On a Lighter Note

Possibly, someone else has already done this, or something like it. I haven't seen anything yet, but I have missed Cobert Report for the last few nights. so, if this isn't original, it's by accident.

Growing up, many of us under the age of eighty were taught that there were nine planets in our solar system. Now, the International Astronomers Union tells us that the ninth planet, "Pluto," is not a real planet, but a "dwarf" planet, little more than an asteroid. This demonstrates the Bush administration's failure to recognize equality among all planets. The ACLU should immediately bring a lawsuit against the administration to ensure that Pluto is given equal and fair treatment among the other planets. Bush should be impeached for grabbing power from Congress in deciding what is and what is not a fully recognized planet.
If Pluto doesn't feel inferior, Congress should enact legislation to make sure it does, such as creating a program that implies that Pluto can never be equal to the other planets without huge amounts of bureaucracy to "help" it step up to the status of the other planets.
But, who is to say that these "planets" actually exist? We can't see them, so how do we know that they are there? Planets were invented by the Bush administration to grab more money from the taxpayer to satisfy his buddies in the oil industry.
If Pluto does actually exist, however, what right do the neocons have to say if it is the ninth planet or not? Why do we even have to number the planets in the first place, making Venus number "two," placing her in an inferior rank to the opressive alpha male Mercury, which is ranked #1. No planet should be made to feel inferior. We citizens should step up and demand that our elected officials take action on this matter.

Schizophrenia: Living A Nightmare Part 2

The Army doctors had evaluated Toni and found her unfit for active duty. She was to leave for the US in November, so she could get discharged and apply for disability. My military commanders felt that it would be in the best interest of the Air Force, for myself, and for my wife and child that we should be separated. Before mid October, the situation became worse than it had ever been before.
My wife's violent episodes were never, during this time, directed toward our daughter. She lived for Crystal, loved her and cared for her and was very protective. Any time she exhibited violence, it was directed toward a co-worker or me. She suspected me of having affairs with anyone I associated with, male or female, and this belief was aggravated by the fact that my NCO in charge of the shop in which I worked lived with his family in the apartment directly below us. Also, my job required that I go on the road several times a month, as I belonged in a mobile telecommunications maintenance unit. That meant that I had to travel to sites throughout Germany. Toni felt as though I was abandoning Crystal and her when I went on these trips. Once, when I returned home, I discovered that my wife was with someone else. I was totally devastated, but I still retained hope that things would get better. I loved my wife and my child, and I couldn't stand the thought of losing them, so I never got angry at Toni. I was in denial, and refused to accept that anything was seriously wrong.
The whole situation affected my work. My private life had been brought to the attention of my chain-of-command in the Air Force. I felt like the Kurt Vonnegut character Billy Pilgrim, in Slaughterhouse Five, being helplessly tossed around at the whims of time and Fate. I was going to therapy alone, and often slept in the car, rather than having to risk violence at the hands of my beloved wife. But my fear was greater that if Toni got in trouble with the law, we would lose custody of our beautiful child.
In spite of the violence directed toward me, the day Toni and Crystal departed for Stateside was an incredibly sad day for me. There was no feeling of relief, only that of loss. I wanted to fix things, I wanted for everything to be alright. I wanted to be with my wife and child. The Army doctors saw nothing wrong with Crystal going with Toni, and there was no reason to believe that Crystal would be in any danger from Toni.
Now, I realize that if I hadn't been so afraid for my own well being, that Crystal would still be alive. Because, when I neglected to tell Toni's doctors everything about her episodes, I was rewarded positively, to be able to live with my wife and child in peace, if only for a few days. Instead of seeing that there was a serious disorder, they treated the situation as simple incompatibility. If I could have told the whole truth, I still wouldn't have Crystal in my life, but she would be celebrating her 29th birthday in a couple of weeks.
There really is no one on whom to place all the blame. Toni wasn't aware that she was beating her own child to death. She saw and heard things that made her believe that the end of the world had arrived. The woman who bore my child, the wonderful, kind, beautiful person I married would never have intentionally harmed anyone. Her personality and even her very identity, were stripped away from her during her episodes, leaving only the most basic, primal being whose only instinct was the basic instinct of self-preservation.
My tour of duty in Germany ended in 1979, and I returned to Colorado Springs on a humanitarian reassignment. I visited my wife in the State Hospital as often as I could, and helped her as best I could with her therapy. She was released in 1980, and we tried to reconcile our marriage. There were too many bad memories, and I found that I was still afraid of her. We divorced in April of 1980. The last time I talked to Toni was Christmas of 1983, and I haven't seen or heard from her since. All I can do is hope she is living a safe and productive life.
Much of what I have learned from my experience is not all that positive. I am incapable of forming any kind of intimate relationship. I don't even try, and I go out of my way to avoid such relationships I sometimes doubt myself, my motivations, and my sense of reality. Sometimes, I still get that Billy Pilgrim feeling.
But there are important things to be learned. Most importantly, unless one is a trained and experienced professional in the treatment of schizophrenia, one should not take it on one's self to try to treat the affliction. Unfortunately, there are not many experienced professionals in the treatment of schizophrenia. It is only within the past five to ten years that the connection between schizophrenic episodes and brain damage has been made. As was the case of my wife, and, presumably that of Andrea Yates, often nothing is done to prevent violent outbreaks until tragedy occurs. I remain hopeful that pre-emptive measures can be taken, but the disease has to be recognized and treated, first.

Schizophrenia: A Living Nightmare Part 1

It seems like a nightmare. Maybe it is, but it occurred during my waking life. This is an account from my life and strange as it may seem, it actually happened. I am not telling this as a "sob story;" I am writing it to bring attention to a dreadful illness.
My daughter, Crystal Marie, was born September 3, 1977, in Frankfort, Germany. I was present at her birth, and it was the most incredible and beautiful moment in my life. And she was incredible and beautiful, a mirror image of her mother. A little over three months later, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on December 17, 1977, Crystal Marie was dead. Her mother, my wife, had beaten to death our three-month-old infant child. We were separated, at the time, and I was still stationed in Germany, but was called home for the funeral and the criminal investigation. .
My wife was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was diagnosed with Schizophrenia (Non-Defined) and committed to the Colorado State Hospital. She wasn't a bad person; she was good, kind, and gentle. I loved her deeply, and one could not imagine the distress brought to me by the death of my daughter at the hands of my wife and the lasting effect it has had on me emotionally and mentally.
Schizophrenia is generally misunderstood by the public to be a psychological disorder. It is not. Though the symptoms, such as dementia and delusion, are psychological, researchers have found the cause to be brain damage. It is also a degenerative condition, for researchers have found that each schizophrenic episode causes additional brain damage, which, in turn results in increasingly more pronounced the symptoms. In my wife's case, the initial brain damage was caused by a dose of PCP she was given at the age of twelve.
Another widespread myth of schizophrenia is that it means "split personality." For this reason it is often confused with multiple personality disorder. In fact, "schizophrenia" literally means "split mind," but it refers to the mind being split by the consciousness and the subconscious. Awareness and perception in the schizophrenic are being filtered through the conscious and the subconscious simultaneously.
It is hard to imagine what this must be like. From my experience living with the woman who was my wife, I can give some sort of ideal. Imagine you are living in a beautiful world, where everything is going right, and you have everything you need in life, everything that you can possibly imagine. Suddenly, you are standing in a crowd of people, some who you can see, and some you cannot see, but you can hear their voices and their thoughts. The thoughts you hear are evil, and they are all of evil intentions toward you People around you are speaking in tongues, they are talking about the Devil, and they are making things fly through the air. They are trying to hurt you, to kill you. You cannot collect your thoughts, because the scenario is changing around you so rapidly, you don't have time to understand what is happening. This is what I understand my wife to have experienced in her schizophrenic episodes.
I first met my wife in 1973, while attending classes at El Paso Community College in Colorado Springs. She was physically attractive, beautiful, in fact. She was very kind, generous, intellegent, witty, and had an open, honest, and friendly personality. There was an innocence about her, but not to the point of naiveté. We became friends first, then lovers. She had her own apartment, but I was living at home at the time, and I often stayed with her in her home.
I was aware that she was schizophrenic. She made sure I understood that, and I was aware of her life, because, such was her honesty, she told me everything about herself. I could handle that, as long as she was taking her medication. There would be some strange moments, initiated by her ever-active subconscious, but any problems could be solved, so great had my love for her become. In retrospect, it may have been denial and disillusionment on my part, but I felt that as long as I held her, and showed my love and understanding for her, any episodes could be overcome.
We all have distractions in our daily life. We manage to get through work and other tasks in our everyday experiences by putting those distractions in the back of our minds. For a person with schizophrenia, the distractions are much greater, but that person can usually deal with it, especially with the help of medication. The medication, at that time was Lithium and thorazene, and helped prevent schizophrenic episodes, as long as it was being administered daily, on a regular basis. There is no cure, for the condition, but it can be controlled. Today, there are more effective medications for treating schizophrenia: now that medical science understands the condition better, we have phenothorezines and customized medications. All too often, the victim of the disease can feel as if he or she has been cured and will feel that the medication is no longer necessary or useful. This is where the problems can manifest themselves.
I joined the Air Force in May of 1976. I was planning a life with the woman who was to be my wife, and wanted to do something that I felt would be good for our future. After I had completed basic training and technical school, in December of 1976, I was assigned to NORAD, Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs. That not only gave me some leave time at home, but also included reassignment time, which I could take as a vacation from the military. The first person I saw, besides my Mom and Dad, was Toni, the woman I loved. She had enlisted in the Army, while I was away, and was to leave for basic training in January, 1977. We then made plans to marry, so we wouldn't be separated. While she was still in specialty training school at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana, we got married. She was to be stationed in Germany, and I applied for a join spouse assignment. We were reunited in July of 1977, in Frankfort, Germany.
There were two things I didn't know before I arrived in Germany. First, Toni had stopped taking her meds before she entered active duty. Secondly she was six months pregnant. From the way she had hidden that fact from me, I did have some reason to believe that the child may not have been mine, but the timeline was correct, and the thought never actually manifested itself. But the nightmare was already beginning.
At first, her outbreaks of anger seemed to be normal for what is to be expected from a pregnant woman, or at least that's what I was told. But things got worse. I would be reading the newspaper, watching TV or joining my wife in housework, when she would suddenly come after me with a knife, a broom handle, a skillet, or whatever he had as a weapon, screaming something like "rubber duck," "you f**ked your father," or something totally incomprehensible. Each time something like this happened, I managed to subdue her, suffering only a few contusions or minor cuts, tell her that I loved her, that I would never hurt her. Each time, I felt that the episode was isolated, and that it would never happen again. The whole time, I never hit her or used violence against her. Sometimes I would be asleep in bed, to be awakened by her footsteps running toward me and her screaming "kill me," or "help me," while she attacked me with a knife or a broom handle.
When I took her to the military hospital in Frankfurt, to try to get her back on meds or otherwise helped, she seemed very lucid, demonstrating her ability to deal with the public while being distracted by schizophrenic delusions. She became the sweet, caring, loving person whom I knew and loved. Her behavior in front of the doctors made me feel as if I were the one who was delusional. Indeed, so great had my fear become, I was afraid to relate to the doctors what had happened to me, and it probably seemed to them as if I were the one who was ill.
After the sessions, we would go home, and life would be normal for a few days. However, later in the week, when we would be driving home together, she would often remove her shoe and start beating me on the head with it, for no apparent reason, which was extremely dangerous as we were driving at 70 miles per hour on the Autobahn.
After Crystal was born, two weeks prematurely, Toni was an ideal mother, very caring and very protective of our baby. We lived with no further instances of schizophrenic episodes for a few weeks, and it seemed as if the nightmare was over.
END OF PART ONE.