It’s been a noisy summer. Loud restaurants, party chatter, self-talk, work calls, TV shows, and the sounds of technology all fight to hold the attention of one very foggy brain.

My SCDS symptoms have been flaring and I’m tired of hearing my heart beating inside my head and struggling to keep my balance when I walk. Every day is an exhausting repeat of the last. I’m holding onto hope that my November neurotology appointment will yield some positive news about treatments or coping mechanisms.

Until then, though, I’m muddling through the daily pandemonium in my head, sorting through the din in search of the important things, even if they’re being drowned out by garbage – like deranged emails from Ms. Chaos.

Yes. Her. Again.

The August pilgrimage to my home state was not without incident. On the agenda were fun things, like seeing my family, meeting a new niece, attending my cousins’ annual reunion, eating junk food at the Indiana State Fair, and boating on the lake. I did get to do those things, and they were every bit as lovely as I wanted them to be. Lakeside evening cocktails with a very dear best friend from my younger days was a delightful surprise and a great addition to the “to do” list, as was a shopping trip to the new boutique that now occupies a forgotten restaurant where we used to get fried pickles.

Every family has their drama, even if you’d never guess it by the facebook posts. Mine might have more than the average share.

So, when the time came to visit my mother, my sister became unhinged, as she does, which resulted in a 10-minute conversation with hugs and kisses for my mother on the sidewalk outside her home. I hid the tears behind my smile, as I wondered if that would be the last time I saw my mother while she still remembered who I am.

My sister has recently decided that I am not allowed to enter my mother’s home to visit her ever again. In fact, she said it would be “over [her] dead body.”

I won’t go into all the ugly things at this moment, but I believe strongly that we are living in a time of unchecked mental illness. I’m not talking about people who like to pretend they’re cats here, although that story might be worth a write. I’m talking about bonafide, mental instability caused by who-knows-what. I’m talking about personality-altering paranoia and anger that grows worse over time, debilitating hatred and nonsensical babbling, behavior that provokes and then cries “victim,” scathing, accusing, delirious emails with ultimatums and threats.

People in this state are not going to recognize that they have an illness; they are not going to get treatment. They are allowed to go about their business, probably living on welfare because they’re unable to be employed. They’re allowed to raise children who have to endure their illness and may even think it’s normal behavior. And we, the family and friends, can only sit and watch our loved ones as they continue down a dangerous path to self-destruction.

So, I’m left with “how do I love a person like that?” Is mental illness all that different from a physical disease? If I could love someone with cancer (or Alzheimer’s) who opted out of treatment, can I love my sister, still?

Once we’ve exhausted every effort to fix, change, improve the situation, it might finally dawn on us that our loved one is gone. It’s a gut-wrenching reality. Much like Alzheimer’s swallows up its victims, mental illness consumes the mind, and it seems, the soul.

Or is it mental illness at all? Maybe I’m too generous to provide her such justification to act so abhorrently.

Sigh… I love her because I know she’s in there somewhere. Just as I will love my mother long after she forgets me…