Posted by sleepygirl on July 15, 2006, at 15:38:08
I spoke with my mom, an experience that always seems to leave me with some vague, horrible sense of guilt. I have an uncle I've never met, who has always lived about 20 miles away from me.
I found out today that he is dying of cancer. I heard bits of information that I could never seem to rely on that he was/is mentally ill. I knew it involved some type of paranoia. My mother told me today more than she probably has ever told me about him (and even that was not that much).
She said that he was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. If that is the case it leaves me thinking that that is not a diagnosis made casually. I mean psychosis peaks its head out in a lot of different disorders, but schizophrenia (to me) implies a chronic, longlasting condition.
My mother said she was distressed by his elaborate paranoid conspiracy theory he had concocted about her some years ago, all around the time of their father's death.
I don't know what the story is with this uncle. It seems that other family members (another uncle and cousins) are making attempts to engage with this particular uncle now. My mother might visit him at the end of this month.
Well, I want to go and meet him for myself, and solve this mystery. He's the one who was thought to "need more help" than his siblings, the one who's most disconnected, the one no one sees (not that that side has ever been well connected).
I want to know what the heck it is that everyone seems to tiptoe around. It annoys me and intrigues me and I want to know what sort of genes might be swimming around my family's gene pool.
My family does not appear terribly sophisticated in understanding mental illness and its symptoms, so I have a mystery to solve........
poster:sleepygirl
thread:667320
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060709/msgs/667320.html