TSI's peer specialist, Jeannette Lee, shares her recovery experience with the Post Gazette. "Sometimes other people have to have faith in you before you can have faith in yourself..." Learn more about Jeannette's personal recovery insights and read the full story below.

(Copyright, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2007, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.)

Women's Recovery Stories Illustrate The Importance of Un-Dependence Day

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

By Laura Yao, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Diane Johnson at her home in Garfield Friday.

In 2006, Diane Johnson lay in the hospital tied to her bed, her hands wrapped in fingerless gloves. She called out, thinking she had been kidnapped and was being held in a basement somewhere, her clothes and shoes gone. She punched a nurse.

Ms. Johnson was getting a brain tumor removed. Mired in depression and schizophrenia at the time, she remembers none of her hospital stay.

She laughs easily now, recalling the story. At 51, her recovery from decades of illness -- both mental and physical -- is almost complete. These days, she speaks of her experiences as though they happened to someone else, a person she knew long ago.

After her only brother died in 2003, the depression she had always suffered took a turn for the worse. She also developed schizophrenia and psychosis, and was hospitalized multiple times.

For three years, her doctors upped her medication as her symptoms worsened, not thinking to check for physical problems.

"I was going downhill. I was seeing things, I was scared to leave my home. I had chairs up to all the doors of my house. My speech was slurred, I was falling out of bed," she said. "My doctor just kept giving me more medication."

Finally, without her doctor's approval, she went in to the hospital for shock treatment in April 2006.

During pre-treatment brain screenings, they found a spot on her brain. As it turned out, a brain tumor -- which, after 10 years, had grown to "the size of an orange," she said -- had been pushing on her brain, causing 90 percent of her schizophrenia.

After the surgery, she had to learn how to walk, speak, and write again. Her hair still hasn't grown back fully, though she wears a wig. Her recovery was hard -- but "I'm still here, I'm alive," she said.

This year, people like Ms. Johnson of Garfield will celebrate a different kind of independence.

On July 7, Un-Dependence Day, sponsored by the Allegheny County Coalition For Recovery, is dedicated to raising awareness and celebrating recovery -- either from drug and alcohol addiction or from mental illness. The event will start at 11 a.m. at Carnegie Library on Forbes Avenue, Oakland, and will offer food, music, balloon animals, and a puppet show to attract the public.

"A major goal of the event is to reduce the stigma associated with those who have behavioral health issues," said Bobbi Donovan, communications specialist with the Coalition For Recovery. "We want to break the barriers of 'us' and 'them.' Everyone is recovering from something."

Recovery comes in all shapes and sizes. Jeannette Lee of Wilkinsburg experienced a different kind of struggle from Ms. Johnson. Ms. Lee, who has been clean for almost 11 years, was once addicted to cocaine.

"I started using drugs when I was 13 -- alcohol and marijuana," she said. "I thought I'd never do crack cocaine, but I started, and it was a life of homelessness and despair. It was basically suicide."

Ms. Lee also suffered from depression and schizophrenia, and later, bipolar disorder.

She went to rehab, but would get out and continue her drug habit. It was only when her neighbors called youth services on her that she decided to clean up.

"I didn't want to lose my kids," she said. "I was helped by the people who called Children and Youth Services on me. I give them credit."

But to recover is not simply to stop using drugs, or to stop seeing visions.

Recovery is multifaceted -- it is first to recognize the problem, and then to address it, said Wesley Sowers, medical director for the Allegheny County Office of Behavioral Health.

It is to assert yourself in the world, and to reinhabit your old life.

"In the end, recovery is about developing hope and a sense of personal power," said Mr. Sowers.

For Ms. Lee, recovery was about finding the things she valued most.

"I have a job now, and a life that's free of drugs." She is married to a man she met in a support group, and has three children.

Ms. Johnson lives next door to her mother, who calls her "the miracle child." She has two grown daughters, and a long-term boyfriend who has stayed with her through the hard times.

"I met him when I was sick and I kept trying to get him to break up with me, kept trying to push him away," she said. "He just wouldn't do it."

Both women agreed that having the support of family and community was integral to their recovery. Now, both are using their experiences to help others.

Ms. Johnson, besides being the secretary for Un-Dependence Day, sits on the boards of the Peer Health and Advocacy Network and the Pennsylvania Mental Health Consumers' Association.

She has written letters to mental health agencies urging them to provide physicals for mental health patients.

Ms. Lee is also involved in outreach and advocacy. She works as a peer specialist at Transitional Services, Inc. She has started a support group called CORE -- Creating Options in Recovery and Education -- which offers four weeks of recovery skills for people with mental illness.

"Sometimes other people have to have faith in you before you can have faith in yourself," she said. To that end, she brings CORE to support people in homes.

Ms. Johnson and Ms. Lee say that a key aspect in recovering fully is acceptance.

"I'm not ashamed. Everyone has problems," said Ms. Lee. "I know I have limits and I accept that. The slow turtle always wins the race."

Ms. Johnson keeps a similarly positive attitude. In her family, her brain tumor has become a joke. "Everybody just calls it 'the orange,' " she said.

That she is doing better is apparent to everyone around her.

"I used to have so much sadness or anger on my face. After the surgery, my whole face was swollen and lopsided," she said.

"Now, I feel so empowered. Everybody who sees me is in awe."

(Copyright, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2007, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.)

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