Blip

As previously mentioned Mr Man has had a change in medication over the past month. I was recently asked in the comments section how Mr Man was doing, and if there were any improvements in his symptoms since taking Abilify. At the time it was too early to tell especially as his symptoms are prone to slight fluctuations in severity anyway. Although he will openly tell me when the voices are worsening and causing him anxiety, he tends to keep his delusional thoughts to himself, unless a change in his behaviour causes me to probe deeper.

This was the case yesterday. We had had visitors in the day and it seemed to affect him quite strangely. I’m not sure how to explain it; sometimes I “sense” something but I can’t describe what it is. After our visitors had left he remained quite distracted throughout the day. He had this expression on his face, and I knew he was deep in thought, but when I asked him what he was thinking he just replied with “I don’t know”.

By the time we had gone to bed he seemed to be ready to open up. He told me that he felt that our visitors were spies. In fact he could only name a few people that he doesn’t feel that way about. He felt that he was being watched all of the time, and he said that the voices were telling him to get on with his “work”. Previously when he had skipped some medication I would find him sitting on the floor in front of the TV with a note pad and pen, taking down “codes” from the TV adverts. Now the voices are telling him to do this “work” again, and although so far he has managed to resist, he said that the voices are becoming very persistent and threatening. Of course, the voices telling him to do these things is one thing, but it's when he starts believing it that I start to worry, which he is. I said I would contact his psychiatrist on Monday to see if we can get his medication increased, but he refused saying that “She’s in on it”.

I’m hoping that this is just a “blip” caused by the disruption of medication levels during the change over, but obviously it is something that I am going to have to keep an eye on. He doesn’t seem to be preoccupied by these thoughts all of the time, as he was able to keep himself busy for some of the time yesterday, and we had some interesting discussions about music and such like. I’ll have to be very careful to make sure that he definitely swallows his medication though, as I know that once the delusions start that he is likely to stop taking them, believing that the meds are used to “control him”.


I know I said previously that I didn’t really want to discuss his delusions yet as I wanted to retell the series of events in order, but obviously that isn’t happening. I seem to be recovering now from my recent bout of exhaustion so hopefully I will be able to write about his first hospital admission soon.