ONE GRATEFUL MOM

It’s the second Wednesday of the month and a wave of peace surrounds me.  I am happy, simply content.  No, I haven’t hit lotto or retired, but it seems to always be the best day of the month for the past year.   You see, my son gets his injectable medication on that day, a miracle for a man of 33 years old, who has suffered much and yet still has no insight into his mental illness and most probably never will.

 

Years of watching him take meds, dreading the climb upstairs to his bedroom with the pills and water, his anger and resentment, the name-calling, and worst of all, the look on his face as he swallowed what he perceived to be poison from his mother is gone for today.

 

The threat of another assisted outpatient treatment order has been enough to keep my son diligently taking an injectable medication. In fact, he has moved out of my home, works 3 days a week and is more independent than ever before.

 

It is not perfect.  The schizophrenia remains, but with the injectable there is much less angst and fewer symptoms. Sadly, he is only agreeing to the treatment until the “AOT” people are off his back.  But without his first assisted outpatient treatment order, he would still be battling the demons on the walls, and the streets, believing they were real and that I was somehow behind his suffering.  He attends no programs since for someone with anosognosia (lack of insight) they simply made him angrier.  How could he listen anymore to the lies they told?  Why did he have to waste 5 years with people who are sick and need help when he is healthy and educated?  No, despite their dedication to help those with mental illness, PROS programs did not help my son’s anosognosia.  There he learned to lie about having insight so that he would never have to return.  What worked was an injectable medication administered once a month.

 

But today I’m not thinking about any of this.   It’s the second Wednesday of the month and I am so grateful.  No longer do I dream about his successful business career or the family he might have had.  But, make no mistake, I still dream – a simple one - that he goes to the doctor and gets the injection because with it, he has a life.  With that injectable, he smiles and hugs me.  I know it won’t last, but for today I am one grateful mom.