Fight for life: Janet Walton writes from her experience of mental illness—one of the few remaining taboos of our age - Living Issues

For A Change, April-May, 2003 by Janet Walton

Most of us are against discrimination. Yet we fail to see that we often discriminate against those things we fear most.

Psychotic illness is one of those strange enigmas people fear. They therefore discriminate against those who suffer from it. It is the worst of the worst. Worse than the big C or death itself. It epitomizes all we most fear--'losing our marbles', losing control.

My grandfather suffered from a severe incurable mental illness and died in an asylum in 1916. It is uncertain whether my father carried a dominant or a recessive gene for this illness. He died aged 40 from Hodgkins Disease when I was only three and a half. I, his only child, carry the dominant gene for psychotic illness.

Normal people are sometimes at the mercy of their sick and tortured thoughts or emotions. These can temporarily affect their brain chemistry. But we psychotics live at the mercy of changes in our brain chemistry, which can quite unpredictably zing us right out of gear--and may be connected to a change in the weather or diet or to exceptional events or to simple unavoidable everyday stress. These changes can affect our thoughts, emotions and behaviour, as by-products.

PENDULUM

We psychotics never--or hardly ever--lie back and give in and say what is actually so true, 'We can't help it.' We gather the reins in our blistered bleeding hands to work on that frantic wild beast within. At times we resemble a raging lion, at times a meek mouse. If you can catch the pendulum as it swings you might get a glimpse of the amiable border collie which we perceive in our fellow human beings at their best.

Through weeks, months, years of torture I have learned to let the pool of sanity of God's creative mind touch and circle my sick mind. Like a stone in a pond, the particle of sanity from Above radiates rings of illumination and sanity in the dark dingy pool. Mostly my mind is alone, cut off from God. But the more I perceive of him, the nearer middle age I reach, the more I stretch forth a calloused hand for a shoot of sanity.

Six years ago when I began to break out of severe psychosis, my anti-psychotic drug was reduced. As a side-effect, my blood pressure rose dramatically. I suffered a heart attack and a slight stroke, which unfortunately were wrongly diagnosed. The medication was reduced still further. There were times when I wanted to die, due to the complete debilitation which resulted.

Eighteen months ago I was taken off mood stabilizing and sleeping medication. As the sick chemistry drifted away from my brain, the physical struck where, unbeknownst to me, it had been threatening to strike for some 40 years. My blood pressure soared and I suffered two severe strokes and a life-threatening and frightening bout of pneumonia. My life was in jeopardy for seven weeks in hospital. For the first year at home I often lay at death's door.

At the onslaught of pneumonia, one junior house officer in hospital said to me, 'I wouldn't bother to live with a prognosis like yours, Mrs W.'

'Why?' I said. 'What is my prognosis, doctor?'

'Well probably paralysed waist-down for life, and psychotic into the bargain,' he said. 'I know what I would do.'

'Well, I have a husband to live for, doctor, and live I will.'

At one point I feared the pneumonia would take me: the hospital had left it to providence. They left me to struggle for my life, and struggle I did.

So I said to God, 'What do you want me to do?' The answer came back heart-to-heart, mind-to-mind, 'Free will I give you, Janet.'

'My will is to do your will, God,' I said. 'I submit my will totally and utterly to you.'

The reply came, 'I need you alive. Rick needs you. Fight.'

So fight I did until after five more days I felt I could let go of the draining battle and rest and trust in God. He took over the strings of the marionette puppet.

'TO LIFE'

The next day my husband asked if I had felt something different as if someone had prayed for me. He and my doctor, unbeknownst to me, had prayed in earnest. Their request--and mine--was answered. My chest cleared and my throat muscles began to work again. Richard and I toasted each other with a glass of water, 'To life'. And life we have, and have it more abundantly.

Now a few months on I give thanks for what I have: partial sanity--it could have become total insanity--and partial paralysis--it could have been total. I have a home of my own--friends, family--and a very loving and wonderful husband. My singing voice has returned after five years of not being able to sing. I am able to read and write again after 30 years of fuzz and confusion. I compose and play my father's piano.

My husband and I are joined in submitting our wills and minds--sick though they at times are--to God's will. He is our light, our life and our way.