Hooray!

I've been accepted into Dr. Egan's PET scan study of schizophrenics on and off
medication.

NIMH will image the activity in my brain while I attend to a task. Withdrawal
will be well managed and in a safe environment.

I believe I will be in complete withdrawal from psychiatric medication around
Christmas. Then we'll establish a compassionate schedule of medication and I'll
be out, with six months of volunteer service to my country's medical
establishment, the best in the world, under my belt.

I am to expect no benefit from this study.
I simply want to be of use to somebody.

I started a volunteer job at the library yesterday.

Things are moving along.

I participated in Dr. Egan's study of the genetics of sibling schizophrenia May
27th and 28th and believe their diagnosis of Chronic Schizophrenic,
Undifferentiated Type, with these understandings:

1) I show disorganized symptoms but not enough to differentiate that type.

2) I don't hallucinate or have delusions.

3) I am not catatonic but have been once or twice.

4) The primary limiting factor in my life is the autism of schizophrenia, which
is well controlled with Abilify, and I seek treatment as an adult autistic as
well as a schizophrenic. This is the only way I can make progress, to learn to
work around my limitations, not to overcome them.

Ultimately, it's three hots and a cot for six months, the opportunity to be of
some use, to exercise regularly with good equipment at no fee, and to have
trained people tell me exactly what symptoms I am displaying day after day,
until I start to see them objectively.

There is no therapy provided, just group meetings to help the inpatient
community get along. I've toured the inpatient facility and the exercise,
assembly, meditation, and recreation areas, and connected well with everyone I
met personally.

However, during the long reqruitment period, NIMH's inability to restrict all
communication to email and fax resulted in an information overload for me. All
that voice mail. New, rapidly spoken, phone numbers, changing relationships.
Finally they understood how much I need written communication and how sensitive
I am to the time pressure of voice mail when it is not on computer, and
conversations in person on the telephone, saw these frustrations as mere
symptoms, and let me in. If NIH had only passed my ADA request that all contact
be by email to the NIMH staff through a central contact database, I'd be in
already. What happened was, I thought they had!

This has been the biggest struggle in years. As hard as motivating out of the
depression after my first lover, my primary partner's younger sister, the only
lover I  ever had before getting involved with street drugs and dropping out of
MIT, died of breast cancer in September 2000, the day after I played guitar for
her and brought her out of the morphine haze. With that fight, I had the help
of an antidepressant and a novel antipsychotic.

With this fight, I had interference from the medication I was on, not help. But
I persisted. I made apologies when I got irritable or demanding. The Abilify
helped with that but it was really a fight to be be heard and seen as what I
really am, which is a pretty non-agressive guy who's had some experiences and
developed some sensitivities and a pattern of doubt and overreaction.

Yipee!

By the way, I rode out into the park and lay for half an hour in the sun today,
worked on my bicycle project, and had my neighbor in for hours. Now I'm at PP's
apartment where I rent 26 square feet and share the cost of the high speed
internet connection and the backup fax/data/voice line, playing with Fermat's
Last Theorem.

It was a good day.

Yours,

Doug Goncz   ( ftp://users.aol.com/DGoncz/ )
Student member SAE for one year.
Loves in my life: Dona, Jeff, Kim, Mom, Neelix, Tasha, and Teri.