Sorry if it is to long to read. Just gives some insight to what I was doing before and after medication. Man, I miss when I first got on abilify. Man did I struggle a lot before getting diagnosed.
Getting By In a Mad House Of Crazy
My name is Krystyna. I am a mother, a girlfriend, a sister, a daughter, a family member, and a friend. I am schizophrenic. To begin I have to think back to two years ago. The voices. One day I was just a normal young adult, the next I was talking to “God.” To be honest it is all a blur, like a long night out drinking. I did not know it at the time, but I was in psychosis. I do not know my first schizophrenic break. I do remember some memorable ones. I remember hearing a voice. A voice in my head that told me it was “God”. At this point in my life I had no belief in a higher power. Past traumas scarred me one by one, until all faith had left. Even hearing his voice in my head would not convince me. So I tested him. I tested him a lot, asking him to show me signs.
Oh boy, how the signs did come. A voice shouted in my head that I was pregnant. I remember sitting on my bed one night. I was watching some television program that I normally would not watch. That is when the t.v. spoke to me. “God” was speaking to me, yes me, through the t.v. This was absolutely incredible. The television volume turned up so clear, it could only be God or a ghost. I know that I did not touch that remote. The voices on the t.v. spoke about being pregnant. That a woman knows she is pregnant even before the test does. Now how could the volume suddenly turn up only on the part about pregnancy test? How could anyone else, besides God,
know I had been taking many with a negative result. This turned my complete skepticism into faith. Which soon turned back into skepticism as test after test turned out negative. Finally,
the doctor’s appointment that I had scheduled, as soon as “God” told me I was pregnant, was here.
I walked into an unfamiliar place that the voice had told me to go. I remember my hands sweating as if I was in 150 degree weather. I remember feeling insane for being there because a voice in my head told me to go there. The blonde haired pregnant lady at the receptionist desk greeted me with a smile. I waited to be called. I waited what felt like years. When I got called back the very nice blonde lady laughed at me for saying I did not have a positive pregnancy test. She then proceeded to give me one. After several minutes, which once again felt like years, she returned with the results. I knew they would change my entire world one way or the other. Either I was going to become a mother or I was insane for thinking i was talking to God. It turned out that I was indeed pregnant. This part of my life is so important to this story because this is what began my 100% faith in these delusions.
Suddenly, “God” was guiding me. I felt as if he was helping me, making me better. I felt like the luckiest person on the planet. The colors suddenly had meaning. I could sit at a stoplight and talk to “God’’and he would respond through the green and red on the stoplight. I could hear words in my head and my head would spin back and forth like a teeter totter, looking at responding colors for my thoughts.
Fast forward a year, the voices that I once viewed as the best thing to happen to me are now overwhelming. They are starting to become very negative instead of helpful. I think that something is wrong. Is Lucifer and God fighting a war for my soul? That is what it felt like. I could almost hear it in my head. I would get shouted at to pray. So I would pray, sometimes for hours. Bowing to the all oh mighty and powerful “God”. I could feel a physical pull. I’d feel my body being
submerged under the bath water. I was told not to get up, that “God” is cleansing my soul. I could feel myself starting to drown until I broke through the delusions and gasped for air. I was told to do outrageous things like go running around my neighborhood barefoot at 1:30 in the morning, throw away all my food, and excessively exercise. I would take multiple showers a day so that I could sit in there and pray in freezing water. Sadly, I listened to these voices.
I would get so frustrated I would just shout. One day I shouted, “I can not do everything you want. I am done with this ■■■■.” At this point, the voice is now controlling what I write in text, what I say to people, where I go and do not go, etc. I was told, along the lines of, that I must follow every direction/command or I would amount to nothing in life. That is when I starting thinking maybe this isn’t God. So I went outside, lit a cigarette, and researched. I researched all I could.
What I found shocked me in a way, but at the same time didn’t at all. I was angry, so angry. How could this be happening? Am I apart of the 1% who has a brain disorder called schizophrenia? Here are some facts I found about schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a brain disorder that distorts the way a person thinks, acts, expresses emotions, relates to others and perceives reality.
1% of the population (2.2 million Americans) will develop schizophrenia.
There are five subtypes of schizophrenia: paranoid schizophrenia, disorganized schizophrenia, catatonic schizophrenia, undifferentiated schizophrenia, and residual schizophrenia.
Positive symptoms of schizophrenia include delusions, hallucinations and catatonia, which is when a person stays in a single position for a long time.
Cognitive symptoms include trouble focusing or paying attention, and difficulty remembering.
Negative symptoms is defined as the absence of normal behaviors. This includes reduced speech and energy, lack of motivation, lack of emotion, and withdrawal from family and friends.
Although the cause is unknown, this mental illness can be developed through factors such as genetics, brain chemistry, brain abnormality and environmental factors.
Schizophrenia typically appears when a person is in his or her teens to early 20s.
About 10% of people with schizophrenia commit suicide and are more likely to have a drug or alcohol abuse problem.
Most people prefer to be left alone and are not violent.
Treatments such as taking medication, participating in therapy and being hospitalized can reduce symptoms.
Making a doctor’s appointment, my nerves running on high. Am I even breathing anymore? I hear my heart beating a million miles so I must be. I come into a new office that I am unfamiliar with. I still remember that olive green couch I chose to sit on for the first time. I remember the psychiatrist. He had a sense of humor when I found the situation to be less than humorous. I told him my experiences for the last year and a half. When I finished he did confirm that I have schizophrenia. He proceeded by telling me how “most people do not know that they are in their delusions and I was lucky to have figured it out.” At the time I did not feel lucky. I especially did not feel lucky with what came to follow.
The crazy has really begun. The medication that I was put on was only making things worse. I felt as though I was being drugged. I could not remember anything. I was putting ice cream in the refrigerator. I would forget I was cooking. I was having bad side effects to this medication. I was unsafe to myself and others. I wondered if this is what the rest of my life would be like. I would dance around uncontrollably. Oh and the twitches, oh how they loved to come. The medication was giving me facial ticks that I could not control. I felt embarrassed to leave my house and scared to stay in there with my daughter. It was time to call the doctor again already.
And so it begins, the trial and error process. Being able to find the right dosage and medication for your body is no easy task. Especially when you have a 6 month old baby you have to wake up with and a medication that makes you drowsy. I was lucky to have found a decent one pretty early on. Finding the correct dosage was the hard part. Antipsychotic medications produce heavy side effects. Common side effects are blurred vision, drowsiness, anxiety, dry mouth, feeling as though you have a cold, muscle spasms or tremors, and weight gain. Different medications have different side effects. Some are worse than others. On the bright side, they also help with the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. After so much trial and error on dosage, that I nearly gave up on the medications altogether, I have found a combination that works for me. Although I have found this to be helpful, it still does not help with the negative and cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia.
Today, the voices mostly disappear into the night as soon as I take my medication. As the voices fade, self confidence rolls back in. My experience with getting diagnosed feels like a dream that you can not remember. The after taste of my pain still there, but I can hardly remember it. Today I am hopeful. I am a mother of 3 who loves her kids and their father more than anything. I dance now, not from my body being controlled by my disorder, but because I am happy. Although I have a disorder, I do not plan for that to stop me on achieving my goals and happiness in life. I am currently enrolled in this English class while majoring in Early Childhood Development. I am thinking of changing my major to Applied Psychology: either mental health or addiction services. Today, I feel like the mad house in my brain has calmed and I can finally see a future worth living.
