reading about schizophrenia

I bought three books about schizophrenia that are oriented to families. The more I read, the better my son's prognosis sounds. Apparently he falls into a group that has a really good prognosis for remission and potential recovery. He was a normal child with lots of friends. Yes, he was a bit hyperactive, but so is every other kid, especially little boys, at that age. But he wasn't a noticeably "weird" kid who wandered around talking to himself or engaging in obsessive hobbies. (That describes one of my husband's nephews to a "t" but not our son.)

The fact that his illness was relatively late in appearing (he was in his 20s) and appeared relatively suddenly is also a good sign. The fact that he has the "paranoid" variety is also, believe it or not, good news. He has never been hospitalized, and apparently the initial diagnosis is often made after a hospitalization. So I'm still wondering exactly which symptoms were so convincing to the psychiatrists. Auditory hallucinations can be caused by a number of other conditions, not just schizophrenia. The night after my gastric bypass, I kept hearing the monitor talk to me. I called in the nurses several times to get them to make it stop, and they just laughed at me and after a while, stopped answering my buzz. When I was in the hospital with the blood clot, I had a long conversation with Barnaby Jones, the detective character played by Buddy Ebsen. Of course, I didn't really, but I thought I had. I was convinced I had. My son's first auditory hallucinations (at least the first ones he told us about) occurred at the funeral of his father-in-law, who had committed suicide violently. My son had gone several days without enough rest and with far too much stress.

Okay, maybe I'm once again paddling down the river of denial, but what I'm trying to do is to convince myself that my beloved son is going to get better and be healthy again. His physical health is good, or so says his brother. (I do so wish I did not have to get news of him via an interpreter, in this case, his brother.)

"Normal" is just a setting on a washing machine. No one is textbook normal. All of us fall within cultural expectations that would have us seem extremely abnormal if we were displaced into another culture. And even people who are mentally ill don't have to be raving lunatics locked up into padded rooms with giant gatekeepers who abuse them.

I won't say that my heart is light now, but it's getting lighter. For a while, it felt as if a big cold wet boulder was sitting on my upper chest and throat, but the boulder is shrinking and getting lighter and warmer.