Know the early warning signs of schizophrenia!

I'm just home from the hospital where I visited my wife who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. It looks like she can get back to a perfectly normal life if and only if she sticks with the treatment now. There have been warning signs for several years but we missed the boat big time. Those signs look like some annoying behavior and it almost ruined our relationship, but you would not take it as illness.

She started binge drinking, not often, but resulting in aggression (no violence in our case). It just didn't fit her personality and she suffered from it a lot. Now I know she desperately tried to self-medicate her inner troubles with the most widely available drug, which is alcohol. There was the inability to trust anybody including me. There was the obsession to have everything tidy (she lifted my half-full plate to wipe the table). She moved furniture every week because she was never satisfied with the arrangement. And sometimes she wanted to be right and refused every logic. All this happened when we started a business and I thought this was just all the stress involved.

Then in January it went into a full blown psychosis. I really cannot describe how devastating these months have been. Last weekend we managed to get her to the hospital because her body was shutting down, so she accepted to see a doctor finally. She had 45kg at 1,72m and hadn't slept more than 2h at a time this year up to that point.
Today was the first day I saw the old smile again. She has to get medication but the only side effect is that she eats way too much sweets, because those pills make her hungry. No motoric issues or apathy, everything fine. She is still not able to grasp her situation, but she trusts the team which does a damn great job.
There is a lot to do now for me but I get great support from all the friends, and I know I should take it. So no need to worry about me.

So, please take care of yourself and your loved ones and visit the doctor at the right time! Everything is perfectly managable today and you can save yourself a lot of trouble.

As I'm writing this I have tears in my eyes, feeling grateful for that beautiful smile I saw today. I missed that for such a long time and am looking forward to having my wonderful wife back again!