My mom has had paranoid schizophrenia way longer than I’ve been alive (I’m 21) so my dad has definitely already been through it with her, they are still together tho. She is a very sweet and loving mother, but when her illness is getting bad she becomes a literal monster and I feel like her schizophrenia ruined a good chunk of my life. She doesn’t take care of herself and is very unhygenic, she’s also very overweight so that is also a reason why she can’t clean herself. When I was a kid she never tought me hygiene and sometimes even discouraged it, bc then I wouldn’t smell like her daughter anymore according to her. As a child I didn’t know better so I did as she said and you can probably imagine how badly I got bullied for it in school. The bullying started in first grade when I was 6 and stopped in 8th grade when I was 14 because I started taking care of myself and my hygiene. Since then I’m very sensitive when it comes to cleanliness and hygiene, so her bad hygiene can be very triggering to me. The bullying was extremely hard for me and still causes me issues. Dealing with it and understanding what happened got easier over the years but I haven’t healed fully from it, so I’m seeing a therapist atm.
I have a lot of memories from when I was a child where she would scream at me and my sister, insult us, or when we were outside together she would screech and scream at strangers near us, I always felt so ashamed but I just thought that she had mood swings or something. Or a while after I had knee surgery as a kid, she grabbed my knee and screamed at me that she wanted to know who was in there (my knee) which terrified me. I also remember her getting dragged out of our apartment by police and getting taken to the hospital when I was maybe 5 because it had gotten really bad again and this is a cycle that repeats every few years. She gets perscribed medication from her psychiatrist, which she refuses to take because she is absolutely convinced that she is not mentally ill.
I found out about the schizophrenia when I was 15, when it got way worse again. She went outside and screamed at random strangers again (she didn’t scream words she just screeched in their face at the top of her lungs) which we could all hear from inside the apartment. She would also do this at home to us again. Someone also filed a charge against us because she made their kid cry by doing this. As time went by she was banned in every shop or restaurant in the area because of her behaviour there.
Back then I didn’t have my own PC so I used the family computer to watch something or play video games and when I occupied the computer she would constanly try to get me off of it because she was always on there and would google extremely long nonsense paragraphs all day or send VERY long conspiracy-like e-mails to everyone (even our city mayor). I distinctely remember when I watched a film on the computer and when I refused to get off, she constantly asked me nicely, then she walked away, turned back around and screeched so loud in my face that I instantly started crying and ran downstairs to my dad, then she used the computer. One time she also got physical and tried to pull me away from the chair, but that is the only time she ever did that in my life. She often threatened us, she threatened to kill my dad, she would accuse my dad of sleeping with me or that he was cheating on her with the neighbour etc., it was so bad. The situation was so helpless because nobody could help and police couldn’t do anything because they said that they have to witness her being a danger to herself or others (for short convos with police or doctors she’s good at hiding her illness and acting normal). At some point the police got the permission to take her to the hospital, so during the conversation with them she noticed that she won’t be able to talk her way out of it so she went to the bathroom and locked herself in, long story short they had to kick in the door and they dragged her out kicking and screaming again.
She spent a few weeks in the hospital, I only visited her once because I needed a break from her and she would constantly accuse us of betraying her when we were there. After the hospital my dad would regularly drive her to the doctor to get the medication injected instead of the pills and all was good again, but about 1 1/2 years ago we started noticing it getting worse again, and suddenly she refused to get any more injections and she also woudn’t take pills. So a year ago when she was on the phone (she calls her mom every day) she suddenly screamed again, and this triggered me so bad because I was so traumatized from this in the past, the unpredictability and randomness of it is so scary. I got really mad, so I went to her room and had a complete crashout, I screamed at her like I never did before and this somehow flipped a switch in her. Since then she is willing to take the pills (only when I give them to her + has to be paired with ibuprofen) which is definitely good, but I’ve been giving them to her for over a year now and it just got better in the sense that it’s not so bad that it would get traumatizing again, bc when you talk with her the schizophrenia is still very obvious.
So, last November (a month after I started with uni) she fell and couldn’t get up again, we had to call several paramedics to lift her on her bed and since then she can’t get up. She didn’t get hurt but I guess it’s a combination of her weight and her joint problems she has had for a long time. Since then I have to take care of her (my sister already moved out and my dad is very old) , change diapers, clean her, make food, etc. My dad tries to help as much as he can, but it’s just too much for us. Taking care of her, dealing with the schizophrenia, going to uni and studying, taking care of the apartment for me and my parents and everything. My dad and I have been working on getting help for this, it’s just an extremely long process. We sent an application to our health insurance for a nursing service and it took them more than 3 months to respond, since then there have been several doctors and everything at our apartment and the situation still hasn’t improved, it’ll just get worse the longer she’s not standing up. The problem is my mom is very paranoid towards doctors and anything similar because of the schizophrenia, she’s convinced that they all want to lock her up or take her in for experiments or something. Once a physiotherapist visited us and she got extremely rude to the point where he told us he wouldn’t come again. She also tells me that she wants me to keep taking care of her and tries to convince me because she doesn’t trust anyone else, but me and my dad are doing anything to get a nursing service (we also need a special bed for this, we’re working on this right now) so that I’m not literally trapped at home everyday, especially because the recovery is probably going to take a while too.
It also makes it hard for me to take care of her, because she refuses to let me do certain things (like clean a wound) because she saw a cartain politician say something on the TV, which she says caused the wound, so it’s only going to get better when the politician says another thing etc.
She still sends a LOT of very long nonsense messages in our whats app family group multiple times a day, which kind of always reminds me that when she can walk again it’s probably not going to be as freeing as I think it will be.
She would start buying a lot from amazon again like she used to do before she fell. She would buy several (useless) things a day, for several reasons. Like a certain product from a specific area because she has a conspiracy about that country at the moment. Or she would buy a lot of pills like magnesium or viagra (which are not cheap mind you), put them in a glass with other stuff and liquids to dissolve the pills and just let it rot there. She did this with a piece of EVERY food she ate too.
I’m not really looking for advice ig, there’s not much more I can do. I just wanted to vent about it, I would be interested if there are any people that had similar experiences?
Sometimes it’s so hard to distinguish between her and her illness and to not take things personally or get mad at her, or to be resentful. It’s so frustrating when she refuses help and thinks that we want to harm her even though we’re doing everything we can to help her. I always have to remind myself that it’s not her fault and how much I love her when the illness isn’t taking over.
I constantly worry about her well being, she hasn’t been outside since 1 1/2 years and escpecially now that she’s been laying on the same spot for 6 months, I wish I could do more for her.
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I am so sorry that your whole life has been affected by your mother’s sz. Bad hygiene, screaming, weird eating habits, nonsense messages or texts and refusing medicine are pretty much common behaviors for bad sz. My daughter exhibited ALL of those when she wasn’t on meds. Because she was able to go outside, she also got thrown out of stores for screaming at customers, and got arrested twice for attempting to hurt others. I lost it and screamed at her more than a few times. I understand that you yourself have been traumatized by your mom’s illness and demands on you and your father.
I hope you have luck in getting her into a home of some sort, or that you can find a place of your own someday.
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Hi bro. Number 1 you’re such an amazing kid. Number 2 is I would like to suggest of you to understand and get a mental idea of her believe system. She’s probably understanding reality in a different way due to her believe system that she had learned from somewhere. Try understanding her believe and see your next step. Hope it helps. Tc.
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