My Diagnosis Story

So, how did I get diagnosed with schizophrenia? Well, it was a long (and incredibly trying) story. 

In the fall of 2019, I was a supervisor at a memory care nursing home. This job was incredibly stressful and difficult at times. I’ve seen many long and painful deaths. And I’ve seen how ugly a disease Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia are. On Halloween night of 2019, I saw the worst death I had ever seen. A man on hospice fell in his bedroom, smashed his face into the floor, and died while I was on the phone with 911. The head nurse and I had to clean up the puddle of blood and urine he was laying in, and tell his wife what happened, who was sitting in the dining room eating dinner. His nose was completely flattened against his face, with him having face-planted into the floor, and I will never forget the sound the bones made when I was trying to make it look at least somewhat normal for his wife. I closed his eyes, which were wide open with pain and terror, and that is an image I had to learn to live with in years of therapy. I stepped down as a supervisor not long after this.

Shortly after this event, I started noticing the visual and audio hallucinations. They started small at first. I remember sitting in my living room in November reading a book and drinking coffee. My coffee had gone cold, yet I could still see steam coming off of the cup. That was weird. That’s not possible. How could a cold cup of coffee be steaming? Then, I noticed my houseplants. They were moving, as if there was a breeze moving through my living room. I licked my finger and stuck it in the air, trying to feel for a breeze. I went to work that day and tried to put the strange occurrences out of my mind.

Then, the audio hallucinations started. 

They began not long after the coffee and plant incidents. They started as a whisper, a distant voice calling to me. They were insignificant enough that I could put them out of my mind. However, they grew in intensity. I now had maybe one or two voices that were narrating what I was doing for most of the day. It was weird, but I was in denial. There’s no way this was a mental health issue. I just had an active imagination. But, I could no longer ignore them. 

My first major delusion was that I was hearing these voices because someone was poisoning my water, or that my water was poisoned with lead. However, six lead tests later, and I could no longer deny my reality: I was hearing voices and seeing things that were not really there. 

I made an appointment with my primary care doctor. As I sat in the waiting room, the voices intensified, becoming somewhat akin to the command voices from my last post. He called me into the office and I blurted out: “I’m fucking hallucinating and it’s freaking me out. Please help me.” We talked for a bit, and he determined that I was not in any immediate danger. He called my therapist, whom I haven’t seen in months, and I had an appointment set for the following week. 

In my therapist’s office, I laid out, quite frantically, what was going on. Unfortunately, this particular therapist did not have much experience with psychotic illnesses, and suggested that I go to the hospital. 

I was terrified to go to the hospital. I was worried that they’d call me crazy and lock me in the psych ward, and that I’d never see my friends, family, or pets ever again. That I’d never know freedom again. But, the voices intensified again, and so did the visual hallucinations. 

One morning that I didn’t have to work, I woke up to complete chaos. The voices were screaming at me. Telling me that “they” (whoever “they” were) were watching me. That I was never alone (not in a good way). They were telling me to take the hunting knife my dad had given me on my 12th birthday, and plunge it into my neck. I was seeing clowns (for those who don’t know, I’m terrified of clowns), spiders, bugs, snakes, and scary-looking faces. I decided to go to the hospital.

I don’t remember much from the hospital. But I do remember sitting in the waiting room with a boy who simply could not stop throwing up, and an unhoused person demanding pain medication. They finally called me up to the intake desk, where I told them I was hearing voices. I remember saying to the nurse, over and over again, “Please make the voices go away.” They took me into the ER and did a psychological evaluation on me. I don’t remember the type of doctor that saw me, but I know that they were not a psychologist or psychiatrist. They asked me some questions, the only one of which I remember was “Are you going to harm yourself?” To which I said “no.” But that was a lie. I was just terrified that they were going to lock me up and throw away the key. 

Unfortunately, all of the social workers and psychologists had gone home for the day, so the doctor said that they would refer me to the EASA Program. EASA stands for Early Assessment and Support Alliance. This program is run out of Eugene, Oregon, and helps young adults experiencing psychosis for the first time. The doctor explained all of this to me, and then said, I kid you not, “Just go home and relax, honey.”

RELAX??? How the fuck was I supposed to relax with a whole host of invisible voices screaming at me to kill myself? In addition to seeing all sorts of terrifying things and not knowing the difference between fantasy and reality. What the fuck???

Anyway, I walked home from the ER, not really knowing if the people trying to talk to me on my way home were real or not. I got home, locked the door, and sat on the couch, staring at the floor for who knows how long. About a week later, I went to the hospital again, not to the emergency room, but to an office in the hospital dedicated to the EASA program. 

I checked in to the office and was called back for a psychological evaluation from a social worker. I then met with a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, who we will call TNP. The evaluation took about half an hour, and it was determined that I had psychosis risk syndrome. This disorder is considered to be the precursor to full-blown psychosis or schizophrenia, if I remember correctly. When I met with TNP, he prescribed me abilify, an antipsychotic, wellbutrin, an antidepressant, and ambien, a sleep aid. 

I started taking abilify and it just made things worse. I think I was on it for about three weeks, and then was switched to olanzapine, the generic name for zyprexa. I was on zyprexa for about five years.

Soon after meeting with TNP, I started seeing a social worker/therapist, L. L was a really great therapist who pushed me to expand my mind, to accept the voices as a part of me. Even if they would never go away, and would be rather bothersome at times, they were a part of me that I had to grow to accept. 

After about two years of treatment at the EASA program, I aged out and was referred to Bridges Community Health, barely four blocks away from my apartment at the time. My new therapist, J, and psychiatric nurse practitioner, CNP, have been a part of my life for the past four years or so. They have been literal life savers, and I am so grateful to have them as my mental health providers. About three years ago, smack dab in the middle of grad school, CNP changed my diagnosis to schizophrenia, due to increased hallucinations. 

Fast forward to 2024, I finished grad school, moved back to Eugene (I went to Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR), adopted an elderly chihuahua, and am now working full time as a college instructor, also at OSU. I decided to start this blog after having to go on medical leave for severe command hallucinations. So, yeah! That’s my story of being diagnosed.

I am trying to monetize this website, but I don’t really know how to, being famously bad with computers. So I’m going to plug my venmo and paypal. Any gifts I get from you all will be met with the utmost gratitude. I’ve got bills to pay, and pets to feed!

Paypal: @RyanYounker

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