A home of his own
’SCHIZOPHRENIA
IS NOT A CASSEROLE ILLNESS'
Chapter 4
Laura Pogliano sits at her dining room table,
surrounded by her old life — photos of Zac in his baseball uniform, with the
dog, with his girlfriend — and her new one — stacks of financial and medical
records.
She says she blew through the $220,000 she had
in the bank on Zac's care, and probably another $80,000 in earnings. She lost a
house she owned in Illinois to foreclosure. She drives a 12-year-old Mitsubishi
with 100,000 miles. She says she's $150,000 in debt.
Zac comes up from the basement, where he
spends most of his time playing video games and listening to music.
Laura Pogliano talks about her son, Zac Pogliano,
who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a teenager.
(Photo: Eileen Blass, USA TODAY)
He greets his mother's guest with a polite
hand shake. But as he does so he ducks, as if something were falling from the
ceiling. His affect is flat. He asks his mother for some money to get
cigarettes. She agrees, and reminds him, "Put on your coat!''
"He shouldn't smoke,'' she says,
"but he has so few pleasures.''
Laura dotes on Zac — babies him, really, even
though she knows he needs to be more independent.
She says that when he's on his meds — he now
gets an injection at a clinic — he's funny, charming and considerate. When she
asked him the other day what he wanted to do, he said, "Just spend
some time with you.''
These qualities are not so apparent to others.
His sister says the old Zac's dry sense of humor rarely appears:
"Medication takes that light out of people's eyes.''
Laura has settled into a series of
short-commute, limited-term jobs, allowing her to care for Zac. She sees a
psychiatrist and takes medication for depression. She says she's better able to
deal with the ups and downs, but she's lonely. "Who would date this?'' she
says, alluding to a few extra pounds she's picked up.
On the table is a folder with contact
information for small businesses that might hire the handicapped. But Zac lost
his last job at Pizza Hut when he skipped a shift. And, possibly because
psychiatrists say he "lacks insight" into his condition, doesn't want
to associate with the mentally ill.
His mother fears for his future. Every time he
gets sick, she says, "his brain loses something.''
Her hope is that Zac, like many with
schizophrenia, will stabilize as he ages, that maybe after a decade the illness
will loosen its grip.
One day her watch will pass to Leah and her
husband, Dan, who live in Michigan with their baby daughter. When Dan asked her
for Leah's hand, Laura recalls, "I said yes, on one condition: 'You
have to accept Zac and all the things that come with him. You have to treat him
with compassion, always, or I will haunt you!'''
Leah says she feels guilty — why did Zac get
sick and not her? — but that if she had to care for him while living hours from
an appropriate hospital, "I'd be lost.''
This month, Laura faces another potential
crisis: Zac is moving out.
“Who's going to come to a
fundraiser for my son?”
LAURA POGLIANO
They've been quarreling. He's eager to go;
she's decided it's time. She found him an apartment three minutes
away. A case manager will visit weekly, and a nursing assistant will check
in three days and administer medication. Laura will cover the other days.
"He has to get out from under my wing and
make friends on his own,'' she says, sounding a little dubious.
After six years, she also puzzled by the
indifference or hostility to mental illness. She might understand people's
reaction to the mentally ill — mysterious disease, atrocious symptoms — but
what about their relatives? Why have autism advocates been able to mobilize
public support, and not families of the mentally ill?
This year, for example, Maryland rejected
legislation that would have made it easier for families to force mentally ill
relatives into treatment.
She thinks it's this: We see only the
upsetting behavior and blame whoever seems in charge.
"Schizophrenia is not a casserole
illness,'' she says — no one is bringing food to the door. Nor are they staging
fundraisers, as they do for cancer patients. "Who's going to come to a
fundraiser for my son?'' she
asks bitterly. "To them, he's a problem.''
Of all the costs borne by Laura Pogliano and
millions like her, the one of not caring may be the cruelest of all.
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