Personal Narrative: My Brother Lester

My brother Lester was first diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at the age of sixteen. Paranoid schizophrenics often have false delusions and auditory hallucinations, causing them to see things-people or objects that aren’t really there or to hear voices no one else can hear. It’s difficult for schizophrenics to differentiate between their illness and reality. For the most part, they can’t. It was hard for my family to accept the diagnosis, but we learned to deal with it. Lester used to live a normal teenage life, going to school, playing sports and video games, and staying out late. If you weren 't a part of the immediate family, you wouldn’t even know he had a mental illness. His illness had never been a problem or concern, in fact; he used to be one of the sweetest people I knew, until he got older. Lester …show more content…
Besides the negative side effects (speech problems, dizziness, stomach pain, etc.) the medicine gives him, he says he doesn 't have to take his medication because there is nothing wrong with him. Sometimes he has a hard time recognizing that he has a mental illness, but when he does recognize his mental illness suddenly is not a schizophrenic. It’s almost like Lester lives in two worlds. One world is reality and the other is a world where he has some other diagnosis. He picks and chooses which world he wants to live in day by day. When he’s in his made up world, he will often tell people he is schizoaffective and not schizophrenic. Schizoaffective isn’t quite understood yet, because it is a combination of other mental illnesses. It’s hard to explain, but he is a very confusing person when it comes to his illness. One minute Lester is completely healthy, then he’s a schizophrenic and next thing you know he’s schizoaffective. SURPRISE! Him not taking his medication creates a lot of tension in the house if just took his medicine; he wouldn 't have so many random