Withdrawal, recovery, & fading in and out.

Sorry for absence. 

Strange times. Been coming off lorazepam, which had made me 'manic', or the up side zig zag of bipolar. 'Up' doesn't mean happy.

Don't remember much of last weekend or beginning of last week. Had to check camera, phone, etc. to recap what I'd said/done.

I was put on lorazepam August 2011. It's part anti-anxiety, part anti-psychotic, added to my usual antidepressant because that wasn't helping too much any more. Well this September the psych-doc I saw took me off it as I was so low she said, it couldn't be working any more. Instead she put me on one called busiperone. I felt this was helping, but it sent my heartbeat v high. A week 1/2 ago I rang my GP worried about it as my resting heartbeat was 125 (this was while lying on the sofa watching TV!). She said stop taking it, go back on Lorazepam, and as you're in such a state, go on 3 a day. 

Well I didn't go to 3 a day. 2 was enough to send me manic.
K says when we went for a woodland walk last Sunday I gathered coloured leaves and twigs for Scooter's grave- yes, I can see I've put them on his spot- so? Ah, he said, but do you remember why you were originally collecting twigs? ----- apparently I was looking for sharp twigs to cut my wrist secretly while walking through the woods, so that the 'blood would trickle down but no one would notice'. OMG I have no memory or this at all. 

Tons of other stuff I don't remember. He guarded it from mum. I am so lucky to have a partner so patient with my weirdness.

And so...... today will be 9 weeks since Scooter died. Yes, I still cry every day. 

I am hearing him less :( 

Calmer though. 

I think the storm has passed. Now I'm in 'after the storm'. Which is still ... well you know. 
 
Friend from school, Jo, and her daughter came up today and it was a good day. But still sometimes there are these moments when I feel myself almost fading away, or maybe it is everything else that fades. It's like I'm watching a movie, I'm not in it. Or when they do one of those camera shots where you are pulled right back from the action. 
Suddenly everything goes away, and I'm left sitting there, looking like I'm listening, smiling, but inside, I'm sitting on a stone in an empty clearing, miles from everyone, just their faint voices, faint noises of things around them. Then I'm pulled back into the room and try to carry on as though nothing happened. 

If I start to sink, I know that it'll be harder and harder to return from that rock. Know what I mean?

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Love, tea & cake,  
Helena

I knew they weren't listening!

My Art Therapy came to an end this time last week, as my therapist is no longer going to travel in from Ipswich to work at the Colchester hospital. Blast. This is the one continual contact within the mental health system that I have had over the last 6 years.

The psychiatric service has been a joke. You get one half hour appointment every three months. You NEVER see your consultant, only one of his/her team of trainees and very rarely the same one twice. Most of the time they haven't had time to read your file, so much of the appointment id taken up with basic questions about your background and family situation. Then they'll say, so what can we do for you today? DUH.



But, useless as it mostly is, I need contact with this service as they are the ones who monitor my meds, change them, introduce new prescriptions, and, the thing I thought most important, note whether I am having the weird hallucinations that accompany the bipolar when I'm under any extra stress.

When my Art Therapy stopped last week, I asked my therapist if could enquire when my next p-doc appointment was, as I hadn't had one since the autumn. He did. He called me after I'd left and said, 'I'm very sorry, I had no idea, but they discharged you.' They hadn't even had the professional courtesy to tell him, let alone say anything to me.

Soon as I got home I rattled off an angry letter to the consultant about this, why was this done, why was it done so unprofessionally, and who was I to go to about meds and hallucinations if they had left me out here on my own?

Appointment with my GP this morning.
She didn't knew anything about it. Had a look back through my files. Oh yeah, she says, we got a letter in June saying they were going to discharge you because you hadn't attended a few appointments [for non attendance, read rebooked them, as they constantly gave me times I couldn't attend].

I then had one more appointment with them after this, during which they said to increase one med and come off another. Nothing was said to me about closing the file.

So here I am, with bi-polar II,
permanently on anti-depressants,
for the last 18 months on anti-anxiety pills,
and regulary taking anti-psychotics for the creepy, Hellish things I hear and experience when under stress,
the main carer of an elderly parent with vascular dementia,
no local support network, 
and my only regular help, art therapy has stopped,
and that's it, I'm discharged.

The GP showed me their letter about it. It even says I was suicidal in my last appointment. But hey, it notes that I dressed ok, was polite, made sense and seemed to have no personal hygiene problems, so I guess that means I'm ok. Maybe you need to be a smelly, drugged up alcoholic to get help.

REALLY glad I wrote that angry letter now.

No reply so far, which is no surprise. PALS is my next step, the Patient Advice & Liaison service. Big, big complaint coming their way.

Just as well I'm not suicidal any more, isn't it? Do you think, if my health problem was heart disease, I would have been discharged still with problems?

52/4

MOAB IS MY WASHPOT

by Stephen Fry

"I shan't tell you," said Mr Kett. "It's a secret. See? That's how good I am at keeping them."

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This is the first chunk of Stephen Fry's autobiography, leaving him at age 20. It's very funny, and very candid, too. 

I absolutely LOVE Stephen Fry. It's OK to say that without upsetting Luvbug for obvious reasons- first, Fry's glorious gayness, and second, Luvbug enjoys QI almost more than I do. He also knows how much Fry's documentary about Bi-Polar helped me, airing as it did for the first time just 2 weeks after my diagnosis. I'd thought I was BP for a long time, found patterns that weren't explained by 'straightforward' uni-polar depression. To have a psych-doc agree, and the art therapist, and to see it on my notes, well for some reason that hit me. For a long time afterwards, I thought -though it sounds corny- "If Stephen Fry can have this and manage, cope, LIVE, then so can I."

The title of the book confused me for a while. It's from the Psalms and is repeated in Psalms 60 and 108:

“Moab is My washbowl; Over Edom I shall throw My shoe; Shout loud, O Philistia, because of Me!”(Ps.60:8)

The psalm isn't quoted in the book so why the title?

Here's one interpretation, which I found on Yahoo! Answers, of all places!-

Old Testament Jews were extremely concerned with cleanliness. Wearing sandals in the hot and dusty environment, their feet would become filthy and upon entering a home, would be washed. In their cleansing and purification rituals they used poured water. They would not put their feet into the bowl, but instead hold their feet over the bowl and pour clean water over them, and the bowl would be used to catch the filthy water. The washpot was therefore a symbol of disgusting filthiness.

The phrase "Moab is my washpot" alludes to God's contempt for the enemies of Israel. The nation of Moab found displeasure with God because of "her overweening pride and conceit, her pride and arrogance and the haughtiness of her heart." God brought Moab low because of her futile insolence, yet He promised to "restore the fortunes of Moab in the days to come." So young Stephen Fry considered that he was a disgustingly filthy, proud, conceited and arrogant young man who, rather like God's promise to Moab, eventually amended his behaviour and excelled.

Wow. I wonder how many writers put that much thought into the title?!!

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BTW...

Equilibrium- The Bipolar Foundation  Stephen Fry is their Special Ambassador. There is a letter from him on the website about their work: here.