Eight Hundred

You may know the song..."only 800 hundred miles to go (more to go!)...." Well, this is my 800th post. I think I should be given a cookie and we should all break into a rousing version of said song.

It would probably be my 1000 post had I kept blogging at the rate of which I used to blog. Ah well, such is life.

So, last time we met, I was fretting about the mysterious disappearance of Dove Dark Chocolate. Good news: DDC is back on the shelves. I have a hankerin' to do some hoarding, lest I ever run out of this delight. I can't explain the great DDC drought of Spring 2014, but don't care now that DDC is back in the local stores.

Now that I have chocolate, I can blog. Let's be serious, shan't we? We'll save the sunshine and rainbows and unicorns for a different day.

As you know, my job tends to be very interesting. Sometimes sad, painful; always entertaining, very rewarding, incredibly educational. I've met a lot of amazing people along the way.  My recent job adventures featured something that made me mad and sad. See? Can't be all sunshine and rainbows.

Recently, I had to watch a stable client purposefully have his perfectly-working psychotropic meds stopped....stopped cold because a medical doctor in a hospital ordered them stopped.

One would think a medical doctor would think of better things to do than this but this one did not. I am not a doctor so I should probably watch my tone or make any judgment. I'm sure there is much scientific reasoning requiring the sudden discontinuation of medication for a person with chronic mental illness. What that medical reasoning might be, I do not know. All I really know is I had to watch a wonderfully stable man stop his psychiatric medication.

The client was medically hospitalized for a medical crisis, leading to changes in his overall treatment. The client, who takes anti-psychotic medication as well as mood stabilizers, had been as stable as he had ever been--we are talking in his entire life. I've known him for 15 years and this is by far the "best" he has ever "done." His symptoms of psychosis were quiet, only a whisper. The voices weren't torturing him as they had in years past. He had clearer thinking and was making sense when expressing himself. He had made great progress in his treatment. Although still mentally ill and although he was still on the more bizarre-than-not end of his diagnosis, he was enjoying a relatively "normal" life. Even better:

He was happy.

Insight into how mentally sick you used to be can be terrifying, for you know what it would be like to return to that "place." So, imagine being that client, lying in a hospital bed, knowing, absolutely knowing that you are about to become psychotic and you can't stop it.

You know you are going to start hearing voices.

You know you are going to get paranoid.

You know you thoughts are going to get all jumbled up.

You know you are going to be terrified.

You know your sleep is going to get all screwed up.

You know you are going to think thoughts that aren't true but will seem very true.

You know you are going to think things about people you love that aren't true but there will be no convincing you otherwise.

You know you don't want to go back "there."

I saw him on the second day after his meds had been stopped. He was still asymptomatic. We talked about mundane things, about his desire to have a diet soda, about his medical crisis...and, then about the discontinuation of all his psychiatric medication.

He had no time for the elephant in the room.

He spoke about his fears and apologized in advanced. "I don't know what I'll say." I assured him I would realize it was his mental illness, not him, saying the words of which he was afraid he would say. I told him I would wait for him to come "back." He knew I had waited before, that I had heard his horrific stories and had seen him at "bad" times.

I assured him that I was not and would not be afraid of him. I meant it. I couldn't be afraid of him. I knew the "real" him. He is not his mental illness. He is a person with an unfortunate blessing of chronic mental illness.

He spoke about the waiting....waiting for the symptoms to start. The waiting was the hardest part, as he didn't know when things would start. He knew the probable symptoms--he just didn't know when they would begin their torture.

Thankfully (a weird thing to say), it only took a few days. He didn't have to wait long.

It made me so mad. I watched him fall apart and become something from a decade ago.

Oh, to find the doctor who "did" this. To scream at him and spit as I yelled, "how dare you do this to someone!" I was on the verge of outrage. I wanted the chance to demand an explanation, the rationale. I wanted facts, medical need, medical justification.

The client did indeed start hearing voices. He got paranoid. He got confused and scared and delusional. He kept saying his brain had turned to jello. I let him say what he needed to say. I did not leave and I did not become afraid.

He's out of the hospital now and his medications are slowly being re-started. You can't just re-start some meds lest you lead to nasty things like seizures. He's not back to "normal," to his base-line, as they say. He's able to look back and explain what happened as he got sick, when he was sick, how it was like to come out of having jello for a brain. Yet, he still has intrusive thoughts, disorganized thoughts, scary thoughts. He can't put all the words together the way he wants them.

He knows he has to wait.

I know I have to wait, too.

Trust me when I say that I am the more impatient of the two.

And, so he waits for his meds to kick in, hoping that they work as well as they did before they were abruptly stopped. He knows there is potential that the meds will not "work" as well as they did before this. Another cruel reality in the world of mental illness is that sometimes meds don't work as well when the are stopped and then resumed. If that happens, I am going to go find that doctor and smack him in the head as hard as I can while I am screaming obscenities.

You'd think the client would be angry, but he is not and he was not. He is the understanding one of our motley crew. He knows that he was very medically ill and that the medical doctor did what he thought needed to be done.

He was scared but never mad.

In his crisis, he is teaching me. He's patient. He has faith. He remains confident. He isn't angry or blaming or callous. He is understanding, reflective, honest.

In life, he is teaching me. He is a gift. He is my rainbow and sunshine.

He's not a unicorn, but he is my rainbow and sunshine. And for that, I am truly grateful.

I look forward to his "return." When he's "back," I'll make sure he gets that diet soda he wanted. And, I'll behave--I won't go looking for that doctor because he wouldn't want me to do that. I will honor my rainbow and sunshine.

As for the unicorn, I'm gonna go out and find one and stick that unicorn's horn right up that doctor's ass.

After all, I promised to behave. I didn't promise not to stick a unicorn's horn anywhere.   :-)

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Happy 800th blog to all of you.
Godspeed, Sabine. Know that we are thinking of you and your family. Much love to you, KG.
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