SchizoAFFECTIVE Not SchizoDEFECTIVE

Wikipedia defines schizo-affective disorder as “episodic disorders where mood and schizophrenic symptoms are both present but a diagnosis of schizophrenia or depressive or manic episodes is not warranted.” Which to me is basically saying, “We don’t know what the hell is wrong with you so we’re taking a little from column A and a little from column B.”

If you tell people your schizo-affective, they automatically turn that into schizophrenic, and they pull their children away from you.  Its not the same.  I know what I see and hear is inside my head, but it doesn’t stop me from seeing or hearing those things.  I may walk around mumbling to myself but at least I’m aware I’m doing it.  It always seems to me that schizophrenics are in their own world.  In the case of a schizo-affective, they are in the same world as everyone else but sometimes take a vacation.

Its almost like having multiple personality disorder as well.  One day I’m a raving lunatic, acting as a tornado and destroying everything in my path.  Then the next day I lie on the couch all day watching telly because I’m too depressed to get up.  It is only after almost every medication on the market that I feel I have plateaued and am now stable enough to go out in public.

But yet I don’t.  I’m terrified of being out in public.  There is a stigma against anyone with any mental illness.  Forget about having one where you keep answering the questions in your head out loud.  I haven’t had “real job” in almost four years.  Before the illness set in I was in beauty school and doing pretty well at rolling old lady perms.  Then something tragic happened and I just snapped.

I spent the better part of one day clawing at the floor till my nails bent back and tearing my hair out while crying and rocking back and forth.  My mother loaded me up in the car and took me to the health center where they gave me a shot of Thorazine to calm me down.  They also gave me a prescription for Thorazine and Xanax.  I slept for a week but when I woke up I was still in such despair so I went downstairs, got a bottle of gin and all my pills then went upstairs to die.

I woke up a week later in the emergency room.  It turns out that while I was bombed on tranquilizers I had wandered into the bathroom and passed out on the floor.  My father found me.  My parents kept a vigil over me for the whole week and when my pulse had slowed considerably they took me to the emergency room where I received a shot of adrenaline to wake me.  As soon as I was stable I was transferred to the Behavioral Health Unit.  I stayed there a week while they figured out what to do with me.  They suggested shock therapy.  I could not have cared if they said they wanted to trepan me.  I just signed whatever papers they gave me and was then transferred to a private hospital to receive electro-convulsive therapy.

I know there are a lot of uneducated people out there who think this is an archaic treatment and that it borders on torture.  They could not be more wrong.  This is shock treatment in a nutshell: you go in and lie down, you get some anaesthesia, you go to sleep, you wake up and feel slightly better.  It doesn’t hurt and I had no idea what was happening when it was going on.  It was no big deal.  I got several rounds of bilateral shock (meaning both sides of my head).  Two weeks later I was declared stable enough to go resume my life of pin curls and finger waves.

Little did I know the struggle was just beginning