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Regular readers of my personal (and currently dark) blog know that when my son’s illness is waxing I tend to stop writing. There is only so much of me to go around, before I start to keel over.
That’s why I’ve been silent here at “What to Expect.” I’ve had a million bright ideas for posts, but I just couldn’t face putting them to cyber-paper. Anyway, we are making tiny steps toward the light now, and I’ve been able to reflect on all the unexpected stuff that’s colonized my brain in the past ten or twelve years.
Yep. I like to think about thinking.
So, it’s occurred to me, and not for the first time, that I know way too much of the fearsome language of psychiatric disorder. That lexicon of stress and sadness has become my most fluent non-native tongue (beating out German by about 50%, and leaving poor French face down in the dust).
Sad but true. I find myself reluctantly acquainted with confounding words like “prodromal.” As in, “Rule-out: prodromal stages of psychotic disorder.” And, “hypomania”-- which is one of those loose words that ought to mean something it doesn’t. Shouldn’t “hypomania” mean the opposite of mania? As in, “depression”? Or at the very least, “of steady mood,” instead of its accepted meaning of “less manic mania”?
(While I’m at it, can I please put in a request for the German word “Schwester” to mean “sweater” instead of “sister”? It just sits better that way. And then you guys over in Deutschland will no longer need to borrow “pullover” for “sweater.” That makes sense--doesn’t it? Cool. Have your people call my people, and we'll get this done pronto!)
Getting back to business--here are some more of the words and phrases duking it out for position in the small remaining space in my brain: Bipolar 1. Bipolar 2. Unipolar. Rapid-cycling. Decompensation. Dysregulation. Trichotillomania (a vicarious acquaintance). Agoraphobia (okay, this one I’ve had tucked away from way back--not because anyone I knew back then had it, but because it’s a fairly dramatic and well-known phobia. Thank godness I was prepared by the time it moved itself into our house). I have a lot more I could subject you to--but I think I’ve put you through enough lexicographic trauma for one day.
Don’t even get me started on the Wikipedia Pharmacologia that lives inside my head. It probably comes as no surprise to anyone but myself that I send emails to clinicians with subject lines like: “Tardive Dyskinesia?? I hope not!!” And with body text like: “What if we return to a slow titration of Lamotrigine (to avoid Stevens-Johnson rash, obv)? And could the Escitalopram be triggering the mania?”
THAT IS NOT THE KIND OF WRITING I THOUGHT I’D END UP DOING. In case anyone was wondering.
Even so, I always feel a short-lived tingle of pleasure when a psychiatrist responds with, “You are reading my mind!” or, “Ex-actly!” When the tingle dies off I feel like crap, because I remember how much happier a lot of people I love would be, if I knew nothing more than the fact that Advil and Motrin are just Ibuprofen in fancy-dress, and Tylenol is no more nor less than good old Acetaminophen.
Readers, I liked it better when the only show-offy language I knew was the jargon of literary theory (impotent language, if ever a language was), and the words you find in poetry or literary prose, but not so often in people’s mouths.
Sometimes I try to convince myself that words are not things, that they cannot hurt me or my beloved family. But I was never that good at deception. In truth, I think words can hurt a hell of a lot. That’s why it’s a good thing to get to know the ones you think may be coming after you. Knowing them can sometimes give you power over them--and over the things they represent.
