William Evans10 said:It’s exactly everything you just listed... it's happening to her right now. And on top of all that... she doesn't care about herself or basic hygiene at all. It's just cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes.
And to top it all off, the medical report states: "Given her age and the nature of these disturbances, the prognosis is poor."
Is there ever any hope for improvement? Because the doctor's words aren't exactly encouraging, and they leave me feeling pretty hopeless. Based on what he said, I feel like I can only wait for the day she becomes completely bedridden and loses all touch with reality.
Because nothing interests her anymore. She doesn't even want to talk. She just wants to lie there.
She lives with us, but her condition hasn't changed one bit. If I ask her to do something simple, like take a shower, she won't do it... I literally have to command her to do it.
The doctor mentioned that while her current medication should keep the illness under control, hallucinations could still emerge... and honestly, he admitted he doesn't even know for sure.
Is there really no cure? No hope?
I find myself compelled to comment on this bolded section; it represents just one episode from my past that I can laugh about endlessly today, though at the time, it felt exactly as I am about to describe.
After spending a few days at the Los Angeles facility while they kept me under observation for absolutely no reason—even though I was perfectly fine, if you can believe the irony—a male nurse approached me to tell me I needed to take a shower. I felt a momentary flash of pride because I understood exactly what he was asking for, though I kept my mouth shut just to avoid giving him any more ammunition to label me as unstable, since anyone would grasp such a basic instruction. I sat there weighing my response before the realization hit me that there aren't actually any showers here. I could hear the sound of running water coming from the bathroom, but I knew instinctively it was nothing more than a recording playing through a speaker, a hollow imitation of reality. There were moments when I questioned my own sanity, wondering if the lack of showers was merely a trick of my mind, but I refused to ask him if the plumbing was real or if it was just audio, simply because I didn't want to confirm his worst suspicions about me.
After he spent some time badgering me, the guy finally convinced me to go take a look, and I followed him along, fully certain there was nothing to see since showers apparently don't exist in this place. We stepped into the bathroom where I could hear the sound of running water—which, in my mind, served only as proof that the showers weren't actually there—but then we rounded the corner and discovered actual, functional showers that you could genuinely use.
I have finally come to the realization that this entire situation is orchestrated against me, especially since no sane person would go so far as to hide the showers from view just to ensure honest people can't find them.
I wouldn't have even bothered showering on that trip if two more hospital staff hadn't shown up to bolster the team.
I never really had the heart to shower in hospitals, mostly because I found certain issues within those bathrooms that weighed heavily on me, though whether that was due to my own declining health or the facilities themselves remains a matter of some debate.
I can't speak to any kind of cure or the possibility of hope, but generally speaking, if you can manage to resolve everything during that first and only hospital stay, you might stand a chance, because anything beyond that point tends to become significantly more complicated.
My prognoses varied wildly, ranging from the absolute worst-case scenarios to slightly less grim outlooks, yet none of them offered much genuine hope. Then my primary psychiatrist told me, after three or four years of this, that it had all been a relatively minor case, almost nothing at all. It caught me completely off guard; I was bracing myself for some heavy warnings or dire precautions, but there was nothing. He simply said I was as healthy as anyone else and that I could finally walk out those doors without giving them a second thought. So I walked out, and this time, the victory felt final. I felt no urge to prove anything to anyone, no need to slam the doors until they shattered, and no craving for praise, apologies, or that submissive fear that used to be the telltale sign of my illness every time I passed through those doors before. That last time, I left knowing I wouldn't be coming back—and even if I did return, it wouldn't be because it was my first time leaving. I never told him how incredibly sorry I felt about not seeing him again, feeling like the chapter was closed, though given that one of my main struggles was severely disrupted emotions, I'm not entirely sure why I felt that way when all I had wanted for months was to get outside and slam those double glass doors so hard they’d break on both sides.
