View from the Year's End

Like so many bloggers I have been looking back over the last twelve months before writing this post.  The overall impression I have is that our life at the moment is something of a work in progress.  The gains and losses are distributed so randomly that I cannot see a pattern.  The one clear gain is this blog itself, which has proved a surprising source of support.  It has been an opportunity for me to explore my experiences, and communicate with friends old and new.

Looking right back to our situation a year ago, the end of the year is certainly an improvement on the beginning.  At the beginning of 2011 Julie was in hospital, and the whole family was exhausted and traumatised by the recent past.  Our lives revolved around visiting her in hospital, or her infrequent visits home.  It was a dark and very confusing period.  Communication with the hospital was very limited, and we found it difficult to understand what their strategy was, how she spent her days, or why she was refused home leave so often.  We understood little about what was happening to her, what was wrong with her, or what the likely outcomes might be.  This was partly because, of course, as a family we just didn't know that much about psychiatric illness.  But it was also true that much of the full extent of her illness was still to be revealed, which meant that noone really knew what was happening.

After repeated attempts to move her back out of hospital failed, Julie finally took matters into her own hands and managed a staged return first to school in September, and home by November.  By the time she returned we had all learned an enormous amount.  After repeated disappointments, we realised that she was going to remain very fragile for some time. She was not going to leave hospital "fixed".  It had been a steep learning curve for all of us, not just for Julie or for us, her family: the predictions of medical staff were proved wrong time and again.  Our situation now is a pragmatic solution, based on vastly revised expectations.  Julie manages to stay at home and out of hospital by a huge combined effort on our part to supervise her more or less continuously.  She attends school when she feels able, although it can be piecemeal and erratic.  We make progress when we can, retrenching when trouble strikes.  We have managed to survive one fairly serious relapse since her return from hospital, which gives us confidence to survive more.

I wish I could talk confidently of recovery, but since it is better to be "managing" than not, I suppose our current situation is positive.  The year 2012 may turn out to be the year in which Julie does make a recovery - it is completely possible that the symptoms will slowly peter out one day, leaving her tired and a little anxious, but ready to take on the world.  It could just as equally be a year in which the psychosis returns again and again, upsetting the apple-cart.  In which case the year 2012 may just be the year in which we graduate from our crash course in mental illness, and begin to consider ourselves truly expert in her care.  No doubt it will be an interesting year, one way or the other: whether it is a slow course upwards, or another roller-coaster.