Schizophrenia or a Mysterious Illness:

Saturday, September 21, 2013 At 5:30 a.m., my husband, Mike, and I were jolted awake by a phone call. Who in the world would be calling us so early in the morning? The caller identified himself as a police officer; then, he asked, “Do you know a Julia Christine Cheek?” “Yes, that is our daughter,” I answered. “We have her in custody,” he declared. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard! At that time, Julia was eighteen years old, and as far as we knew, she was sleeping in her bed. We were suddenly wide awake and very alarmed to hear the policeman tell me that he had been called to a house in a nearby neighborhood because our daughter, Julia, had been banging on their door. The officer said he would bring Julia to our home, and he would talk to us in person. We gave him our address. The first thing we did was to run to Julia’s bedroom to verify that it was indeed empty. We ran downstairs and observed that the front door was wide open. The reality of the situation began to set in. We quickly got dressed and met the officer at the front door. Julia was still wearing a hospital identification bracelet. The night before, Julia had been in the ER, and we had gotten home about 3:30 a.m. We were asleep by about 4 a.m. and had assumed that Julia had gone to sleep also. She had left our house, in the rain, barefoot, without her glasses. Julia walked down the street, crossed another wider road, and wandered into another neighborhood. She knocked on a stranger’s door, and they called the police. Thankfully, the neighbors did not press charges. When the police were questioning Julia, she was able to remember her telephone number, but she insisted that she was not Julia Christine Cheek. As Julia walked in our door, she began telling the police officer that we were not her real parents, that her name was not Julia, but Rebecca Jones. She believed that we had adopted her. What had happened to our daughter? The officer proposed to take her downtown to Ben Taub Hospital’s psychiatric ward. We objected and asked if he would please release her into our custody. We promised that we would take her to a psychiatric facility of our choosing. We further explained that we had been proactive, and we had been taking her to see many doctors during the past year. We knew there was something wrong with her, but we hadn’t been able to discover what was wrong. The officer agreed to allow us to handle the situation, but he warned us that if he ever found her on the streets again, that he would be taking her to the Ben Taub Hospital’s psychiatric ward.