Jani's at the mercy of her mind

[chiggerbit]

January Schofield (6) constitutes a test case for the Internet. What's the Internet for? Is it just passive entertainment? Is it just TV-plus-chat?

Yeah, well this is the part that makes me exremely uncomfortable, Mac. ARG's, Luther Blisset and all that. And I swear to God that if you have been fucking with us, I will have your balls for supper.

[chiggerbit]

http://bipolarsoupkitchen-stephany.blogspot.com/

[chiggerbit]

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNe ... 374&page=1

[chiggerbit]

this is EXACtLY the kind of story that Co$ would promote, which is a part of why I have been so skeptical.

Bu it's on ABC, so i must be true, right?

[Penguin]

this is EXACtLY the kind of story that Co$ would promote, which is a part of why I have been so skeptical.

Bu it's on ABC, so i must be true, right?

The comments on that ABC story...They are all like this more or less -

What you "think is there" will go away if you don't believe in it. It sounds silly but it is true.
Posted by:
salvationthroughsanctification

isn't it possible that if a little child like this really doesn't want to live that maybe as horrible as it sounds her life should be ended? why make this little girl live through such horror just so that she can have a few moments of happiness--that sounds incredibly selfish to me.
Posted by:
archmunster Jul-1

Bloody nutcases.

[MacCruiskeen]

this is EXACtLY the kind of story that Co$ would promote, which is a part of why I have been so skeptical.

But it's on ABC, so it must be true, right?

See the very first post, "Jani's at the mercy of her mind". That article was in the LA Times on June 29 (not April Fool's Day) and has since been reprinted in the Chicago Tribune and elsewhere. Michael John Schofield has been blogging for five months. Now he's been on the radio too. He names several hospitals, doctors and social workers by name.

Just because the Church of Hubbard opposes stuffing tiny kids full of drugs is no reason for any of us to support or tolerate tiny kids being stuffed full of drugs. In any case, if this was a hoax it would have been exposed long ago.

Somebody a page or two back said he thought MJ Schofield was crying out for help and hoping to be stopped, without even really consciously being aware of it. I think that's true. And I think the same is true of all the journalists and medics involved in this murderous madness. Essentially they KNOW it's murderous madness, but their jobs and reputations depend on them pretending not to know it.

Little Eichmanns, every one of them, just following orders. or anticipating the commands before they even arrive. Perfectly normal people, broken as kids. Crippled inside and therefore functioning efficiently.

We did EVERYTHING we could to try and break her. Nothing worked.

[Nordic]

Well, I sure don't know what to do.

I mean, my desire is to respond to that monster on his blog and confront him.

Beyond that, report him to child services? But how? One would assume they are aware of this already.

Or maybe not?

Hell if I know.

What are the boundaries here?

I can't think of any parallel, or any precedent.

One day I was walking down the street in ritzy liberal little ol' Santa Monica and I could hear some guy verbally abusing some kid inside his house. I had to stop and look, and through the window I could plainly see this guy just screaming at this kid in the most emotionally and sadistically abusive way. I wanted to call the cops. But i didn't. Why didn't I? Because what was the alternative? To get involved and maybe make things somehow worse? What if the kid was taken away and put into some foster home where he was treated even worse? What if the cops showed up and nobody believed me? What if the kid was just totally used to it and didn't see why I was upset by it and stood up for his Dad? What if after that the Dad took his anger at me out on the kid and beat the living shit out of the kid?

I saw a Frontline documentary on this very subject once and it was absolutely harrowing. There were cases where kids were taken away from their parents -- something that should only be done in as a last resort, in my opinion -- I mean, taking kids away from their PARENTS! And in this doc, which really was one of the most compelling and objective docs I've ever seen, it showed how sometimes nobody really knows what to do, and sometimes well-meaning people can make situations worse. And other times when nobody does anything, or they think they've smoothed things over, and the worst does happen -- the kid ends up dead. Hindsight is always 20-20, but without the hindsight the decisions are often wrong.

[MacCruiskeen]

How many of us here have blogs? I don't have my own but I contribute to the group blog Qlipoth sometimes, and I've just posted something there:

http://qlipoth.blogspot.com/2009/07/liv ... urder.html

- If you do blog anything, please don't call the guy a monster. Not only is it brutal, it's not true and it can only be counterproductive. He is just desperate for some sane help. No witch-hunts. (As soon as i find the time I'll go back and delete all the posts here in which I called him a bastard, etc., or at least the word itself)

Also, could anyone with a DU or Kos or Huffpost account please maybe think about posting something there.

On Edit: Someone blogged this today:

Father Of Girl With Schizophrenia [sic] Admits Hitting, Starving Girl

[MacCruiskeen]

Does anyone know how to archive a whole blog? Can anyone do it quickly? (Text-only would be fine.)

On Edit: I've just posted a comment to his board:

"In her first two years of life, people would remark how well behaved she was.

Of course, these people only saw her out in the world, surrounded by crowds and chaos that would make other babies scream for the comfort of their mother's breast. Not Jani. Jani has always been at her calmest in the eye of a hurricane. The more violent the world around her becomes, the calmer she gets. Because it is stimulation. This was even true of her behavior in the face of my violence. She grew calm, even mature, telling me "Daddy, it's okay. You need to calm down" when I would throw objects across the room and put holes in drywall."

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... try_1.html

Mr. Schofield, would you mind explaining this? You say January was normal and indeed exceptionally well-behaved. You tell us she has an IQ of 146. She is clearly very intelligent and highly imaginative. Now you describe how she actually tried to calm you when you where in the throes of a violent rage.

What age was she at the time? Why were you raging? And how often did this happen? (Elsewhere, you have mentioned hitting both January and her mother.)

Please note: I am not trying to demonise you, just quoting your own words and requesting clarification. Because surely you too will agree that a child's behaviour can very easily be influenced by a parent's behaviour.

Thank you.

MacCruiskeen

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 06:22 AM

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... back.html#

[MacCruiskeen]

Fifteen minute radio interview, July 4th:

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... _Jani.html

"We were paranoid first-time parents, so we were afraid to take her out and expose her to germs and stuff."

"We didn't consider mental illness until she became violent."

"When did that happen?"

"Uuuhhh, she became violent at five."

"Violent"?? She was five.

This man is clearly seriously disturbed, and the interviewer is a fucking cretin. Nobody ever asks this guy the most obvious, obvious questions. (Why did she "become violent"? What had he just been putting her through?)

[nathan28]

Does anyone know how to archive a whole blog? Can anyone do it quickly? (Text-only would be fine.)

On Edit: I've just posted a comment to his board:

"In her first two years of life, people would remark how well behaved she was.

Of course, these people only saw her out in the world, surrounded by crowds and chaos that would make other babies scream for the comfort of their mother's breast. Not Jani. Jani has always been at her calmest in the eye of a hurricane. The more violent the world around her becomes, the calmer she gets. Because it is stimulation. This was even true of her behavior in the face of my violence. She grew calm, even mature, telling me "Daddy, it's okay. You need to calm down" when I would throw objects across the room and put holes in drywall."

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... try_1.html

Mr. Schofield, would you mind explaining this? You say January was normal and indeed exceptionally well-behaved. You tell us she has an IQ of 146. She is clearly very intelligent and highly imaginative. Now you describe how she actually tried to calm you when you where in the throes of a violent rage.

What age was she at the time? Why were you raging? And how often did this happen? (Elsewhere, you have mentioned hitting both January and her mother.)

Please note: I am not trying to demonise you, just quoting your own words and requesting clarification. Because surely you too will agree that a child's behaviour can very easily be influenced by a parent's behaviour.

Thank you.

MacCruiskeen

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 - 06:22 AM

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... back.html#

[/lurk]

http://www.httrack.com/

use via linux command line or as a windows app.

[lurk]

[MacCruiskeen]

[url=http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.januaryfirst.org/Blog/Entries/2009/6/11_Entry_1.html] Blog About Me

I’m getting used to it now[/url]

Five days ago I tried to kill myself. In a way. We tend to devalue "cry for help" suicide attempts as the desperation of love struck teenage girls. Yet we also stop breathing at word that a young man has put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Male suicide (meaning suicide by violent means) shocks us to our cores and leaves us wondering how such hate could have seethed without our notice. Female suicide (quiet suicide, a lonely death in a garage or bathtub) is seen as pathetic. Of course, this has nothing to do with gender. It is a cultural construct. I attempted to die in a "female" way.

I was crying for help. So much of our lives is automatic, done without thought. We do what we do because it is familiar. We have done since the beginning. And then there are the things like what I am living through, which are not automatic. Raising a schizophrenic child is not automatic. I have to learn every moment of every day. Last Sunday I was beyond the automatic and to be beyond the automatic is to be in darkness. Remember when you were a child and your mother or father tucked you in, kissed you good night, turned off the light and closed the door. Your room was suddenly plunged into darkness. So what did you do? You called out. Because your world had gone away. So you called out so your father or mother would crack open the door. That shaft of light spilling from the hallway assured you that the world still existed beyond your personal darkness.

That is what I was doing. I was a child calling out to you all so you would open the door a crack and let some light in, letting me know I was not alone. And you came.

Later, as your parents stopped coming, you spoke into the darkness, half-afraid something would answer back, hoping the sound of your voice would scare it away. I never understood hiding under the covers. I would rather stare into the darkness, so whatever was there would know I was ready, that I knew it was there, even if I couldn't see it.

That is probably what this blog is tonight. I am mustering my bravado and shouting into the darkness "I know you are there, monster, even if I can't see you, and I am ready for you. I will not hide. You will not get me with my eyes closed."

Today was the first day since Jani came home that I felt free of fear. Today was the first day that I wasn't walking on egg shells. Today was the first day that I took it as it came.

Today was the first day I felt I could do this. Today I picked up my gun and charged up Hamburger Hill.

[Michael Schofield lives in a Hollywood movie. And this interminable next section is one of the most painfully wrong things I have ever read in my life. His child is neither delusional nor psychotic; he is both. And he knows it.]


Jani has continued to receive level drops at her school on a daily basis, always for hitting a boy in her class (her class is all boys). This is clearly part of her thought disorder as the boys, despite their placement in the regional Severely Emotionally Disturbed class, are very good to Jani. Chicks are not very common in their world (boys far outnumber girls in severely emotionally disturbed classes) so Jani's presence is really something for them. They would probably lay down and let Jani walk across their backs so her feet never touched the ground. However violent they may be elsewhere, they love Jani. But she keeps telling anybody who will listen that she hates boys. Today I asked her "what does hate feel like." She replied "It feels like wanting to hit boys." But of course that is not a feeling. I asked her again "What does hate feel like?" Finally, she confessed "I don't know."

Because she doesn't. Because it isn't a feeling that she knows. Jani wouldn't know hate if it bit her in the butt. She is not feeling anything. She is thinking "I hate boys" and all her answers to why involve circular statements that reflect no logic. The school psychiatrist asked us today if Jani had ever had a traumatic experience with boys. No, unless you count the birth of Bodhi. Has she been abused or molested by a boy? No. In all four of her hospitalizations she was with girls and besides Jani is not one to just lay there while anybody, boy or girl, does something to her. So the only trauma related to boys that Jani has ever experienced has been Bodhi's birth. Her hatred of boys is not based on external trauma but on an internal, repeating idea that boys cannot possibly understand her.

When Jani was much younger, infant, toddler, small child, she loved boys better than girls because boys were more active. Two year old boys would run around and do crazy things and Jani loved running around with them. She wanted to go to Boise, Idaho at two because she thought that's where boys came from. Her hatred of boys is not really hatred or any emotion at all. It is simply a repeating thought in her head that we are still working to break.

Today we brought Jani Burger King for lunch and the kids' toy was some sort of Pokemon thing. Boys love Pokemon and another boy asked politely if he could see it. Jani refused it. First I tried parental pressure, telling her to share the toy with this boy. However, parental pressure doesn't work with a psychotic child. So then I hit upon the idea of offering her points in return for sharing the toy. First I offered 25 points, then fifty, then one hundred, in a sort of "Deal or No Deal" high stakes game designed to find the point at which Jani's desire for another toy (a real emotion, desire) would trump the thought in her head that she hated boys. Jani finally took the deal at 150 points, the highest she can earn. But she tried to negotiate, saying that she would show it to the boy but he couldn't touch it. Then it was my turn to say "no deal." If she wanted the points, she had to hand it to him. She started to cry....

But it was not a cry of defeat. It was an an angry cry, a psychotic cry. I can tell because there were no tears. Her actual cries and those of her psychosis are very different. She dangled the Pokemon toy in front of this boy. He grabbed it but Jani would not let go. I told her she had to let go to receive the points. It still took me saying this about six times for her to finally let go, not because her greed (also a desire) had kicked in but because the voices in her head knew they were defeated. Jani did let go of the Pokemon toy, releasing it to this boy, but then immediately hit me. This was the voices in her head lashing out at me. She then tried to hit the boy whose only crime had been to ask to see her toy. I did not let her and got her to the ground, taking a few blows in the process. Again, there is nothing to make you feel alive like getting kicked in the head. But my restraining was done without any anger. In fact, I was telling her how proud I was of her.

I told her, trying to be heard over her screaming and crying, "You know what you just did, Jani? You took the first step to defeating your illness." I was so proud of her. However, she began screaming over and over again that she was a "bad girl." The more I said "No, you are a good girl," the more violent she became. 400 the Cat and Wednesday the Rat were really raging inside her head and they were punishing her for "giving in" to our world. The boy gave the Pokemon toy back after only about 10 seconds but Jani was now completely psychotic. She raged underneath my arms for the entire recess period. There was no calming her down or making her feel good about her decision to share her toy (she will not accept positive feedback in psychotic states). She raged, tore rose petals of a plant and ate them, really nutty stuff. She began grabbing herself because she needed to go to the bathroom but would not go for fear of missing recess (even though we assured her the staff would give her

extra time at recess like they usually do). Again, Jani was too psychotic to process previous information which would have told her that her staff and teachers were very accommodating and had given her extra time at recess several times before. This is an example of Jani's inability to apply prior learned knowledge when psychotic. I told her to go the bathroom and then go to recess, but she refused. Susan told me to let her go and Jani ran off to the playground, bladder bursting, and without her shoes. It took four staff to make Jani go the bathroom and relieve herself.

That, folks, is psychosis.

Ten minutes later the thorazine kicked in and she was fine.

Tonight, when I was awarding her her prize for the 150 points she earned by sharing her toy with a boy, she said "I can share my toys with him but I can't let him be first in line." Rational? No. It shows how the psychosis is now shifting. One of her irrational fears was beaten today so her illness is looking for a new one.


But we will worry about that tomorrow. The important thing today is that for a few moments, and at a terrible cost, we helped Jani beat her illness, even if only for a brief moment. We took the hill. Did we hold it? I don't know. But it gave me confidence that maybe, just maybe, we can slowly beat this thing back. We may take ground from her schizophrenia and then give it back ten minutes later, but at least we know now that we can push it around as much as it pushes us around. It still kills me that the battlefield is my daughter's mind.

I have stopped thinking about the future. I have stopped thinking about winning or losing this war. I think in minutes and hours. I think in terms of inches, not miles. I think in terms of battles. Sometimes, we will overrun the psychosis. Sometimes, it will overrun us. But at least today I learned again that we can hold our own against it. We may not win. But we can live to fight another day.

We took a hill today. We may not hold it. But for right now I raise Jani's flag over enemy territory.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... try_1.html

[MacCruiskeen]

http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... try_1.html

Yesterday, because Jani was falling asleep in the car and we were trying to keep her up so she would sleep longer last night and not wake up at 3am, I gave her meds later than the prescribed time. I also gave her her meds later because she already has a severe sunburn under her eyes and on her arms and neck, thanks to the medications. Thorazine and Tegratol cause severe photosensitivity. Jani will burn in just a little sun in less than five minutes. Lithium is a salt and leaves her dehydrated and having to drink all the time. And we are not yet to the hottest part of summer. The combination of medications leaves Jani hot, itchy, and thirsty. She scratches her sunburn constantly and we shower her in lotion and Solarcaine. Several times yesterday evening she screamed in pain, especially after I stupidly took her swimming and the chlorine got into her sunburned and rubbed raw skin under her eyes.

Today I sent her to school in a jacket, hat, and sunglasses. She has to walk around like the Invisible Man, completely covered up (even her hands will burn) which in turn makes her a risk for overheating due to the other side effects of dehydration and heat stroke. Yet she will not stay indoors during recess.

But the side effects, as crippling as they are, are the lesser of two evils. Jani did not get her meds on time last night at six pm. By seven, 400 the Cat appeared, although Jani said she wouldn't play with her. A few minutes later, I lay Bodhi on the floor after his bath to put a diaper and his pajamas on. Jani, passing by, realized he had one gotten one of her toys and was teething on it. She grabbed it from him, slapped him on the head. I reached for her arms, forgetting that Jani still had her feet. She kicked him in the side of the head. Not hard, thank God, but it scared the hell out of him. I picked him up and rolled away out of Jani's reach, putting my back between Jani and Bodhi, while Susan restrained Jani. Then we were stuck because Jani's meds were in her apartment, 200 feet away. I was only in my underwear, so Susan took Bodhi, wearing nothing more than a diaper, and ran to the other apartment to retrieve Jani's meds.

Had we been in Jani's apartment we could have dragged her to her room for a time out but we were over in Bodhi's apartment for dinner. We had no where to restrain her.

Susan humped Bodhi down three flights of stairs, across the parking lot, up two flights of stairs, got Jani's pills, and came back again. Jani got her medication and within 20 minutes of getting her Thorazine 400 the Cat was gone and Jani was no longer at risk for violence.

Susan, Bodhi, and I are like the people on Lost and Jani is the island. The meds are the series of numbers we must punch in (every three hours) in order to prevent the end of the world.

I kept Jani up until 9pm but she still woke up at three am. We had another incident at that point. I can get up at 5am. Even four am. But I cannot get up at three. The incident was caused by Jani refusing to obey my command to wash her hands after going to the bathroom (which should have made me realize she was psychotic). [!!!] She said she didn't feel like it and with no other way of getting her to do what I told her, I started dragging her into her room for a time out. She hit me the whole way. But there was a water cup on her dresser, which I had to get out because otherwise she would throw it against the wall. I couldn't reach the cup, hold Jani in her room, and close the door at the same time. So I put my foot on her chest and pushed down lightly, just enough to hold her down, while I got the cup out. I turned and she leapt at my legs, hanging on while I shuffled to the kitchen to put the cup down. At this point I was worried about her biting since I was only wearing boxer shorts.

I have been bitten in several places but some are more painful than others. The more give in the skin (ie the fatty areas) the more painful. But this time she didn't bite. I got her into her room, but again I had to push her down on the floor to give me time to close the door otherwise she would be back through the door. She does not care if I close the door on her head. She is psychotic in those moments. So I have to push her down on the carpet to prevent more serious injuries. I got the door closed and went to lay down on the couch.

Silence.

I lay there, wondering nervously if she would try to open the windows in her room and jump. Suddenly, BANG. She was throwing something against the door. I breathed a sigh of relief. At least I knew what she was doing. The last time she was silent in a time out, we opened the door to discover her halfway out the window.

There a few more BANGS and then silence. I waited, hoping she would fall back to sleep from the Benadryl I had given her. But she calls out that she is ready to talk (which is what we are trying to teach her to do instead of raging - talk out what she is feeling. The problem is that the psychosis keeps her from knowing what she feels). [!!!]

I asked her why she was in a time out. She has to articulate the reason in order to come out. She said "Hitting." "And," I asked. "Screaming," she said. She hadn't screamed so I realized that once again she was disassociating from her experiences. She really didn't remember what she had done. Yet I still didn't give her a Thorazine. I was exhausted and just wanted to collapse, so I let her watch TV in the "dayroom" and I fell asleep on her bed.

By the time she woke me up again at 5 she was fully psychotic. She was running around, even with Benadryl (standard ADULT dose in her) and playing with the rats and insisting that Bodhi wants to torture animals (because he has in the past discovered and eaten some of Honey's dry dog food. I stupidly tried to reason with her for a few moments before I realized that there was no point because you can't reason with psychosis. So I gave her her meds. Within 20 minutes of getting her Thorazine she was back to her normal sweet self. It made me realize that if Jani wakes up early she needs an extra dose of Thorazine because it is not the dose that matters. It is the time. She must have every three hours she is awake, and right before bed and right after she wakes up.

Today's update is a lyric from Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street," from So, released in 1986. Overshadowed by sappy love songs like "In Your Eyes" and bombastic songs with claymation animation like "Sledgehammer," "Mercy Street" has always been my favorite Peter Gabriel song. Written about... [...]


http://www.januaryfirst.org/www.january ... try_1.html

[Maddy]

[url=http://mental-health.emedtv.com/thorazine/thorazine-dosage-p2.html]Thorazine Dosing for Children

The dose of Thorazine for children varies depending on the child's weight and the condition being treated. Often, the dose is 0.25 mg of Thorazine per pound of weight every four to six hours.[/url]

Thorazine is not PRN (as needed).

[justdrew]

I tried getting it via WinHTtrack and it wouldn't work, the Apple's iweb crap-ware uses very large complex javascript to display the site, if you turn off javascript in your browser, you can see basically nothing, and that is what you get with httrack unfortunately.

well, flashgot was able to get all the text, but not in a very useful fashion, but at least the text of all posts, I have, it's mixed in html pages that don't render out of their natural habitat, but the writing is all present in the files, for what it's worth. Will hold onto for awhile.

(may I just add that apples' iWeb is producing some of the most uselessly over-complex crap html I have ever seen? these pages are browser abuse.)