3 years ago, when Emma was brought home from Vegas, she was a shell of her former confident self. She was still very beautiful, dressed well, but she was paranoid to the point of not being able to handle living in her own house because she thought she was being stalked by the government.
She didn’t even trust us at first – thought we were one of “them”. After a week of being home, she started doing really weird stuff – letting 3 dogs out without leases, walking around the neighborhood barefoot with her hands in prayer position, and would leave flowers at neighbors’ houses. She kept going into the shower with clothes on, and put toothpaste all over the bathroom walls, thinking that she was an artist.
Taking her to the emergency intake center resulted in her being admitted to their mental ward facility to be under surveillance for 24/7. A young doctor without bedside manner asked if she was on drugs, and when we replied no, she diagnosed Emma as having a “first break” and suffering from a psychotic disorder of schizophrenia, giving us equal odds of her getting better, getting worse, or staying the same. (Really, no bedside manner.)
They put her on Risperal, but since Emma was refusing to eat, switched her to Zyprexa, which is known to make people gain weight because of the desire to eat. After 10 days, Emma was released into our care, and she seemed to be getting better.
She remained on Zyprexa – going as high as 20mg per day, and was slowly tapered down to 5 mg by Dr. G. After 6 months of living with us, Emma became very restless and wanted to return to Vegas, and I was also ready to be rid of this daughter who did nothing around the house and thought that our town was too slow with nothing to do.
She remained on 5mg of Zyprexa, lived independently and supported herself quite well for about a year, and then we had a call from one of her friends who had dropped her off in the emergency room in Vegas because she was having suicidal thoughts.
Yikes! Thank God for good friends!
The reason she felt that she needed to check herself was also because she had not been sleeping for days. Her doctor at the free drug clinic in Vegas ran out of Zyprexa, and substituted Saphris, assuming that it would work. Duh! Evidently it didn’t and almost caused a disaster.
They quickly put her back on Zyprexa 5 mg, but she was not able to function normally, and they subsequently increased the dose to 10 mg, 15 mg, and then 20 mg. She was still feeling stressed and anxious, and was not making as much at work since she would leave early before her shift ended or not go to work at all – because things did not look normal, or they looked scary. She did not feel that she needed to come home – she felt that she needed to make money to pay her bills.
It did not help that she had also “rolled” on Ecstacy 7 times while on the Zyprexa 5 mg, with each trip being a bad one with lights looking abnormal and her skin feeling like it was on fire. Seven trips, each one bad – sounds so stupid – wasn’t the 1st bad trip bad enough to learn not to take that drug again, especially since she knew that she was on a drug for her mental stability? [Currently she believes that she did permanent brain damage because of this. If anyone else has had or heard of similar breakdowns with this combination, please comment below.]
One year after that, she came home, and the parade through doctors her in our hometown began. Still no progress – in fact, Emma has deteriorated from someone who was able to do errands such as shopping, banking, packing, work tasks, to someone who is afraid to leave the house, or be left alone, or do outside errands at all. Lights that were acceptable to her are now too bright and hurt her eyes. Sounds that were merely irritating are now much too loud and sound scary. Peoples’ faces sometimes get scary. Colors are no longer beautiful. Food doesn’t taste as good.
There are some therapies that we have not completed or started, but the constant has been the medication for schizophrenia. Her psychiatrist is puzzled because he has prescribed almost every known medication for schizophrenia without any positive results. In fact, some of them make her feel violent, or sick with nausea, or sore. Currently she is on Geodon 80 mg (40mg twice a day) and her same symptoms are present. She now has hands that shake, and her legs twitch if she is sitting still. If she is up and about, she paces, back and forth. This condition is called akathisia, a side effect from the antipsychotic drugs that treat schizophrenia.
A full psychological profile of Emma was never done – the initial diagnosis of schizophrenia done by the emergency mental ward doctor 3 years ago had been accepted as the diagnosis for all subsequent treatments.
At this point in time, is it schizophrenia that Emma has? If it isn’t, are the antipsychotic drugs for schizophrenia making her worse?
As of today, her neurologist, her neurobiofeedback trainer, and her psychologist believe that it is not schizophrenia. Her psychiatrist calls her a puzzle because she is not responding to the anti-psychosis medications and has even begun to question if she is bipolar rather than schizophrenic.
Meanwhile, her mother is going crazy because Emma is deteriorating into an even more anxiety ridden non motivated shell of her former self. She refuses to get off of the anti-psychotic medication because she thinks she will go more out of whack. How much worse can she get? There is still room on the downslide, but not much.
I do believe she needs to get tested, and tested by someone who is very good at assessments. That is one of the next steps. It is also one of the steps that should have been the first step, imo.