Kristine's Relapse

Kristine called yesterday. The first thing she said was that she completed the application for Le Cordon Bleu online and wanted me to proof read it. She asked me if it was O.K. to send in; doubting herself. I told her it was fine.

She also informed me that she had 3 anxiety attacks. She said she felt as if her mind had gone back to that dark place where she was when she was other worldly before going to Appleton.

This time during those anxiety attacks of lost hope, she only wanted to stay in her bedroom when she was suppose to get medication.
Her voices talked to her the entire time trying to encourage her that everything will be O.K.  She didn't want to believe them and she argued with them. 

She said the doctor increased her Trilafon?  Although I don't see this drug on her list of prescriptions. I thought she was taking Fazaclo. I don't even know what I am talking about. Is she on both of these drugs?

She did say last month that she wanted to come home to get on with her life because she feels she is wasting time, getting older when she feels so good about herself now. 
Her counselor told me over the phone that she understands Kristine desire to try to get on with her life. It's only normal to want a better life.  She said that Kristine needs to control the voices in public in order to survive in the work place and she is doing very well.  I told her counselor, that of course, she will not control her voices around other zany people; what's the point. They know what she has. How crazy is it for Kristine to pretend to others at Gould Farm that she doesn't have a schizoaffective disorder?

Society knows one's insane when they act delusional; but when one pretends to be sane, society thinks it's O.K to mingle with them. I cannot help laugh because the world is so zany and I would be lock up too, if I didn't try to put it in God's perspective, instead of mine.

I guess it boils down to controlling oneself in public as a litmus test for acceptability.
Let me tell you: THAT'S not a very good litmus test for living among others.  How many serial killers have walked among us and still do, in control of themselves in public?
No matter how insane it appears, talking to ones self isn't the same thing as killing someone. So is a serial killer less insane than a schizophrenic person because he has more public control of himself?
At least a serial killer can function in the real world; another litmus test for sanity.  What was I thinking.

It's all a mind game. Supposedly sane people can play insane mind games too. Like the Madoff ponzi scheme. He even has the word "Mad" and "off" in his name. That should have been a prerequisite to madness. Don't we inherit our names from our ancestors and their profession.

Are they crazy or just considered crooks.  Surely there is something mentally "off" with crooks.

In the end we will discover that God let the insane rule the world; while the sane were locked up.

Maybe filling out the application to Le Cordon Bleu was slightly stressful for Kristine.
I think Kristine was on Zyperxa the first time she physically showed up for an interview with Le Cordon Bleu 4 years ago. She spent the entire day supervised through the school: watching cooking classes and talking to chefs. She passed the interview with flying colors. She controlled her voices so well in public; but then talked to her voices nonstop in the car on the way home; much like Dr. Saks does today.

Like Kristine, Dr. Saks, a USC graduate with schizophrenia, a different type of illness but similar, teaches law and gives seminars about her condition. She controls her voices at appropriate times. She works at the university level and survived in the so called 'real world' with this illness since high school. She was just as delusional as Kristine throughout her life experiences. She advocates  education as her survival method of coping; not being locked up, waiting it out, to see if she would become normal. That will never happen. Keeping her mind active is her sanity; no matter how crazy she appeared to others.

Kristine's doctor is now saying that Kristine can go to classes but it would be a disaster for her to live at home as she needs a place to live that has a staff support.  Naturally, I don't agree completely.
Even now when she is in a residential place she did not have the medication at her disposal and was too distressed to get it when she was in her room alone.

She never had a problem of getting her medication when visiting us at home as she had the medication on hand and she always let us know she needed it. The fact that she called us from Gould Farm which is on the other side of the States to let us know she was having relapses is a credit to her awareness and responsibility and most of all, her trust in us now. A trust that she acquired only after she was at Appleton under proper psychiatric treatment and excellent staff supervision and now she is ready to try to get on with her life as hard as that may be.

I  think the mind is so superior in it's making that humans are still at a loss to understanding it. It doesn't take much for the mind to change. When a Presidential candidate is elected and isolated from the common man on the street; he sometimes becomes paranoid or "out of touch." The same can happen to a mentally ill person who is locked up for too long.

I once heard that the difference between being called an eccentric and a crazy person; is that one is rich and the other is poor.  I think there is some truth in that. The deciding factor being society and what they will tolerate.

Yes, I know that not everyone can handle the responsibility to live beyond a institution's walls; as I have witness. Kristine works hard towards that responsibility of getting on with her life and living it to her fullest and how can I deny that for her. What is my purpose in life if not to be here to give her that support.