Where do I start? On that night of Thanksgiving Sunday I had stopped in at my twin brother Mark's apartment as he wasn't feeling well.
Approximately one year before Marks death, he had been diagnosed as Schizophrenic (Abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality). In one sense it was a relief that we had an answer to what was happening with Mark, why he was thinking/reasoning the way he was, and what the cure was. Often when people take medication to treat Schizophrenia, the medication works so well that the user starts to believe they don't need it, when they stop taking the medication they suffer the effects of Schizophrenia. In Marks case we all saw the difference when he was under treatment, and it was great to have him back, but the last night I saw him I could see he wasn't Mark with medication. I arrived late that night as I had to work out of town. Mark was extremely nervous and it took a little bit of coaxing to find out from him that he wasn't taking his medication. His answer to "why not?" was due to a lack of money.
Mark had two jobs, renovations during the day and working at a Legion a few times a week at night. Both places of employment earned him just enough money to pay his monthly expenses as the jobs were slightly paying above minimum wage. With the extra expense of his medication he was only able to afford it for ten or eleven months using his savings. I never thought about asking him if he had to pay for the medication before this day, I new his budget was tight but I guess I assumed his pills were free? He showed me papers and papers of budgeting, but I could tell he was already losing belief that he "needed" the medication, he was already forgetting how beneficial his pills were. Since everything was closed due to the holiday and the late hours, I grabbed his telephone book and I started flipping through the pages.
Years ago I heard of some organizations that help people in the community pay for things like medication. I was looking for those organizations that would help him, Mark would qualify for sure once he showed his incomes and expenses. The paper that I was using to write a list ended up with a few numbers and I'm not sure whether they all could help, and it didn't seem like a satisfying list. I never thought about it until that day but why was it so hard to find places that could help my brother and I, our family, his friends, etc., we weren't the only people to ever look for this information.
He had a computer too but we found nothing that was beneficial or quick to retrieve. It was only a few weeks after Marks death that it came to my mind to find and promote all the great services that deal with social, intellectual and physical issues that we all may face at one point or another. The more I age, the greater my eyes open. We had a long and hard journey to convince Mark to seek help, and in the end we did it with him, unfortunately there were other things we should have been aware of.