the
Issue 11 02.22.05
harbinger
a publication of Shawnee Mission East • 7500 Mission Road • Prairie Ross Boomer
M
ost dads make their daughter’s kindergarten graduation, camera in hand. But David missed his daughter’s, saying DEA agents were recruiting him in a bar. Most dads wish their daughter good luck when she calls to tell him that she’s leaving for the navy. But David responded to his own daughter’s call by saying God was getting him a new Saab. And most dads, upon discovering that their elementary school-age daughters found a man smoking crack in the backyard, would try to shield them from the sight. But David sat his daughters down and taught them how to use a crack pipe. He isn’t like other dads: David’s schizophrenic. And for his three daughters, including East students Amy and Sarah, life was filled with strange encounters, frustrations of not having a real dad at home, and a biological father who – because of his mental disorder and drug abuse – became a phone number flashing on the caller-ID every few months. David didn’t always have his condition, however. Serving the Air Force in the 1970s, David experimented with a variety of drugs, including cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine. His substance abuse later brought on “drug-induced” schizophrenia. “He always had the possibility and the genetics to be schizophrenic,” Amy said. “But what brought it out was the drug use.” Although his former wife Anne married him during his military service, the disease wasn’t apparent at the time. Five or six years into the relationship she started noticing signs. “One night I came home from work and he was outside kneeling,” Anne said. “He crept over and whispered, ‘They bugged the house. They know I did drugs in the military. We can’t go in.’ At that point I was like ‘Riiiightt.’” Despite constant paranoia being a common sign of schizophrenia, Anne tried to ignore the condition, and David
Village, KS • 66208
only got worse. “We would be in the grocery story and he would pull me over and whisper, ‘all these women want me,’” she said. “Only later did I find out he actually believed that.” Trying to intervene, Anne got David professional help, and he was put on medication. “[But] schizophrenics realize they are different, so they go through stages when they say strange things and stages when they hold it back,” Anne said. “He was stable when the medication worked. But when he was really whacko, he would throw [the medicine] down the sink.” Because she still had faith in a more stable future, Anne decided to have children with him. “I eternally thought he would get better,” she said. “But it just got worse and worse and worse. Medication and counseling didn’t work.” Thus their whole childhood David’s daughters were aware of something different about their father. Amy first realized this fact one day at the mall when she was four. As the two went up an escalator her father randomly spun her around and he lifted her up above the moving stairs. “You’re this tiny thing … and you think you’re going to fall and die. At that point I truly realized, ‘Oh my gosh! Who would do that to a little kid?’ “ Peculiar behavior like this became commonplace as Amy and Sarah continued to grow older. Whether he kept them secluded in a room because he felt the rest of the house was dangerous or made the daughters stay on the lookout for an escaped convict while he left to flag down a cop, David’s behavior never surprised his daughters. “It’s kind of like our childhood was an adventure because he always thought someone was looking for us,” Amy said. “It was like we were in a war the whole time.” David also continued his drug use. “If he could get his hands on it, he would use it,” Amy said. “We never caught him, but you could smell it.”
continued on page 12
DANGEROUS
MIND
Father with schizophrenia puts stress on daughters