Michele Gyselinck
I am a 62-year-old woman. I was born in Montreal and grew up in a western suburb of the city. I became a confessing member of the local CRC, First Christian Reformed Church of Monreal on May 15, 1977, so this year will be the 43rd anniversary of that event. I have two B.A.s, one in LInguistics and the other in English Studies with a Major in Professional Writing in English. I developed schizophrenia around the age of 28.
Posted in: When Healing is Elusive
Once again we need to make the distinction between healing and cure. What this couple did NOT get in answer to their prayers was a cure. That does not prevent them from experiencing healing emotionally and spiritually. I did not find a cure to my schizophrenia despite people praying for me. That turned out to be because I could help people more by having the illness and living with the side effects of the meds I have to take to control the symptoms than by being cured of it. Having this illness moved me to want to learn what it is, what are its symptoms, and how we can best cope with this illness in addition to striving to sensitize those who are healthy, so that they don't add to the burden of those who live with schizophrenia or other psychiatric illnesses.
Maybe the Lord is waiting for this couple to find a purpose for their lives going forward in the fact that the husband has the particular disease he has. It might give a new meaning to their lives. Accepting this illness and striving to help other people with psychiatric illnesses and their relatives has led me to participate in stimulating and challenging activities. I hope for Mr. and Mrs. Roorda that they can find this purpose for their lives.
Posted in: Pray for Shalom After Attack on Disabled Man in Chicago
Why do people blame that attack on Obama, even indirectly? He has never done or said anything to encourage that kind of behavior. Because he himself is "black"? I don't get that sort of reasoning.
Posted in: A Life of Mystery and Faith
Yes Andrea, it is right. In the beginning it may be only coping, or coming to terms with the "new normal." In fact I believe that when we're afflicted with anything that changes the way we have to deal with life, we have to go through the various stages of grief. And to be sure God WILL bring healing if we ask though not necessarily cure. And I did find healing and peace with His help over time. And learned the difference between healing and cure. In the early stages after the diagnosis I didn't want to be healed because I had so many other problems that to me were unconnected to my illness but were actually related, and those problems made it very hard for me to find paying work. And I was afraid that if I were cured I'd have to hit the pavement AND look for a job despite those problems. Then I learned that schizophrenia has NO known cure, and that all those problems were part of the illness. At 58 I still can't work because I never know from one day to the next at what time I'll wake up because of the sedatives that pharmaceuticals put in antipsychotics, and by now I've pretty much given up on it. I would have liked a career in Professional Writing in English. That's what I trained for. But it's unlikely now.
I have to tell you that although I had prodromal symptoms all my life that made me behave oddly, the actual symptoms of the illness only started around the age of 28, so in my case that was in the second year of my first B.A., and I was diagnosed with schizophrenia ten years later. In the meantime I had a primary diagnosis of psychotic depression that didn't fully account for what I was experiencing. Back then, depression was considered as the common cold of mental illnesses and expected to last about a year. But I kept getting depressive episodes because of the voices I was hearing in my head that told me mean things. I would also suffer from insomnia, which is why pharmaceuticals put sedatives in psychiatric medications : to allow people to sleep at night. Otherwise, you can't function the next day. So I'd get depressed and be treated with antidepressants for about a year; then the treatment would be phased out--because you have to be weaned off those meds, you can't go off all of a sudden because of the withdrawal symptoms, which can be quite nasty. And some months later I'd start being depressed again, and depending on the doctor I might or might not be put back on antidepressants. One doctor I saw on campus during my second B.A. would not put me back on the medication despite my insistence that I was depressed because he thought I was just being anxious. Then again, he was not a real psychiatrist, just a GP with some training in psychiatry. He had never completed his residency because he would have had to move to another city to do so, and he was too lazy to do that. I had to go and see the pastor of the church I was attending for help in finding another doctor who would be willing to put me back on the medication that I needed badly. At that time I would start crying for no obvious reason on city buses. It was this same doctor who later diagnosed the schizophrenia six months after I graduated with my second B.A., the one in which I majored in P.W.E. Have you ever met people with schizophrenia before? It's referred to as youth's greatest disabler.
Posted in: A Life of Mystery and Faith
Hi Mark,
Yes, it's estimated that schizophrenia afflicts about 1% of the population world wide with about equal distribution between men and women. In men the average age of onset is between 15 and 25, and in women, it's between 25 and 35, so at 28 I was right in there.
But men with untreated schizophrenia tend to be more violent than women in the same situation. I read a very good article in the March 1987 issue of Saturday Night Magazine about the different ways the illness manifested itself depending on gender. It's title was, "Of Two Minds" I believe.
Posted in: Domestic Violence—Knowing the Facts, Confronting the Myths
I just read about a physician in Toronto whose body was found in a suitcase last Friday after she had been reported missing by her mother. Her husband has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Apparently the couple was going through difficulty, and the wife had filed for divorce. And friends of the victim say she was in an abusive relationship. I have heard it said by no less than Dr.Phil McGraw that women who are in abusive relationships are never in greater danger than when they are planning to leave, and what I have read elsewhere confirms that, but apart from the delusion of the honeymoon stage, it can be difficult for the victim to get out without the patner knowing since abusive husbands are often very controlling people who will check their spouse's cellphone for unusual phone numbers or anything that might suggest things to be suspicious of. Heck, I even read of one case in Scientific American Mind some years ago in which the wife had to ask the neighbors if she could throw stuff out in their trash cans because her husband looked through their garbage for stuff to start a fight about.
Posted in: Being Fed With Stone Soup
No, no one would ask for a disability. The most you can hope for is to come to terms with it. If I'd had to opportunity to chose, I would have opted out of schizophrenia but in so doing I would have missed what I learned from having it, and I might still harbor prejudice towards those who suffer from mental illnesses, whereas now I strive to help them and their families with information and resources.
Posted in: A Life of Mystery and Faith
Dear Sister in the Lord, Like you I suffer from a disease for which there is no known cure. In my case it's schizophrenia, an invisible disorder since it afflicts the brain but that can be detected by the odd behaviour of those who suffer from it. Some people have prayed for my healing, but if healing there was, it was only emotional and spiritual. Otherwise, I still have to take medications every day to control the symptoms, and the side effects of those medications include significant weight gain that in turn leads to diabetes Type 2.
As I said in a meeting of the Advisory Committee to the CRC branch of Disability Concerns, we should distinguish between healing and cure. People can experience healing without being cured of their illness, and you have, obviously, NOT been cured since you still talk about walking with pain. As to whether you have experienced healing according to this terminological distinction is for you to determine. Nobody can tell that on your behalf.
Yours,
Michèle Gyselinck
Posted in: Chronic Pain and the Fullness of Joy
Dear Sister in the Lord, you MAY experience healing without being cured, and I imagine that it's a cure you're looking for. I pray that God will cure you, but even more that He will heal you.
Posted in: Serving Students with Empathy
You should not feel bad that it took you longer to reach your goals than it did for people who are in good health and have no known disability to slow them down. I live with schizophrenia and it took me longer to reach them than healthy people too. I graduated with my second B.A. a couple of weeks before I turned 37. The main thing is that you can actually work for pay in your line of training, something I've had to give up on, because now that I'm well enough to function in a job I'm too old to find an employer who would take me.
I'm 57 and will turn 58 in November. Some of my cousins have actually retired from their jobs by now. The fact is that just as people with disabilities compete in Paralympic Games rather than the regular Olympic Games, people with disabilities training for professions are not in the same race as people without disabilities. About the time of my graduation with my second B.A. I was having another episode of depression, so the night before the graduation ceremony I asked my mother for money to buy a frame for my diploma, which she was reluctant to give me at first but still gave me, and I was able to frame it and place the diploma where I could see it and think, "Oh yes, I actually did this," every time I passed by and saw the diploma. This may not seem important to people who don't doubt their own self-worth, but to people who either get through college on probation or can't get a reference from a professor because her marks are too average, it can be capital. You should rejoice that you made it in spite of the obstacles you had to overcome rather than feel diminished by those obstacles. You have more merit than people who had no hurdles in their paths. BRAVO. And keep up the good work.
Posted in: Does Your Worship Team Take Song Requests?
We no longer have an evening service in Montreal because the people who complained about the format never showed up when there was a formal service in the sanctuary when I moved to Sherbrooke, QC, to attend university there. Now we try to keep a balance between hymns and songs so as to keep the highest number of worshippers happy, and it seems to work. Of course, I'm not in church every Sunday, but I haven't heard other committee members bring up complaints about the choice of hymns or songs at WoCo meetings. Maybe we would need to conduct a survey.
Posted in: Who Are We Excluding From Worship?
I watch a service by the People's Church in Toronto when I can't make it to church, and when I see this service on TV, the congregation is NEVER SINGING but only members of the praise team. If we use the approach that worship is only what's going on up front, then that is borrowed from another tradition, which I hate, by the way, because those singers put on a performance with tremolos in their voices as if they were giving a paying concert or something. It turns me off no end. The sermons are good, but the rest must make ordinary congregation members or even people with more limitations so inadequate. I would not feel welcome in such a church that doesn't consider its people's input good enough to be broadcast on the air.
Posted in: The Ability to Effect Positive Change
It's difficult for Canadians NOT to be aware of Presidential election campaigns south of the border. When you're a mouse in bed with an elephant, as PM Pierre Elliot Trudeau, the late father of our present prime minister, used to say; you have to always be aware of what the elephant is going to do next. But since I can't vote in that election there isn't much point in sending that letter.