Another Beautiful Mind

Tomorrow morning I’ll be in court for the second time in 10 days. Again, a judge will decide the fate of my 42 year old sister.

2 weeks ago she was found in the Walgreen’s parking lot screaming that someone was trying to kill her. She then ran into the ladies room, jumped onto the commode and kept the police at bay for over an hour before allowing them to help her down and transport her to a hospital mental health unit. In my day they called it the psych ward. Is that the pc term these days? Whatever. It’s still a psych ward to me. Mom knew her way around one. As did my aunts, uncle and if granny never got admitted, she sure should have. I was just too young to know and mom never talked about it. Yeah, the simple truth is that some of my family has been blessed with a beautiful mind. Russell Crowe did a great job in that movie, didn’t he? He shed some much needed light on this disease. My sister had never displayed symptoms of it as far as I was aware. I’d lost touch with her after I helped her out of legal troubles back a few years ago. She was pissed at me for having to be firm with her and ignored my calls and I accepted that she needed her space. I found out that she’s been seeing a psychiatrist for about a year for troubles concentrating, and as it becomes apparent, the onset of what has now been diagnosed as severe paranoid schizophrenia.

The first time I visited her in the hospital I could literally see the fear in her eyes. How do you know when it’s severe? When you soil yourself rather than use the facility because you know it’s rigged, that’s severe. And you sleep in a chair, because your bed moves at night, that is severe. How horrible it must feel to be in fear for your life day and night. But she never talked about it with the staff, only me. She was smart enough to know that if she talked about it with them, she’s never get out of there.

I put my arms around her and assured her that I would not let anyone or anything harm her. I would take care of her. She was living alone at the time, and we talked about her coming to live with me after she stabilized, until she could find a low income place here in town, closer to me. She jumped at the chance. She thought that might happen at the first court hearing, but I knew she was nowhere near ready to come home.

The court hearing was necessary because she wanted to sign herself out, and the doctor felt she would be a harm to herself. In that case, the court gets involved. Since then she’s been doing better, taking her meds better, not hiding them under her tongue and spitting them out later as she had been doing before. But there are still signs that she’s far from stable. She called me last night in fact and left a message that someone was again trying to kill her, and a couple of days ago spoke about talking to a friend through “spirit.” Since I’m not home for 12 hours at a time on my night shift, I can’t take the chance that she would have problems in the middle of the night and not have someone there to calm her down and reassure her that she was secure. In speaking to her doctor, he recommended a half way house for a period of time. She doesn’t know this, but she will tomorrow at court.

My heart just breaks for her because I know how much she wants to get out and come stay with me, or go home. And I want nothing more than to make it better for her. But I want her to be safe more than anything. I need to be strong for her. I’ll be transporting her to the facility after court. After that, I think I’ll buy a package of circus peanuts and eat the whole bag . . . . . because I can.