I get questioned occasionally as to why I’m a member of the The Balanced Mind Foundation when my child does not have Bipolar Disorder.  Tim has – and it’s a long diagnosis – Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Type.  His condition shares many symptoms of Bipolar Disorder, specifically periods of mania and depression.  But what frightens people about schizophrenic disorders – the constant that is the hallmark of schizophrenic disorders – does sometimes occur with Bipolar Disorder.  The big “p” word.  Psychosis.  Psychosis rules the roost around here, more often than I would like. 

The first time a psychiatrist told us that Tim heard voices, I told him HE was the crazy one.  It was during Tim’s first hospitalization at age 10.  I blamed it on the staff, the med change, the fact that he was inpatient, away from home.  There was no way my child was psychotic.  The man standing on the street corner, yelling at the rain was psychotic.  The D.C. sniper was psychotic.  10 year olds are NOT psychotic.  But, looking back, all the signs were there.  He violently refused to bathe or brush is teeth.  He suddenly couldn’t sleep without a very bright light on – if he slept at all.  He didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was complete gibberish, or a whisper directed at an empty corner.  At school he rocked in his chair, hid under furniture, and was convinced everyone hated him or wanted to harm him.  But, at the time, I vehemently denied it.  And I denied it during his next several hospitalizations as well.  By the time I finally realized it was true he was on his 27^th med combo, 12^th hospitalization, and his psychiatrist was asking that we seriously contemplate ECT (we didn’t).

I wrote a post on my personal blog this time last year about what it’s like to drive in the car with Tim when he’s psychotic. It’s freaky and unnerving and gives me the willies like nothing else can.  It’s pretty well controlled on his current med regimen and therapy, but it breaks through, of course, at the most inopportune moments. Just last week Tom drove him to the eye doctor for his annual checkup.  He stalled and avoided getting in the car until I started to get testy. 15 minutes after they left, Tom called.  “Tim won’t go in the office,” he said.  “He says the eye drops the doctor uses will make him go blind.”  When Tom said he’d tell the doctor no drops, Tim simply sat, rigid as stone, completely non-communicative.  They turned around and came home.  How can you argue with a delusion?  What amazes me is that, days later, he complains that he needs new glasses. It’s a good bed that psychosis will be part of Tim’s life for the rest of his life.  And, as such, it will be part of Tom’s and mine as well.  We’re making plans to set up our lives so that psychosis can be relegated to simply a facet of that life, rather than the centerpiece.  It took five years for me to start to wrap my head around it.  The “p” word still makes me uncomfortable, but I’m in the place where I can stare it down without losing MY mind.

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