http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opini...717/story.html
　
Possible to live 'normal' life with schizophrenia

Social stigma slowly fades as curiosity about how we cope grows

By Austin Mardon And Justin Selner, edmontonjournal.com
　
Although we as humans are simply the products of bones and DNA, we do posses the unique ability to make choices -- maybe that is where the soul is.

In the 1890s, after giving birth to her second child, my great-grandmother developed what today is called schizophrenia. For all intents and purposes, her life was over. Stricken with this mental illness, known at the time as dementia praecox, she was locked up in an asylum and left to die some decades later in southern England. During this time, her husband quickly rose in ranks as a London policeman and proceeded to divorce his ill wife and remarry.
　
Schizophrenia then reappeared in my family, surfacing in my mother after the birth of her third child. Although I was only five years old at the time, I was fully conscious of this event. My mother first developed postpartum depression; that eventually cascaded into the psychosis of schizophrenia. As a result, my mother was in and out of the hospital for most of my childhood. Unfortunately, she never responded well to the medications, but she somehow managed to function at a marginal level. Nevertheless, to this day our family remains the brunt of small-town southern Alberta hostility due to our perceived strange behaviour.

The torments I was subjected to in school were both nightmarish and brutal.

Even the teachers who taught in the school did nothing to protect me from the endless physical, verbal and emotional lashings my fellow peers endlessly bestowed upon me. Despite having been invited to present and speak in my childhood town, I have been unable to bring myself to relive those painful days.

However, enduring the abuse of my early school days prepared me for the ostracism I was to receive when I became afflicted with the psychosis of schizophrenia at the age of 30.

Just one year after obtaining my undergraduate degree, I found myself living in a tent near the South Pole, on an expedition recovering meteorites for NASA. Although I was constantly confronted with dangerously freezing temperatures and many situations in which my life was severely threatened, I did not fear dying. Rather, I experienced frequent nightmares on the Antarctic Polar Plateau of returning to those horrific times of school.

My ability to genuinely feel shame from the judgmental expressions and fear expressed in people's eyes when they discover I have the scarlet letter "S" for schizophrenia has been blunted by the layers of emotional scar tissue I accumulated in my youth.

After my first psychotic break from reality, people in my family said I should get sterilized because I was genetically inferior.

Genetic doctors have also expressed this opinion to me. I have often likened this to the Nazis, who used castration or murder in an attempt to eliminate further schizophrenic and mentally disabled individuals. From my father, I knew this province had also adopted many similar eugenic laws that had continued to be implemented until my youth.

People have often told me I am brave in my advocacy for this much maligned group -- schizophrenics and the seriously mentally ill.
However, it does not come out of any sense of bravery, but rather a deep-seated fear concerning what happens when people become too afraid to interact and participate in public life.

Before I became ill, my life centred on the pursuit of higher-level education, and was full of challenges and adventure. Although my professors trained me for a life in the field of geography and teaching, I did not use this knowledge in the manner I had expected.
Ironically, I honestly feel I used it in a way that was much more profound and beneficial.

After my first psychotic break from reality, people in my family said I should get sterilized because I was genetically inferior.
　
Genetic doctors have also expressed this opinion to me. I have often likened this to the Nazis, who used castration or murder in an attempt to eliminate further schizophrenic and mentally disabled individuals. From my father, I knew this province had also adopted many similar eugenic laws that had continued to be implemented until my youth.

People have often told me I am brave in my advocacy for this much maligned group -- schizophrenics and the seriously mentally ill.

However, it does not come out of any sense of bravery, but rather a deep-seated fear concerning what happens when people become too afraid to interact and participate in public life.

Before I became ill, my life centred on the pursuit of higher-level education, and was full of challenges and adventure. Although my professors trained me for a life in the field of geography and teaching, I did not use this knowledge in the manner I had expected.
Ironically, I honestly feel I used it in a way that was much more profound and beneficial.
　
People usually become bored when I start talking about my scientific and scholarly research on meteorites, Alberta politicians, or space science.
What does fascinate them is the story of my illness and how I have lived with this burden. Because it is such a unique and odd illness that anyone can get, people sometimes observe, "there go I but for the Grace of God."

I tell my wife all the time I missed out on that 20-year-period of work my contemporaries are now concluding by gazing at their fast approaching retirements.

In contrast to them, we will likely face a retirement below the poverty line. I hear many people talk about how poor they are when they earn $50,000 or less, but for nearly every person on AISH, this is an unattainable dream.

During a typical day, I can spike up for normal activities, but pay for it with long naps and stressful babblings to my wife.

Even good stress has resulted in psychotic symptoms.
　
This is best exemplified in my investiture as a member of the Order of Canada in which my family's reaction consisted of yelling at me for two weeks about the shame I had brought to our name by linking such a well-known award to the horror of schizophrenia.

Doctors are human and within the limits of their skills as practitioners of the healing arts, I do believe they genuinely try to heal the one per cent of the population that suffers from schizophrenia.

Be that as it may, I have heard figures estimating up to 90 per cent of patients with schizophrenia do not take their medications properly.

For whatever reasons (likely fear), I am in that 10 per cent who do take their medication properly and with an almost maniacal determination.

Apart from taking my medication, I also try to reduce the stress in my life. I also have a reason to stay well and healthy as my wife depends on me to support her and leave her with the dishes. Half jokingly, I tell people that every time (which is fairly infrequent) she asks me to do the dishes I tell her I can't, due to my medication. While that lame excuse still works, it is after five years of loving marriage.

When we married, I vowed to her that, while I would likely not be able to support her above the poverty line or do the dishes, I would take my medication religiously for as long as I was alive.

While I am still paranoid, have visions, and hear voices, I am doing all I can to stay healthy.

Society may not classify me as "normal," but ultimately it is simply important for me to live, as my wife says to me often, a happy and healthy life.
　
About Austin Mardon
Austin Mardon has four decorations, including the U.S. Congressional Antarctic Service Medal, the Alberta Centennial Medal and the Order of Canada (member). He has authored several books and over 201 peer-reviewed communications. Today, he receives the Alberta Medical Association's highest award for a non-physician: the Medal of Honour. Justin Selner is a political science student at the University of Alberta.

Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/opinion/Possible+live+normal+life+with+schizophrenia/3571717/story.html#ixzz10XJNq6Rp
　
One reader comment:
saspence
11:13 AM on September 24, 2010
I have faced this illness with my husband, who is now in prison for not taking his medication properly. My husband and I are legally married and he has had this illness for quit sometime. He gets episodes where he gets parinoid of myself. knowing that someone is living a good life with this illness is uplifting.