One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Posted by Dave on Mar 6, 2012 in Dave's Blog | 2 comments
The one step forward came on 9 February when we shared the lab results with Chris’ psychiatrist. She agreed in principle to reduce the medications if and when we had successfully treated his Lyme disease. Chris was confidently exclaiming, as he has in the past, that he didn’t need the meds now because of the length of time since his last episode. I cautioned him that him that spring is always a high risk time of year. He denied it.
That night, he did not take his medication nor did he get it at the pharmacy in spite of my calling him three times to remind him. The next day I put the last of the medications in his pill container and told him I would return to do the rest later and that he only had a few days supply left. He said he would pick up the prescription and didn’t need me to put them in the container. I asked him to be sure and pick up the prescription. He said he would. I offered to put the meds into the container and he said he was capable of doing it and didn’t need me to do it. Later I learned that instead of getting and taking his medications, he gave some money to a homeless friend to buy a tent and sleeping bag, and then went camping with him over the weekend. Just a few days without his meds and his judgment was already impaired. Later I learned he had obtained the pills but had failed to put them in the pill container.
I spent the weekend at a Canary Party Conference near Sacramento. When I returned on Monday I could tell he was already pressured and becoming manic. He took his meds, while insisting he didn’t need them as I put them into the container. Subsequent interactions with him led me to know he was heading for the hospital again. As he descended into another manic episode I unsuccessfully tried to get him hospitalized through the mental health on call personnel. I thought of disabling his car so he couldn’t drive, but was fearful of a confrontation if he saw me in his car. I told mental health crises workers of the situation and they said they would alert the authorities. Ironically the day before this incident he drove to the County Sherriff’s office with some new manifesto for peace in the middle East. His functioning was so impaired that he left his cell phone. Even though the mental health authorities had allegedly put out a warning re Chris’ mental state, no one at the Sherriff’s office did anything.
The sad and predictable details of his hospitalization are omitted here. Upon being discharged his entire consciousness had shifted to spiritual battles in which he is pushed by forces having nothing to do with brain dysfunction secondary to Lyme disease and associated infections. When I went to his apartment during his hospitalization, I noticed he had thrown the pills in the trash. Perhaps his retreat into the world of spirit gives him a kind of confident certainty that belies the vulnerable state of his body and brain. Better to be tossed about in a heroic struggle between Good and Evil than to have neglected to take his medications. Becker’s classic book The Denial of Death comes to mind.
The irony of this episode is that his behavior is highly consistent with a diagnosis I created in Beyond Mental Illness called “Faulty Brake Disorder.”
I absolutely love the faulty brake disorder…that’s exactly what I have been calling it as well! One problem I see here is that the psychiatrist is not the right person here to dispense his meds: a Lyme literate neurologist is what you need! We have about as many of those in the world as we have needles in a haystack. Psychiatrists are treating symptoms and tamping them down. Neurology is often quoted by doctors as the least developed of all the medical disciplintes. Neuroscience is new science indeed. Unfortuntely, David, the biggest split or psychosis is in medicine itself, over the brain. The brain is the only part of medicine really that splits itself up into two categories: mental and medical, psychiatry and psychology, and neurology. We might even say that the transference and counter transference is remarkable….We can replace the heart, but can we replace the brain? We can’t even understand its function nevermind the healing aspects it takes. And none is more seriously misunderstood than Epilepsy, which I will be giving my speech of a lifetime’s work in Chicago this August. It is our lack of understanding the function of the brain that has led to more misunderstandings of people than I think any other. We label our kids as willful, not living up to their potential, when they just can’t. There is not choice in the matter when the brain becomes diseased up to a certain point. Of course Chris identifies with the homeless: that is where our lack of understanding of the brain and specifically the temporal lobes, shows up most! As a society, we have utterly failed when it comes to how we are treating brain illnesses and disorders. We make judgments on the sick and write them off. They live in a hell trying to figure out what they have done wrong, why they can’t do things others do so easily, why are they so ill-fated and what have they done, what terrible thing could be almost forcing them to act the way they do? An agonizing hell on earth that no one, I repeat no one should be subjected to and receive anything but our most compassionate understanding and help. If you need help identifying the meds best suited to Chris’ condition, I would be happy to suggest the ones that CLINICAL RESEARCH indicates match his condition, so that he does not become a guinea pig…no wonder he won’t take his meds…they are probably not the right ones! Does anyone really listen to his feelings about being on them? Validate them? If he were on the right meds, he would feel more normal. I will repeat that, if he is on the right meds, he would take them because they would make him feel better not worse…How do we match up the meds and the nutrition to him the best possible way? I use a combination of things….for one, we have to know his blood type for the best nutritional profile…See Dr. D’Adamo’s Diet by Blood Type, the father better than the son…Rare blood types, and I am one, have multiple sensitivities as it is, and when they are sick like with Lyme, they get even worse…and hence it is important to know what you can and can’t have…people need to know what their personal brakes are…and how to use and develop them and heal them when they are broken…So for example if you are allergic to shellfish or fish, please don’t do the omegas from fish….do olive oil instead to lube up your brain…or find the right oil for your system…Your brain and body tells you what you need and don’t need to heal but who really listens? As we face the epidemic of autism and Lyme disease, these practices will become important for a much larger part of the population than you or I realize. Pretty soon we will all need to understand our brains a whole lot better than we do now….and Chris can help with that understanding…and putting it out there…thank you for your courage and bravery! Chris couldn’t have a more devoted parent than you and in my experience, it’s the parents that are most devoted to their kids who eventually get the help and care that they need so kudos to you, and so lucky for Chris to have you….I know that you are embarking on an Odyssey that has caught a wonderful new wind in its sails that will take you and your family to amazing places of the greatest healing and it is a blessing to all the others who will also be able to be helped by your journey. It is all a Spiritual Journey really isn’t it and wheneven I myself get bit under the weather and feel overwhelmed I say to myself, who are the Wonderful Healers that God or a Higher Power would have me meet now? And I look very forward to meeting them, they are the most amazing bunch!!! and gifted saints among us…..
SSRI’s actually increase cortisol stimulation from the adrenals which stresses the adrenals even more causing even more anxiety which is why Klonopin is usually prescribed with it. Eventually your HPA axis becomes upregulated towards high cortisol levels which leads to a severely disrupted hormal circadian rhythm of cortisol and DHEA. The key to getting better is reducing stress and lots of sleeping. The crux of those with anxiety and depression is that they usually have terrible insomnia.