Families

Thanks to so many of you you who contacted me after my fall. I am recovering nicely. Still still and sore, but improving daily. Thank you, too, to all who have written me of your personal stories of loss through schizophrenia. It helps to know that I am not alone in my grief and loss. This illness is so often misdiagnosed, so often mistreated. The result is that families are ripped apart and the survivors will never, ever, again be whole.

I think of this Christmas season and all the things our family, Colby and I, will never again do. Our traditions of wrapping presents, sliding down the hill at Red Oak golf course, going to Savers and the Mall of America, playing Michigan Rummy, finding the one new ornament on the tree, and all the traditions of Christmas Eve and morning, all of that for us, for me, is lost forever. Schizophrenia took it all.

The guilt I feel will never go away. It was my genes that manifested in Colby’s illness and resulting addiction. It was my family who has had members of each generation as far back as we can trace who had this mental illness. It was me who made Colby a walking time bomb. If I’d had other children, would they, too, have been afflicted? There is no way to tell.

I heard this week about a grandma, mom and two sons who all have/had schizophrenia. The mom and grandma died because of it, the sons are, so far, receiving treatment that is keeping them functioning. The trouble with schizophrenia is on several levels. One, there is no definitive test. Diagnosis is a process of guesstimation, trial, and error. And two, while just about every parent of a son or daughter with schizophrenia I have spoken to can say, “Yes, I now realize my child was showing signs of this at age 8, or 10, or 14,” schizophrenia is not thought of until a person is in their early twenties (for men) or mid twenties (for women).

How many lives could be saved if we could recognize it earlier, and if health care were available to all? Here in the United States it is not. Insurance companies exclude due to pre-existing conditions and that made Colby ineligible 1) after he reached his mental health maximum as a teenager and 2) after his insurance company closed. Had those things not happened, I believe my son, my only child, would still be alive today. I would have a family. I would have a reason to celebrate the holidays. But that is not the way things turned out. For me. For other families, please know there is help out there. Check out schizophrenia.org for more information, and know that you can make a difference in the life of someone you love.