We have a lot to be thankful for.

Great Feel Good Article

There is a lot of good in the world. It can get lost in the moment, misery or tragedy. But it is there.

I am an American and have been buffered from the worse. I have faced my foes and obstacles but I have never been loaded up on a train to an extermination camp in Nazi controlled Germany or Poland. I've never been a religious minority chased up a mountain without food, water, or warm clothes to escape execution by ISIS. 

Cynicism and mistrust is a creature that I wear like a gold necklace around my neck. I may not see it and forget but it is there.

My sister has schizophrenia which is a terrible disease. When you live with someone who suffers, you see the disease aspect. My sister is currently avoiding me because she has done something at one time bothered me.

It no longer bothers me. It is not her fault it is the fault of people who are willing to meddle in her life but will leave and not even see the pieces that need to be picked up.

I dropped my sister off ten minutes early for her psychiatrist appointment. I gassed the car up and got us a breakfast sandwich because it is always a long wait. I get back to the community center where she talks remotely to her psychiatrist by computer screen. It is 10:04 when I get out of the truck.

They have her back there. I ask to join. The girl tells me I can't. I say I am her legal guardian. She says that my sister does not want me back there.

You may think why can't they speak alone with her. I have learned when people are going to take advantage of her or my mentally disabled brother, they talk to them alone. Get them agree to things and then that person can deny anything that can cause them a problem.

No I don't trust a doctor. Their feet are clay like mine.

Anyway, my main fear was they would arbitrarily change her medication.  Like many schizophrenics, my sister does not think she needs the medicine. The voices my sister hear can be horrendous. I have lived with her off her medication.

I get back there and he is finished. I am panicked about her medicine. The doctor gives me some "s---" about what her insurance covers and the medicine is not changed. He thinks I'm a idiot. I recognize he is going to talk about something related but not what I have said. So I shut up, her medicine is not changed.

Him thinking I'm an idiot can be used to my advantage. Unfortunately the mental healthcare system is not your friend. It is an adversary.

I will go to a lawyer to help me navigate my sister's healthcare. I would like to write a letter but it is a battle.  What an insurance company dictates is not what my sister's healthcare will be.

Later I found out what my sister was urgent to discuss without me present was my misappropriation of her money. When she told me her psychiatrist had told her many people with schizophrenia die from people misappropriating their money, I learned what the privacy was about.

She feels the $550 a month she gets from social security should be managed by her. I give her $250 for spending money. The other $300 I use in the monthly grocery and dining out fund that my mother manages. I put $300 of my own money in that fund. Any medical or dental bills I cover.

I walk away from any fight but if you want to know what a living hell is. Live with an untreated schizophrenic.

To say the system is broken is not correct. There is no system. So few doctors train for psychiatry and mental health services are so poorly funded, you are truly on a wing and a prayer.

Anyway, my family is doing well. We have what we need and many things we want. I hope you are so blessed.