Quote:
Originally Posted by habernac
Firebot, he sounds exactly like my great uncle. My grandpa tried to have him committed back in the 60's but was unsuccessful. My great-grandma was the only one who could get him to take his medication. When she died, he ditched the meds and became a street person. He would show up at a relatives once in awhile, I met him once in 91 or 92. He would talk to you in normal conversation one moment and go off the rails 5 minutes later, talking to people who weren't there or singing loudly. We had a pretty good chat about hockey (he was a pretty decent athlete back in the day).
There were a few violent incidents, he took someone hostage once (he had a gun). He mostly stayed off the radar.
The last I had heard, he had been hit by a car riding his bicycle in Winnipeg. The doctors were stunned because he left the hospital only a month later, his broken hip pretty much healed (I think he was 85 at the time). He died just shy of 90, the family found out by accident, he ended up near Richmond, BC and was buried in a pauper's grave.
I hope your brother has a better ending to his story. I think it all comes down to them wanting to take their medications.
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My brother would get on these weird talks like you describe. He would be perfectly fine, then you could see something shift in his head, and he starts rambling at random about a story about life cells and how they would multiply and you could see how life and the earth was created, and he knows the secret to life. To him, it made perfect sense to jump in to talk about this discovery while we are at a famiy gathering, but he would get really upset if someone asked him what he was talking about. He would try to explain again to no avail and get even more mad. He would be right back to normal 5 minutes later. This would be after we knew he had schizophrenia.
He had severe bouts of migraines throughout his life, and his only relief to the pain was banging his head on the walls. Eventually there likely was some damage and a chemical imbalance, and it just got progressively worse.
Unfortunately, the only way for this to have a positive ending is for him to be coherant enough one day to realize he needs help and reach out to a family member; I have no idea where he is and have no way to contact. He was almost there and had his feet on the ground and working again (would speak with him over the phone for a few hours about how he was getting his life back together, I was the only one he would speak to), but he went off medications (since there was 'nothing' wrong) and went off the rails soon after.