Ben

Because I centered the blog so much on pictures and events, sometimes I neglect to mention some of the day to day things that are happening on the home front.  I realize that when I get an email and people are asking about Ben, especially.  So I thought I would give an update, status report on Ben.

Since mid-April,  Ben has been on nine different medications for his schizophrenia, some more than once.  For some reason, his body has had difficult tolerating anti-psychotics.  We have had a number of scary moments with weird reactions.  Some would occur on the first day, others after a few days--there seems to be no good reasons for these changes.  Asthma attacks, frozen muscles, pain, and other symptoms just kept happening.  Now we are back to the medication he was taking in early April.  This medication causes him to gain weight and other negative things to his body but at least he can tolerate it.  It has been almost 2 weeks now so it has been a bit more calm around here.  He still feels miserable but no weird reactions.

We did have a bit of excitement last Friday.  I had just started out with a list of errands with Jena in the early afternoon.  As we got in the car after our first stop, I thought to check my phone and noticed I had missed two calls from a restricted number and I had a message.  It was from Ben's doctor and he informed me that one of Ben's recent labs had come back with a high level of sodium and I needed to take him to the ER immediately---not the kind of message you ever want to receive.  Luckily at that moment I got a call from the doctor who was anxious to talk to me about the result.  He felt it might be an error but that we had to check it immediately.

I headed home, got Ben, picked Gary up at the bowling alley and we went to the ER and spent the afternoon with Ben getting pricked and tested.  All turned out fine and the ER and our doctor think it was lab error (but of course our insurance is the one who pays for it.) as the blood work on Friday was within normal limits.  The ER doctor said that it would be very unlikely that it was so high and corrected itself in 2 days.  We were happy with that and glad to head home after 3 hours.

Ben is hanging in with all that is happening and keeps hoping to find some way to manage his illness without medications.  Despite his (and our) concerns about the medication, he still takes them which allows some of his illness to be calmed down.  I can't imagine how he manages to cope day to day with this terrible illness.  He spends his days at home, mostly on the computer or watching TV.  From time to time, he will go outside for the mail or to walk the dogs.  I pray often for researchers to be inspired in seeking new and improved ways to treat it.  In the meanwhile, we are grateful for our understand of the purpose of life and where we are going afterwards......what do people do without that knowledge.