Archive for July, 2009

Meeting Challenges

{ July 30, 2009 @ 11:46 pm } · { challenges in education, coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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kayaking on the Puget Sound

kayaking on the Puget Sound

Most of the challenges I have met and overcome since my diagnosis have been cognitive challenges. I first had to acknowledge that I had Shizoaffective Disorder. Then I had to identify coping mechanisms and put in place strategies that would keep my symptoms at bay. Once I stabilized, I set out new, educational challenges for myself. I completed one masters program and am in the midst of receiving my second masters degree. I have been pleasantly surprised by what I have accomplished while dealing with my illness.

I have also fallen short of a challenge or two. When I was hired by the Chicago Sun-Times to cover high school sports, I felt like I was at the place I wanted to be. I saw myself moving up the ladder at the paper and truly wanted to spend the rest of my days as a sports reporter. I dreamed about some day being on my beloved Cubs’ beat and doing sports talk radio shows as the town’s Cubs’ authority. I worked hard during my first year plus there, but then things got rough.

It took over a year for my boss, the high school sports editor, to even know I existed, and when he finally learned my name, he found faults with everything I did. When I got a job right, he rarely if ever praised me. When something was amiss, on the other hand, even if it wasn’t my doing, he laid into me and he was relentless. He fired me and rehired me several times and didn’t even acknowledge my presence the rest of the time. My symptoms slowly returned due to all the stress I was experiencing at work. Soon it was clear that sportswriting at the Sun-Times wouldn’t be my life’s vocation. I quit the paper when the job became too unbearable.

I’m now taking on yet another academic challenge as I embark on a masters of Secondary Education. Though I don’t know if I will eventually overcome the challenge of being a high school teacher, I am willing to try my best and see where I end up.

Last weekend my fiance Jamie and I went to Seattle for a friend’s wedding. While in the majestic Pacific Northwest, I took on a different kind of challenge with my adventurous partner in crime, a physical one. On our first night in Seattle when the trip planner was trying to figure out how we would spend our second and last day there, she suggested that we go on a kayaking tour. I’d never been kayaking before, but how hard could a paddle down the coastline be? I said what the heck and told Jamie I would do it. Then she told me that it wasn’t a quick little excursion, but a seven mile odyssey through the Puget Sound. I almost choked. I didn’t want her to sense that I was one to back away from a daunting task so I kept my mouth shut.

I was nervous when we got to the water’s edge and our guide gave us a crash course in the do’s and don’ts of kayaking. We got into our little boat and started the treck. What followed was one of the most remarkable and memorable experiences I have ever encountered. Not more than two minutes into our journey we spotted a seal poke his snout out of the water. That sight in itself was our money’s worth right there. As we glided across the dark blue surface of the Sound, it was like coasting across a sheet of glass. The water was calm, the sun was shining and the surroundings were beautiful. We spotted a few jelly fish and a soaring bald eagle along the way.

The best part of the trip wasn’t seeing nature in its element, it wasn’t learning the history of West Seattle from Andy, our tour guide; it was the fact that I was able to meet a daunting challenge, one that I was reluctant face, head on; and I did it with Jamie, literally by my side. I felt like it was a microcosm of what lies ahead for us as we enter the sacred union of marriage. Challenges for us may be mental, like deciding how we want to raise our children, they might be physical, like actually raising our children, but we musn’t back down from any of them, even when they seem as daunting as a seven-mile kayak along the Puget Sound with no prior kayaking experience.

The Price of Heightened Creativity

{ July 27, 2009 @ 11:35 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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I just finished reading Steve Lopez’s The Soloist, a book about the struggles of a Juliard-trained musician contending with Schizophrenia. Nathanial Ayers combats his illness with a deep and undying love of classical music. He still has moments of clarity where he can create a masterful sound as he plunges into Beethoven movements on his cello or violin. But his hopeful moments are always followed by a submergence into the depths of despair that have him preferring a life on the streets to an apartment and psychiatric treatment that Mr. Lopez finds for him.

Ayers’ plight reminded me a lot of my own. During times of stability, I was moved by a profound and passionate love for literature and written expression. I would lose myself in masterpieces like Cather in the Rye, often creating my own fictional versions of the classic work. My characters were layered and multi-dimensional, often representing people whose paths I crossed during my youth or travails across country. During times of mania, much like Ayers, I experienced augmented creativity that allowed me to see the prose I constructed before my very eyes.

Research has proved that there can be a link between mania and creativity which speaks to the many artists, writers and musicians, including Ayers and the great Ernest Hemingway who were creative geniuses while struggling with mental illness.

My regret is that I never held on to any of my work during my manic episodes in Vegas and LA. When I finally accepted treatment and got well, I disposed of everything I wrote when I was symptomatic, fearing that it would remind me too much of troubled times.

One creative flourish in particular documented a disillusioned teenager seeking refuge in a trip across the country to find meaning and purpose in his life. He stays with a relative in Vegas where he gets caught up in a dangerous lifestyle, becoming a regular at the sports book and various casinos. His cousin, who is a member of the FBI, helps him get back on track and find respite to his tormented existence in his loving family. I wrote it during a stay at an impatient care facility in Texas and left it there when I was set to return home to Chicago.

Today I struggle to find inspiration for my creativity. My only real writing outlet is this blog. Off the medicine I can paint elaborate landscapes with my prose. I can imagine multi-faceted characters and dense plots riddled with exciting twists and turns. On my meds I am constrained by here-and-now realities, missing the ability to dream and conjure. The trade-off is that now, unlike Ayers who refuses medication throughout the book, I am not plagued by periods of confusion and rage. I do not experience downward spirals where I put my life in danger. I am not burdened by nights where I have no other place to lay my head than my car pulled off on the shoulder of a dark and desolate inter-state. I guess creativity is a small price to pay for a safe and harmonious existence.

Disability Benefits

{ July 27, 2009 @ 4:52 pm } · { challenges in education, coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
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My employment history over the past four years was reviewed by the Social Security Administration. They were trying to determine if my SSDI benefits should continue indefinitely. The goal of the review was to determine if I am capable of full-time employment in which case my benefits would be discontinued.

I have been employed by three different employers over this time–the most prestigious of which was the Chicago Sun-Times. I was at the Times from the fall of ’05 until last December. It was rewarding work and I made many good contacts. When my boss started reprimanding me and humiliating me in front of my coworkers though, the job became too stressful to continue.

While this was happening the economy was suffering and so was the newspaper. Readership was down and space was being constantly cut. I left the paper just before it declared bankruptcy and laid off a good number of its writers.

The Social Security Administration found that I was ‘incapable of substantial or full-time work.’ As I read this portion of the five page review, I was stricken with mixed emotions. While this was good news because I would continue receiving my monthly checks, it didn’t bode well for my confidence as I attempt to take on a full-time teaching job at the end of my schooling in the fall of 2010. It’s true I haven’t enjoyed a full-time job since I first got sick in 2003, but I will have to prove to a school administrator that I am more than capable of performing in such a role. Where will this confidence come from? Confidence comes from measured success, and the success I have achieved over the last four years has been largely academic, as I completed one Masters and am more than halfway through another. But teaching is different than being a student. Perhaps the only thing I can do is meet the teaching challenge head on much like I have confronted my mental illness.

Though I will lose financial benefits when I do embark on my teaching career, I look forward to the letter I receive from Social Security notifying me that I will be cut off from my benefits due to ‘full-time and substantial employment.’

The Most Understanding Person I Know

{ July 21, 2009 @ 6:29 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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What more can I say about my fiance Jamie? I don’t know at what point written compliments get old and worn out, but I might be approaching it. I’ve blogged about Jamie frequently, stating several times that she is my rock and biggest supporter. Now I have to say that she is the most understanding person I have ever met.

We had a pretty lengthy discussion last night about this site. I call it a discussion and not an argument because that was what my parents always said when my brother and I would hear them raise their voices at one another. “Are you guys fighting?” We would ask. “No, we are having a discussion,” was the consistent reply. I do believe that what Jamie and I had was in fact a ‘real’ discussion though. There were good points made by both sides and there was a sharing and receiving of each other’s opinions.

I have given Jamie full access to this blog. I want to publish a memoir one day and if my name is going to be emblazoned on the cover of a book, then I might as well start sharing some of my inner thoughts and feelings regarding my mental illness with the person with whom I plan to spend the rest of my life. So allowing Jamie to read this blog was a good first step. I’ve also told my brother about it but no one else. I still have a long way to go in the area of publicizing my plight.

So Jamie happened upon my last post about the ‘places I’ve been.’ She read about my stay at the Lawson House YMCA, which is tenement housing on the north end of downtown Chicago. We pass by it a lot and see its staple, vagrants out in front of the building chain smoking cigarettes with literally nothing better to do. Jamie was surprised that I never shared this with her. “How can we spend the rest of our lives together if you leave out big parts of your past?” She wanted to know…

I have shared many of my psychotic episodes with her. I have been open and honest about my illness from the very beginning. I told her about my stay in a Texas holding cell, I told her about my escapades through Juarez, Mexico. But I failed to mention that I spent two years living in a group home in downtown Chicago. She felt that that was vital information. I didn’t see it the same way. I lost my temper for a moment, “What do you want to know? Do you want to know that I spent a couple of years living alongside people who were previously homeless? Who had lifelong drug addictions? Who were products of single parents in the slums of the city? Who were estranged from their children? I don’t think that’s vital information, I think it’s a time and a place I want to forget.”

Then her position adjusted a bit. “I just don’t want to hear about big events in your life on the blog first. I feel like you should be able to share these things before you write about them,” she asserted. I calmed down a bit and decided to compromise. “I can tell you about these things before I write about them, but the truth is, I’m afraid and embarrassed about some of the things that happened in my past… afraid that you’ll judge me and want to leave me.” There, I got the truth right out there. Since a previous girlfriend accompanied me on a trip to my psychiatric rehabilitation clinic, and quickly decided that I was destined to end up in a psych ward and that she would have to take care of me; I have been careful about how candid I am with Jamie about my illness and my past.

“I haven’t judged you yet, have I?” She asked.

“No,” I said.

“And I know all about your stay at a group home five years ago.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And do you want to leave me?”

“No,” she intimated.

And thus Jamie supplanted herself as the most understanding and compassionate person I have ever met. The strength it must take for her to know about my uncensored past is astounding. I realized after our discussion that the reason I chose to write about staying at the Y rather than telling her about it is because it is easier. Writing is impersonal, sitting face-to-face with a loved one or friend and getting things out tests your courage and will.

I know in some of the blogs I have read, people aren’t able to tell a friend or a loved one about their illness. For a girlfriend/boyfriend, fiance or spouse to stand by his/her significant other, in spite it all, is a mark of true companionship, for better or worse, and a sign of the endurance of the relationship. I’ve also found that it is relatively rare. So I am exceedingly grateful for Jamie’s understanding and acceptance, I couldn’t ask for a better future wife.

The Places I’ve Been

{ July 18, 2009 @ 9:54 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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I’ve posted a link to another blog called Suicidal No More: Living with Schizophrenia. The post I read stimulated some thoughts that I have been trying to sweep under the rug for a long time. Jennifer wrote candidly about her trip to downtown Clearwater and to the beach. Much of what she saw and experienced on her trip reminded her of psychotic episodes she had in the same area. While delusional, she walked the same streets and frequented the same buildings that she saw on her trip to the beach. Now stable and healthy, she was able to experience a day at the beach that was relaxing and fun without reliving the nightmares she experienced there in the past. To read the blog click on its link to the right…

I too live in the city where I had my psychotic break. Chicago is a big bustling place filled with historic landmarks and captivating views. During one of my episodes in the spring of 2003, I left my parents’ house in the north suburbs and drove to the Windy City. I was being troubled by grandiose thoughts that I was going to try out for the Chicago Cubs and play in the Major Leagues. This delusion came on the heels of several months spent in Las Vegas and L.A. trying to make it to the N.B.A. But basketball season had past and baseball season was here and my focus shifted from one sport to the other. I drove to my cousin Doug’s apartment in the West Loop. I knew its location because my brother had lived in the family owned building before my cousin moved in. I had never been particularly close to Doug but I knocked on his door one weekday morning, looking for him to take me. This was consistent with all my psychotic episodes–I was always looking to escape from my current situation. I think the appeal was real adventure and a disillusionment with the life I was accustom to.

Doug let me stay ‘for a few days,’ he said while I looked for my own place. The second night I was there, I left the apartment at about 7 pm and didn’t return until after 4 in the morning. Doug of course heard me come in and wasn’t pleased the next day when he woke me and told me to get out. I walked all the way through the city to the Gold Coast on the north end of downtown. I sat in a restaurant called Carmines for hours, listening to the piano play some familiar tunes. I nursed drinks and tried to fit in to the yuppie crowd. Each time a girl sat down, a million thoughts raced through my head but I never mustered enough courage to strike a conversation.

That night’s trip through the entire city had been etched in my mind ever since. My senses were heightened and I remember intersections and street corners where I thought I was talking to Major League ball players. I live in the city now and I pass the same street corners and reflect back on that night. Most of the time I’m in the car with Jamie and I have to drive by, pretending not to remember those psychotic times.

After I spent some time in an inpatient care facility in Texas, where I received my diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder, I flew back to Chicago to a group home at the Lawson House YMCA. I credit the Y for helping me turn my life around. I was introduced to a great staff and a treatment center at Northwestern Psych Rehab right down the street where I was able to gain insight into my illness and an understanding of how I would combat it and reach stability. I continue to see my doctor and nurse at Psych Rehab once a week. Both buildings, the Y and Psych Rehab are located in the heart of downtown Chicago.

While I was living at the Y, I would often take walks around the city. Occasionally, I would walk down a street where I recognized a classmate from high school. I would abruptly turn the corner and walk down a different street. Why? I was ashamed of my living situation. I was living in a room about the size of their walk-in closets. I wasn’t working while they were enjoying a thriving trading career or a successful medical or law practice, I was living amongst some very seriously ill people, some that had been homeless, others that had lost everything because of their diagnosis, and I just wasn’t proud of who I had become. People from my hometown on the North Shore of Chicago go to Big Ten schools and make six figure salaries by the age of 35; and at 25, I had yet to hold a full-time job.

Since living at the Y, I have made something of myself. I have complete one Masters degree, worked at the Chicago Sun-Times for three years and am now on my way to finishing a second Masters in Education. I have met and fell in love with a beautiful, caring and compassionate girl and we are currently planning our wedding for next December.

I am working as a camp counselor this summer as I finish my Grad degree and I am on pm bus duty which means I ride the bus after camp and walk the kids to their homes. The bus I ride goes through downtown, and we pass by both Psych Rehab and the Lawson House YMCA. I look out the window as the buildings pass and I reflect on the complete 180 I have done since my days at the Y. I still feel like I’m hiding something from the other bus counselor, someone I have grown close to at camp, by not mentioning that I once stayed in the building where vagrants hang outside and smoke the day away. Where the homeless gather and look for the cheapest SRO’s in the entire city. Where cockroaches scamper through the community bathrooms and rats claw through the dumpsters out back. Yeah, I lived there for two years while I got well. But Kristi will never find out because I keep the conversation going as we truck on by. Some things are better left reflected upon than told. The group home at the Y was a necessary component to my recovery and Psych Rehab continues to be a place where I can find peace of mind. I don’t regret where I’ve been but it does become difficult to compare the places I’ve been to the place I am now and the destination I hope to find in the future.

My Journey

{ July 17, 2009 @ 1:25 am } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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We went to Jamie’s work friend’s place for dinner before we walked a half a block to Wrigley Field where we took in an awesome Elton John and Billy Joel concert. Who would have thought that the two 60 something-year-olds could still rock. As we left Ron and Kendra’s apartment, I couldn’t help but reflect on what a nice place they had. Jamie and I have a great place. It is in a good neighborhood and it is a beautiful loft space. I couldn’t ask for a cooler apartment, but we rent. I can’t wait for the day when I can afford to buy a home where Jamie and I can build a family together. Maybe I’m being a bit impatient here but I look at most of our friends and they are a few years, sometimes more, into a stable career, I haven’t even started mine yet. It brings a feeling of insecurity and uncertainty. I’m insecure about being in school at the age of 30, and I’m uncertain as to whether I can cut it as a teacher, after all, teaching represents a complete unknown.

Life is hard enough without letting self-defeating doubts creep into your psyche, so why am I dwelling on a variable that I cannot control at the present time? I get impatient when I talk to people we know about their thriving careers. We know a Chiropractor, a PR person, a teacher, a builder, a lawyer not to mention all the professionals on my softball team and I am trudging through a masters program that won’t end until next year. It’s hard to deal with.

On top of the insecurities I have about not being a member of the workforce at the present time, I am dealing with the added stress of an illness that can make it difficult to function. The only way I can find what’s at the end of the tunnel is to keep pursuing my goals with focused energy and unwavering commitment.

I have to try not to compare myself to my friends. I have to have the confidence to believe in myself and in the notion that I am on a course no one else has been on. Therefore my journey is unique and filled with new and exciting challenges that I must meet head on. The self-defeating thoughts will continue to creep in every time I hear the Chiropractor talk about a patient, or the lawyer talk about a client, or the builder talk about a house, or the PR consultant talk about a represented company. But I’m friends with these guys not because of what they do, but because of who they are as people. I have fears of not fulfilling my career goals but I ask myself what’s the worst that could happen–I lie around the apartment in my underwear searching for inspiration to write the next great American novel. Will I be happy as Jamie’s stay-at-home better half? No. But that just means that I have to focus on making my journey a successful one marked by hard work and dedication. Would I like to be years into a successful career? Of course. The illness set me back a few years. It also allows seeds of doubt about my capabilities as a professional to creep into my consciousness, but I have to continue to work hard and overcome the imposing hurdles that have been placed in my path.

Not Ready to Publicize my Plight

{ July 15, 2009 @ 5:17 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, sources of inspiration }
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I’ve posted a link to a blog called Meds No More. It is about a woman’s struggle to reach stability by weaning herself off her medication completely. It is a concept I never thought possible but she is fighting and surviving. It is truly inspirational to me. Stories about people beating the odds are all very captivating and important.

Another individual who has beaten the odds and survived is Robin Roberts, ex-ESPN anchor and current host of Good Morning America. I heard her on the radio this morning and couldn’t help but reflect upon what I heard in my post today. She was talking about her struggle to beat cancer. At first she wanted to fight the battle independently and anonymously, but then, encouraged by her mother, she made her fight public and became a spokesperson and a face for overcoming cancer. As she said in the interview this morning, cancer does not discriminate. She never thought that it could strike her, but it did and she refused to lay down and die. She is now cancer free and does a great deal to raise money and awareness for beating this often deadly disease.

Schizoaffective Disorder does not discriminate either. I started this blog as a means of coping with my illness in a public forum, but is my struggle really public? Only my first name is written on this blog in an attempt to keep my illness and my daily struggles from the eyes and the minds of current and future employers. Even some family members and friends do not know about my diagnosis and I really don’t want them finding out. Why isn’t one’s struggle to confront and overcome a mental illness like another person’s fight against cancer? Both afflictions are completely random and potentially lethal… Why cant’ I bring myself to truly publicize my blog and thus my illness? I thought about sending out a blast email to friends and family promoting this site, but even my fiance, Jamie, my biggest supporter and rock, doesn’t want her friends knowing about the things I write about. The stigma exists and it is crippling.

The Meds No More woman, like Robin Roberts, seems to be in a place where she is more open about her illness and her struggles to overcome it. I’m not there right now. I work with children and am pursuing a career in education, and I don’t want parents of kids, or even the kids themselves finding out about the trials I have been through due to my illness. Call it cowardly, but I just don’t want all the reading public knowing that I’ve spent time in prison, have been in and out of a psych ward and on occasion still hear voices and experience delusions. Until mental illness is more widely accepted, and the public can attribute erratic behavior to an illness that can take over your body and mind, I will continue to post as some guy named Joshua from somewhere in the Chicagoland area.

Robin Roberts and Lance Armstrong are the faces of cancer survival like Michael J. Fox is the face of coping with PD… But I’m not ready to be Joshua X… The guy coping with Schizoaffective Disorder.

My Inspiration

{ July 13, 2009 @ 5:22 pm } · { sources of inspiration }
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At the wedding over the weekend Jamie and I stopped to replenish our drinks at the bar and one of the guests was visibly upset. She was talking to two other girls when Jamie and I came over, and as I ordered my Coke she began to cry uncontrollably. Jamie asked a bystander what the problem was and she told her that the girl had recently lost her mother.

Jamie lost her father two years ago, just a few months before we met. Since the time I met Jamie’s family, I have heard all about the legends of Jonny, her father. He still carries a larger than life persona amongst her entire family. I feel like I too knew him, his wry sense of humor, his loving and caring soul and his tendency to go above and beyond for his two daughters. I actually saw him on video, making a speech at Jamie’s sister Jennifer’s wedding, and seeing him for a few minutes told me that his mythic essence is and was well deserved. I know Jamie misses him all the time and she shares this loss with me quite frequently. I try to console her but it is hard. How do you know what to say and do if you haven’t lost someone close to you? The truth is, I don’t really know how to comfort her during these times but she says I do a good job and that is all the feedback I need.

Jamie sprung into action at the wedding. She sat with the girl for an hour as they swapped stories about their lost loved ones. By the end of that time, they were sharing laughter–her sobs turned into giggles as her memories turned joyful. It is hard enough dealing with the loss of a parent, but to counsel someone else in a similar time of need shows resilience, courage and maturity. I am so proud of the way Jamie handled the situation. She could have easily turned her back and walked away but she did the opposite. She was there for this stranger in her time of need and the result of her compassion and selflessness was that she gained a friend who understood her plight. It showed remarkable strength of character to do what she did. That’s who I have come to know and love, someone who is not only respectful and good to those she knows and loves, but someone who will extend a helping hand to someone she has never even met.

In dealing with my illness, there were times when I wanted to crawl into a ball and shut myself off from the outside world. Through counseling and with Jamie’s help, I hope to inspire others to bounce back from their setbacks and provide a guiding light to mental health and stability the same way Jamie helped her new friend overcome her loss.

Peer Pressure

{ July 12, 2009 @ 1:26 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
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mmmm... beer!

mmmm... beer!

Jamie and I had a wedding over the weekend. It was a lot of fun, good times with good people. Again, I was forced into reluctant alcohol consumer mode. Most of the guests were from Texas and if there’s one thing Texans can do, it’s drink. The groom, Ryan, is a nice guy, very warm and friendly and a devoted companion to Jamie’s best friend Carolyn. After the rehearsal dinner, Friday night, we went to a bar in the Gold Coast. As I entered, Ryan handed me a drink. I kind of looked down at it like it was a foreign object.

“Oh, you don’t drink, do you?” Ryan asked. “Not really,” I said, giving my standard answer. “But you do drink beer, don’t you?” He questioned. I paused without an immediate answer. “I mean you will drink beer tomorrow night at the wedding, right?” I didn’t really know how to respond. Coming up with reasons why I don’t drink is getting harder and harder. “Sure, I’ll have a beer or two tomorrow night,” I asserted. To be honest, I thought that I might indulge in a couple drinks on Saturday night, then my conscience got the best of me.

I met with Dr. Levinson yesterday and I told him that it was getting even more difficult to turn down drinks. I have not had a drink since the summer of 2007, when weekend drinking turned into acute symptoms. Most people don’t drink because they become dependent on alcohol to function. I don’t drink because it interrupts my homeostasis. In other words, I become psychotic and delusional on alcohol, yet the temptation remains.

On the night of the wedding, I decided to keep a coke in my hand at all times, it was my hope that people like Ryan would think that there was Captain mixed in it and leave me alone about the drinking. On Friday night at the bar, I sat with two of Jamie’s closest friends while Jamie was being her normal social self, working the room. Her friend Kristen who flew in from Atlanta for the wedding asked me the million dollar question. “So have you always not drank? Or was there a time when you did?” I knew she wanted to know if I ever had a drinking problem. How could I respond without it seeming like I did. I surely couldn’t intimate that I have Schizoaffective Disorder and alcohol could cause a psychotic break. Although I look forward to the day when people are as comfortable knowing about others’ mental illnesses as they are knowing about someone being Diabetic.

“There was a time when I did drink,” I started. “Then when I started Grad School, I decided to make a lifestyle change. I wasn’t productive when I drank and I decided to turn over a new leaf and focus on school.” There that wasn’t so bad… Now Kristen thought that I drank myself into a stupor in college and was too hungover the days after to do my homework. That wasn’t so bad, yeah right!

“Oh,” she said, taking it all in. She looked at me with judging eyes. What 30 year old couldn’t handle his liquor. Sleeping it off till 12 the next day is something you do when you are in your late teens and early twenties. I wanted to look at her and say, “just kidding,” and down the nearest beer in one gulp.

I’m still not sure if I’ll take up drinking again but staying sober definitely has its baggage…

Paranoia

{ July 8, 2009 @ 9:55 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder, symptoms and warning signs }
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About a year ago at this time the doctor doubled my Seroquel dose due to evolving symptoms. I was working at a newspaper and my boss was incredibly overbearing and difficult. He was a throwback in the newspaper business who managed his employees by yelling at them and calling them names. I was the the unlucky recipient of some of his rages and it started to affect my moods. I tried to justify the tyrant’s behavior by acknowledging that he must have been an unhappy man. He was well over 250 pounds and paying the alimony of two ex-wives.

I would walk into the office a ball of anxiety, just waiting for him to lay into me. Consequently, I began experiencing paranoia about people being able to hear my thoughts. I shared my symptoms with my doctor and we kept increasing my dose until the symptoms subsided. As a result, I put on about ten pounds and had trouble going to the bathroom because Seroquel can slow the gut. I was very uncomfortable most of the time.

Since that time, we have been gradually decreasing my dose of Seroquel to try and reach the level I became stable on several years ago. The doctor feels that the least effective dose should be maintained. I was reluctant at the beginning, fearing that my symptoms would return but we are now just 100 mg away above where I was before the symptoms and I haven’t experienced any signs of relapse, until last night.

I was sitting at the computer while my fiance was watching the news and the paranoia returned at a mild level. I am not at the paper anymore and the biggest stress I have comes from the graduate class I am taking in pursuit of a Masters of Secondary Education.

I rode the symptoms out and by the time I went to bed, they were gone. Today I woke up and went to my camp counselor job and haven’t felt any signs of the paranoia. I will monitor my moods throughout the day, and if I experience any problems, I will call my doc and perhaps return to last month’s dose.

This is one of the things I deal with every once in a while, it is one of the burdens of living with Schizoaffective Disorder. I am very in tuned to my moods so I can catch symptoms early and avoid any psychotic episodes. It is difficult but necessary and I can’t trade my life for another, it is what I am saddled with as a person living with a mental illness.

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