#flyeater

All right, so, work has discovered a way to completely capture my attention. I think it’s been the first time I haven’t been preoccupied with my friend’s disappearance for more than 24 hours.

The short of it is that Flyman has had a horrible setback. And the long of it is, it may have been going on for a while and we didn’t notice it. Maybe we should have seen the warning signs in his closed-off behaviour in therapy. He’s always been evasive, and now we know that for the last week or so he’s likely been deceiving us all.

I was working late, as has been my wont lately, when there was an emergency called for all doctors on his case. Flyman was violently ill, doubled over screaming. We tried to calm him down, but then he started gagging, finally crouching down and vomiting all over the floor of his room. That’s when we saw what he’s been choking on: bones, feathers, and blood.

He’d eaten a bird, raw. Somehow we’d missed it, we must have gotten lax, since he’d made so much progress. We were thinking of releasing him in two weeks, of all things. And that wasn’t the worst part of it. As we were all standing there in shock, he turned up to me from where he was sitting. ‘A cat,’ he croaked at me. ‘A kitten, a nice, little, playful kitten, that I can play with, and teach, and feed – and feed – and feed!’ He kept repeating ‘feed,’ over and over before bursting into hysterical laughter. At which point we sedated him and sent him to intensive observation.

This breakdown means we’ve now looked at his journal. Most of it was completely ordinary reflections on the day, very positive. But starting about six days ago, his writing stopped and he started making tallies and drawing strange diagrams instead. I had a fitful sleep, then set about trying to decipher them this morning. I didn’t have much luck with it at first – I was convinced that the branching diagrams were some sort of genealogical pattern, as they expanded from a single point down to many at the bottom.

It wasn’t until the afternoon, when I had to explain the whole debacle to my supervisor that it hit me. Flies, spiders, birds, cats. They aren’t family trees, they’re food chains. And he’s working up them, somehow, which left me chilled, because what would he count as the ‘top’ of the chain? Needless to say, he is not being released until we get to the bottom of this. We’re already weaning him off one his old medications to try something stronger. Also, brain scans.

[…] A short update on Flyman before I go. Since receiving a copy of Insects of Britain and Western Europe, he’s taken an interest in creepy-crawlies in general. Lately he’s taken to catching and cataloguing spiders instead of insects. We’ve got Spiders of Britain and Northern Europe on order for him. (I’m not changing the pseudonym from Flyman to Spiderman for reasons that should be obvious...)

Someone in the comments yesterday asked for how Flyeater is doing. I’m pleased to report that the answer is ‘very good!’ He’s being allowed monitored activity outside, and it’s improved his mood greatly. He’s eating regular meals again, and gaining back his weight.

His interest in insects continues, however, but in a healthier way. He was following around any flying ones in the garden, and one of the staff suggested giving him a bug collecting kit. He catches the bugs, examines them under a magnifying glass, and then releases them. His therapist has ordered guides on insects to promote this new interest of his.

This is all exciting because, in spite of his proximity to the insects, he’s yet to attempt eating any of them, which means his antipsychotic medications must be working. I think I’m going to redub him ‘Flyman’ instead of ‘Flyeater’ to celebrate his progress.

I try not to get too upset when people use psychiatric terms for non-psychiatric issues. I don’t want to be one of those tossers who interrupt people to say they’re not really ‘depressed’ or ‘anxious’ when they’re actually discouraged or worried (I do draw the line at gits who think that any pet peeve means they’re ‘OCD’, however).

But I don’t use them that way myself, because in my mind I can’t remove the clinical meaning from the phrases. For example, I am not, at the moment, depressed. I am feeling quite down. A woman I was seeing casually has decided to see someone else seriously and so we’ve reverted to being just friends. Which, honestly, is fine, I like her and I admire her, but the change has made me realize I was probably more fond of her than she was of me. Still, it’s merely a disappointment, one that I will get over in part by trying to be as supportive of her in her new relationship as possible. And by drinking, most likely.

Depression, on the other hand – that’s an entirely different matter. Remember ‘Flyeater,’ who I mentioned in another post? I described him then as being generally cheerful and upbeat, which was true, then. He’s since then fallen into an intense period of gloom, dull affect, and general listlessness. Depression isn’t emotional so much as physical, a draining of the body’s energy and its ability to feel. We’d been making some headway on improving his bodyweight, but since his depression has begun, he’s been wasting away again.

From his therapy sessions, we know that Flyeater misses the outdoors. For obvious reasons we have kept him inside since his admittance, hoping to identify the psychic cause of his fixation before we risk letting him resume his entirely muscamorphous diet. There hasn’t been much luck on that front; his brain scans are normal, medication affects little change in him, and he’s very adroit at avoiding the issue in therapy sessions.

Which brings us to a turning point: do we risk allowing him outside? And if so, will he be under supervision? Restraint? Maybe it will prompt some breakthrough it our work, but it might also send us sliding back to where we began with him.