Over coming our own prognosis

Health and Recovery
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Continuing the discussion from “Is it a dream or a memory?”:

I’m still pondering this. I haven’t really been to upset at how life played out. But as things change, I am sort of in mourning for all that life I just sort of let slip by. I just saw so much of my life as completely out of my hands. I’m sort of wondering if doctors ever expect us to get better.

I know it’s just the roll of the dice, but lately I do wonder if I would have gotten my head out of my butt sooner if I wasn’t always told that I was incapable of taking care of myself.

I kept reading it in books, I kept hearing it from doctors… and I sort of heard it in my head… “Oh Ok, it says here that disorganized Sz is worse and I’m on the low end of functionality and I’m worse off then Paranoid Sz.”

If I just hadn’t believed that so much, would I have taken the bull by the horns sooner? I’d like to think that I would. But in reality, I needed that other ingredient of Want.

:coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: :coffee: I have to stop that.

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I keep saying this, but SZ is very much an illness that is chronic and it runs in phases - it fluctuates. One day you are fine, add a bit of stress to the mix, and the next minute you are not so fine. I think that many doctors do not truly understand enough about SZ. They are many times busy treating the more common illnesses, depression, anxiety, mild bipolar etc… Many times these doctors make generalized blanket statements about SZ that do more damage than anything else. They think schizophrenia and they immediately jump to the conclusion that it is a death sentence with no real hope for improvement. Stigma exists among mental health professionals too. Not all doctors have this attitude but many do

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Skullfuck prognosis. Mine was suicide, alone and drunk before the age of 40.

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I have heard about my son “He is the worst case that we have seen in this hospital”

I have heard/read some say they have been told the paranoid sz is the worst.

I have heard/read some say they have been told that disorganized sz is the worst.

I have heard/read some say they have been told that schizoaffective is the worst.

I have heard/read some say they have been told the bi-polar is the worst.

It seems whatever it is we are being told it is the worst and hardest to treat… Maybe they think it’s easier for all parties involved to have lower expectations? I don’t know.

Whatever your prognosis or diagnoses you have overcome a lot and you have to have faith that it happened the way it was supposed to so that it held the most meaning for you and your family.

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You have to have normality in mind. A vision of the goal you want to achieve. I want mental silence and I will find it again. Im hoping these voices will fade and I can forget about them. Now the real battle is getting over my anxieties they play into the telepathy. I almost wish it was confirmed that it was real still just so I’d know that I was ok and people are used to my ■■■■■■■■. I think it would help me feel that my stresses are less important, maybe i should just run with that anyway. But yeah all these trimonthly visits to the pdoc really havent been to helpful. Its an oppurtunity to adjust my meds, but the real battle of getting better was all on my shoulders. Had to understand what was happening in my head and what needed to change before anything got any better. I dont really have delusions I just have hallucinations. I wonder if I really am schizophrenic or if my hallucinations ledd me to have schizophrenia like delusions. Somethings going wrong up there and the doctors do not know how to sort it out. If only rTMS was more widely appreciated as a means for removing voices, perhaps the professionals would recommend it.

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SurprisedJ this is not true.
you are strong, inteligent, kind, funny, empathetic and an all round ’ good bloke '.
i admire everyone on here for what they have been through, especially 77nick77 and you and others who went into mental hospitals.
you have all beaten the odds.
you can not start beating your self up over the ’ if ’ , ’ buts ’ and ’ maybes '…look at where you are now and how far you have come, this has taken incredible strength and courage.
take care

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Most people don’t get me but one friend thinks I just have depression. I think I’m very depressed and it causes my mania. And I only heard voices due to prescribed medications. I know life’s hard and I’ve lived a sheltered and confusing life but my life doesn’t have to be as dead end as they made it. I just want to be happy and normal. I can’t even read on abilify. It makes me dopey. My new psychiatrist canceled my appointment after I waited a month for it.

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Sorry about your appointment. Make plans to talk to him about finding the drugs that you are most comfortable on. Including maybe antidepressants. I’ve had few if no side effects from them.

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Do you have a therapist?

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Exactly.

Yeah surprised, you’re a good guy and you have accomplished a lot and I hope you accomplish more. You have given me compliments before. But I think YOUR life is impressive and inspiring.You hold down a job, you go (or you went) to school, you live pretty much independently, you look after your sister on some things, and you surf which I could never have done on my best day. And you do this despite all the crap going on with your brothers. And SOMEHOW you have managed to keep a sense of humor, which may be the greatest accomplishment of all. I don’t always answer your posts but I read a lot of them. Anyway, I thought you deserved a little recognition. I wish you and the kidsis good luck and of course I will be seeing you around here.

                                                                                                  Nick
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It’s been such a long time i’ve forgotten(if i was indeed ever told) what my prognosis was. All i know was when i was dxed with sz in the mid 70s expectations were very low. At one point i was earmarked for at best group home and at worst long stay ward and was regarded as a chronic schizophrenic. I managed to do better than that and live in the community with my wife but never cracked the occupational and social barriers. I went up a level gradually with support from my wife but that was it. I think the prognosis now is chronic and severe mental illness,relatively stable,ongoing social problems. I think talk of a cure has long gone and it’s about maintaining the current level primarily.

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Hi firemonkey, I too had social difficulties especially with lack of verbal spontaneity and thought blockage. This free brain game made a huge difference for me and I’m now spontaneous and people comment on how eloquent I’ve become. For me the game takes good effect after about a week of playing it a few times per day although if I stop playing for a while the old problem comes back but to a lesser extent. The game consists of completing word stems and each completed word is rewarded.

http://games.lumosity.com/widgets/word_bubbles_promo.html

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That game is quite good but i am hampered by slow typing skills/tend to become flustered under time pressure.

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Prognosis are like challenges, its like someone challenged me to avoid being dead by suicide, drunk and alone at age 40. All of the recovered schizophrenics I have met, the very highly functioning ones, (I know some personally outside of this site) have the same approach as me- :skull: ■■■■ suicide and schizophrenia. The only schizophrenic I personally know who has never been hospitalized, quit work/school or anything like that is UNCANNILY similar to me. Very hard on himself. Loves metal. Learns to love himself for being a little ■■■■■■ up, accepting the ■■■■■■ up parts as just what makes him unique. Sees schizophrenia as a challenge. He and I both have the same lives, full time students, he works a job outside of school and I am a competitive athlete, we are both equally highly functioning. He takes 160mg Geodon, his main med, I take 120mg, its my main med too. Neither us of us were always on meds, we both survived without them and still functioned very highly.

Its this young men’s no ■■■■■■■■, “smoke this ■■■■” approach to schizophrenia that I see ACTUALLY WORKS. Thats why I throw my cuss words around, thats why I post videos of me training, that’s why I keep on being “dangerous” and “deviant” because it WORKS. I have the potential to kill someone without a weapon, sure, but I am enlightened, have an IQ in the upper 2.5 % of the population, am majoring in psychology and am on three sedating meds. I am far from legally insane today, I know a delusion when it happens and my meds have me 90% symptom free. Im not dangerous, and neither is my friend I mentioned.

I noticed that he is the only person who has never let it get to him, aside from me. Sure, weve had problems, weve been through alcohol abuse, we smoke cigarettes, but we never quit functioning because we see schizophrenia as a threat, and we both destroy threats. He and I have had multiple hour long talks about how we do what we do and how we never gave in, and we conclude that its because we get angry and tell ourselves that enduring this illness ONLY makes us stronger.

And we do just fine. We’re both make good grades (I make perfect grades) and stay productive, we both never feel pity for ourselves. We see schizophrenia as our minds versus our brains, and willpower over wiring. To have a brain that suggests doing things, gives us thoughts that are not based in reality but are plausible, criticizes us, it’s clearly our brain versus our minds. We still have some symptoms, but are mostly recovered due to med compliance.

Sure, its unorthodox, but seriously, my prognosis was “fight for your life”. Thats all I heard. I want to see more people fight. I get sick of logging on here and seeing people who dont take this illness seriously.

It can and will ruin your life or kill you. If thats not enough reason to take something seriously as a threat, I dont know what is. I think some people dont get it…this illness is the worst thing that can happen. Its worse than cancer. People with cancer receive love and support and dont get called “canceritic” and treated like ■■■■. They die with a sound mind and peacefully slip away.

Now we all have had 100% no mercy episodes, when our minds shatter and we cant even do things like eat. I remember mine perfectly well, I was hitting my head against the wall screaming and didnt know what day of the week it was, I was hallucinating too much and couldnt think straight because my mind was in “delusions-only” mode. Thats not ■■■■■■■ peaceful and people are afraid of us when we are like that. In those episodes, that is when people kill themselves, when it wont stop for a second, when we just want out. I started slowly making my way to the kitchen to commit seppuku and my parents knew exactly what I had in mind and they took me to their bed and just stuck me their and told me to lay on my stomach until it passed.

And that sort of ■■■■ happened a number of times, and I went to school and the gym the next day.

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I don’t remember getting a prognosis from anyone. I’ve just gone with the flow and done what I’ve can. In my case, I think counselors and my family have seen in me things that I haven’t been able to see in myself. When they offered me help or jobs or more responsibility I simply took it. NO ONE told me personally that my own disease would be degenerative. NO ONE ever told me I would never be able to work or ever go to school. My case of schizophrenia was SEVERE. But I never heard I am hopeless. I have always heard what I CAN do. Not what I CAN’'T.

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