June 26th 2007

June 26th 2007

I don’t know if everyone does this, but whenever myself, or one of the family, suffer from anything that I can’t work out, I Google the symptoms. Usually, this delivers a prognosis of fairly instant and painful death. This can be amusing, or upsetting, if you hold some faith in self-diagnosis. My mistake was listing the symptoms for Harriet, and placing them in the unemotional hands of the Google search engines.

Early onset schizophrenia has a long list of increasingly disturbing symptoms. Every time I type the words, I tell myself I shouldn’t, leave it to the professionals. But my fingers tap away, seemingly under their own control, and there it is again, adolescent-onset schizophrenia. I can’t even spell that last word – I rely on the suggestion.

I want to join a support group, to see how other parents are coping. But I haven’t got a diagnosis yet. The psychologist, Jim, has avoided pigeon-holing her. Other than the first time he saw her, five minutes in, he said, “You know she has ADHD?”

I knew, my husband knew. We didn’t want it on her record. We’d heard some schools were less than sympathetic with a formal recognition. Fortunately, we needn’t have been worried. So far, at least, the schools have been very accommodating to all her quirks.

Jim spent a few years trying to help us control her. We didn’t want pills, he agreed, and never even asked – or worse – told us to start her on Ritalin or whatever they tackle it with. We controlled her diet, gave her cod liver oil and multivitamins, and hoped for the best.

But strange things keep happening. A month ago, she told me about a strange floating dot in one of her eyes. It was green, and fixed. This weekend, she said the green one had gone, but there was a black one there instead. I’m going to make an appointment with the optometrist. Thank God they’re free in this country. Unfortunately, my first thought is that she’s imagining this dot. I go back to the faithful Google lords, and type in schizophrenia dots eyes.

Can’t find anything.

She’s also seeing our neighbour come out of his house regularly. He’s been dead almost a year now. She told his widow, she now thinks Harri is sensitive to spirits. Don’t want to Google that one.

Part of me wonders if this is my fault. My two boys, flanking her in age, are both completely ‘normal’, as in they behave appropriately for their age and abilities. But, my questionable past has given me three children by three fathers, and hers definitely has mental health problems. He has never been diagnosed, that I know, but two psychiatrists, whom I saw at various times after leaving Number Two father, said he was most likely a violent schizophrenic.

But it’s not just him. I have a tendency to be obsessive compulsive. I wipe toilet seats before I can sit. Started out in public loos, now I do it at home as well. I have to wash my teacup at work before using it, even though the cleaning lady had a fairly good bash at it the night before. I don’t walk around the house three times before sleep, checking locks and oven, but even a little apprehension concerning germs could affect her?

Last night there was a blow up. She came in stinking of cigarettes and full of attitude. So had that ‘sneaking’ look, and I asked to look in her bag. This degraded into a chase, her hiding the bag, screaming shouting, and hubby dragging her out of the bedroom. I did a search, found the bag, which had a box of matches with smoked butts inside. I also found a porn magazine (God the stuff they put in them now is nasty), printed porn from our printer (she’s been surfing for porn again) and a mostly empty box of icing sugar… with spoon.

She’s twelve. Just a small young looking twelve, and she’s out looking for trouble. Had to take her phone away last night, as well. She’d signed up for a text service from the porn mag, and a dating service for teens. Now I’m having nightmares of her sneaking off to meet Billy Whats-his-name that she’s met on the text, only to find it’s some scum 40 something paedophile, and we’ll never see her again.

Sleep came slow last night.