph or Alex. At midnight Dan would run away from home thinking he was someone else. I would immediately follow him in my car and coax him into my car. I thank God that each and every time I was able to intercept Dan and have him return home. It was a period of time that frightened me terribly. I felt all alone in dealing with all of this.

During this time Dan finally did something that got him put away for a very long time. At the time Dan was doing self-injury to himself so we kept all sharp objects locked up. One day we forgot to lock up all of the knives and Dan got a hold of that knife that was left out. My youngest son came rushing into the room where my husband and I were seated. He looked so terrified that he could not get any words out of his mouth. Using gestures he showed us that Dan was trying to stab himself in the chest. My husband and I ran to that area of our house to find Dan with a knife pointed into his chest. When he saw us he immediately dropped to his knees and slashed a huge gash down the inner part of his forearm. He looked at my husband and told him that if he made one move towards him he would cut even deeper. My husband stepped out of the room and called 911.

While waiting for emergency help I watched my son stand up and thrust the knife with all of his might into his chest. I jumped in back of him and tried to get the knife pointed away from him. We both stumbled and fell into the shower. Miraculously neither was harmed but my son repeatedly told me that he was insane and for me to get out of the room. I did retreat and he quickly locked the bathroom door.

I then became aware that I had to try to prevent my other kids from seeing a part of this nightmare so I got them situated in another area of the house. Within a few minutes our house was surrounded with at least six police cars. It was at this point that things suddenly seemed surreal to me. The police entered our house and we quickly relayed to them what had happened. At this point all of the officers drew their guns unholstered and stared warily at the locked door. I called Dans name over and over but there was no answer. Quite frankly I did not know if he was alive or not. The officers now had their guns out, pointed upwards and told my son to come out of the room. There was no response and at this time I believed I had lost my son. The policemen picked open the bathroom door lock and opened it. There was my son with the knife pointed at the officers. They pointed their guns directly at him and told him to drop the knife, which he did. He was then taken by ambulance to a hospital to get the wounds on his arm stitched. After that he was put into a psychiatric ward. This time they knew that he needed long-term care. He was depressed, suicidal, and anorectic and showed every sign of having obsessive-compulsive disorder. We did not know at this time that he was beginning to show definite signs of having schizophrenia.

Posted by Kathy on June 4, 2004 04:04 AM