“All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This afternoon, finally, my brother was moved from the extended care unit of the hospital’s emergency room and into a proper psych ward, where he should have been, at least four days ago.
Delays in his admission into the emergency department almost definitely made him more irritated last Friday. If the hospital had received the funding and the staff that are required, it would have been less likely that Nick would have become violent, been restrained, heavily drugged and bound to a barouche. He would have been difficult, he would have been psychotic, but if there had been more mental health care resources available, I doubt he would have become violent as he would have received the care he needed, when he needed it.
I’ve alluded to Nick’s problems on battlecat.net a couple of times, but very rarely. Since I got back from Finland though, and entered back into the altered reality that is my family life, I have realised that it is one of those things that need to be explored and written about, and published.
It has been easy to exclude my brother’s presence from my writing, because personal blogging, no matter how natural, how exposed it may seem, is still a text that can be manipulated and edited. A blogger can create an identity, a branded self, by choosing what to write about (heartbreak, gardening, international cycling) and choosing what to exclude (psycho difficult brother, abject fear of failure, sexual encounters of the thrilling and incredibly disappointing kind). Over time though, I’ve realised that writing about the less shiny parts of one’s life can not only be therapeutic, but also helpful to others.
So here it goes, I’ve forgotten stuff and excluded other things. But still I’m writing something, even if some of the facts are hazy.
Nick is three years younger than me. He has always seemed to have problems, was scared easily, had learning difficulties, was a little more obsessive about certain things (MacGyver and pocket knives) than other kids. As a kid though, he was also incredibly cute, so cute that at about 4 and a half years old, in an often told story, I bit him square on the butt cheek just after he got out of the bath.
“Ih Ah, bit me on the bottie!”
Some kids are just cute enough to eat. Nick was one of those kids.
by .
[The other cute kid is yours truly.]
Cuteness aside, Nick needed more care than other kids, and he demanded attention, rewards, frustration. Visits to therapists, speech pathologists and hearing, sight and movement specialists. Ritalin. Repeated years of primary school.
[depressed, frustrated mother. reserved father. attention seeking older sister.]
Once he did make it into high school he hardly made it to class, from memory he seemed to spend more time just hanging out with the school nurse or getting into trouble. And at some point, one of his mates (coincidentally, the son of my piano teacher) introduced him to dope.
He started hearing voices. He started talking about the voices he heard. He hallucinated and began to cut himself in order to stop the visions [the kitchen, a carving knife, Nick's arm]. He was out of school, diagnosed with schizophrenia, medicated and in a youth psychiatric support group. He still demanded attention, couldn’t and can’t manage his money at all. “I need cigarettes, iced coffee, food, skate shoes.”
At what point did the symptoms end and at what point was he a cunning spoilt teenager?
Ten years on and Nick lives in a filthy flat the family bought as he’d be homeless otherwise. He has no concept of how his bills get paid. He can’t hold down a job in the rare cases he is offered one. He smokes like a chimney. He finds it hard to make and keep friends.
Last time I checked, Nick had schizophrenia, seizures, depression and Asperger’s Syndrome, which undiagnosed and untreated for years has made managing all his other problems far more frustrating. Over the last month as his medication routine has fallen apart, he has had vocal tics, muscle spasms and difficulties speaking. For a while there, my cute brother was acting and sounding pretty much like Gollum.
That weird guy you passed on the street as he muttered to himself? Well he’s someone’s brother. He could in fact, be mine.
My parents are exhausted, my mother particularly so. Dealing with my brother has driven wedges throughout the family and there have been times when my mother’s relationship with my stepfather has been severely tested as a result of everything that has gone on. My baby brother has no understanding that Nick was anything other than the weird guy he is now and so he resents the situation even more than I do.
And so, there I was, cursing the lack of funding for mental health care as I held Nick’s hand while he muttered and sweated and writhed and shook last Friday night. I had to look at my little brother struggle against his restraints and I couldn’t do anything, but at least he was so drugged out that he let me hold his hand.
[Seeing him like that was the worst thing I have ever experienced.]
Tonight when I visited him in his new ward he spent most of his time drawing. He was a little bewildered by the change in surroundings, but the other patients I met were quite lovely, and in some cases extremely odd. Nick’s arm is shaking and he can’t walk quite properly and until he’s had some more tests we won’t know why that stuff is going on. He is calmer and easier to get along with than normal, but it is a subdued Nick, a very vulnerable Nick, who has a long bumpy road of tests and medication adjustments to go.
“She’s paranoid you know.”
“Pippa, keep your head still, this picture isn’t turning out right.”
“I have to have an MRI scan and an EEG, but I’ll be out of here tomorrow.”
