Going Downhill

I don't know what is wrong with me. I got through Christmas and I had hoped that things would start to improve a little, but if anything I am going downhill at a rather alarming rate. Last night I had absolutely no sleep whatsoever and I am not sure that tonight is going to be any better.

Today has seen me just sitting around doing nothing because I had neither the energy nor the inclination. I had hoped to get some studying done today but I can't concentrate on anything for more than about 10 minutes so that was a non-starter. I've also managed to lose one of my knitting needles that I am using to knit the wrist warmers so I am stuck with the knitting on three needles and no needle to transfer onto. Yes, they are knitted on double-pointed needles so I am knitting in the round which means that the stitches are spread around three needles and you use the fourth needle from the set to knit the next set of stitches and then when they are all off that needle, it becomes the spare. But I'm not sure that I could have concentrated on the knitting enough to do some anyway.

And I haven't managed to cook myself anything today either because I just couldn't be bothered, but I have eaten. I have to phone the HTT tomorrow for my weekly report (as a concession to it being the holiday season I can report over the phone and not go in person for them to eyeball me) and I'm not sure how I am going to answer the questions that I will be asked. Do I tell the truth, or do give non-committal answers?

I also have a half completed post for the Tackling the Mental Health Minefield waiting for me to sit down and finish it. I want to do just that, because I still have quite a few more posts to write for the series and I don't want too much time to pass before writing them so that my recollection doesn't become too hazy. Fortunately, most of the remaining posts will be somewhat shorter than Parts 1-6 were, so perhaps I can work on them at the rate of one a day and then publish them over the next few weeks.

I'm going to take my night-time medication in a minute and then head for my bed. With a bit of luck I might manage to get to sleep before morning arrives.

Surviving

Well, I have managed to survive Christmas, even if I did spend much of it in bed with a rotten cold. Christmas dinner was bangers and mash (sausages and mashed potato for the non-British readers) with a lovely thick onion gravy. It was washed down with a mixture of Australian sparkling wine with cranberry juice added.

I seem to have spent most of my waking hours watching various films on television although I did manage to do a bit of knitting yesterday and I am hopeful that I will feel energetic enough to do some more this afternoon/evening. I have also managed to record lots of films to watch later so I will have something for when there is nothing worth watching.

I haven't been to the sales; I haven't even left the house for nearly a week. Tomorrow I will need to go out to buy some supplies and get a bit of exercise. I'm feeling low, but not so bad as I did this time last week.

I must also sit myself down with my OU course material and work my way through it so that I can complete the second TMA for my course. It has to be submitted by the middle of January so I had better get a move on. This TMA has only two parts to it; the first part is the most important one and requires me to write a short story or a chapter of a longer piece of writing of 1500 words. It also requires me to include something that relates to one or more of a number of supplied words. These are places or feelings and the one that I have chosen to include is 'abandoned'. I have an idea of what I am going to write, but having an idea is not actually having the words ready to write.

I think some sessions in the library are called for because if I am there I can't be distracted by what's on the television.

Santa Ahead Of Schedule

Santa is making good time on his journey around the world. He has actually arrived in London a little ahead of schedule at 2352. Let's hope that Rudolph and all the other reindeers have not peaked too early and that they are able to complete their journey on time.

Christmas Wishes

As I sit here warmly wrapped up because I have a streaming cold, I have been keeping track of Santa on his trip round the world visiting all the children and leaving their gifts, I would like to wish all my readers what I hope is a happy time.

I intend to get an early night, if I can, and then spend tomorrow watching the box. I have decided to have bangers and mash for my Christmas dinner, washed down with cranberry juice and sparkling wine. I'll probably have a tissue almost permanently held to my nose if today is anything to go by.

Christmas Shopping

I had to go and see the Home Treatment Team this morning. I should have gone last Friday but there was no way that I was going out with snow on the ground and not knowing what the buses were going to be like. I phoned them to let them know that I wouldn't be coming and made arrangements to see them today instead.

I chose to make the appointment for today because I thought that I could kill two birds with one stone and get my Christmas shopping on the way home. It shouldn't be too busy I thought because it's not Christmas Eve until tomorrow. I got off the bus and walked to the supermarket which happens to be the biggest one in the country for that particular chain and went looking for a trolley. I knew that I didn't need a lot of shopping but I wanted to get a couple of bottles of wine and a couple of bottles of soft drink, so rather than trying to carry a basket which would be getting heavier as I went round the shelves it needed to be a trolley.

Shopping trolleys come in various sizes and a small one would have been ideal for what I wanted, but there wasn't one to be seen. In fact, I managed to get the last of the large trolleys. that gave me an indication of how busy it was inside the store. It was a teeming mass of humanity. It seems that everybody had decided to do their food shopping this morning.

I still don't feel much like cooking myself meals at the moment, so I had decided that I would see what ready-meals I could find. I now have a choice of penne pasta with bolognaise sauce, macaroni cheese, or sausage and mash for my Christmas dinner. And a bottle of Australian sparkling wine to wash it down.

As you can see, I really know how to have a good time!

Lecturing Again

I've had an email this morning asking if I would be willing to give my lecture 'A Patient's Perspective Of Psychotherapy' at one of the London universities again. I replied straight away and now all I have to do is agree a date with 'S'.

It's nearly a year since I gave it the first time and I remember the nerves and anxiety that I suffered beforehand. I know that I will suffer the same feelings again, but the lecture was well received last time, and I have no doubt that it will go down well again.

Over the next few days I must make some time to sit down with the script for the lecture and update it. I still had a few months of psychotherapy after giving the lecture in February, so I can add the feelings that I had when the psychotherapy came to an end, and talk a little about the therapy that I am undergoing at the moment.

The lecture is based on posts that I wrote at the time that I was receiving therapy and the emails about it that I wrote to Mr Smiley. Updating it shouldn't be much of a problem so a few hours should see it done. Having the confidence to do things like giving this lecture and the presentations about patients having online access to their medical records is very much down to Mr Smiley. It was he who constantly reminded me that they were things that were well within my capability and that I had been doing for years.

It is moments like this that make me realise how much I will miss Mr Smiley's gentle encouragement and his faith in my abilities.

The Most Devastating News

I have just received an email from the wife of my best friend. Mr Smiley and I have known each other for nearly 40 years. We met when I was a very shy and nervous 18-year old. I can even clearly remember his first words to me, "What do you want?" That remark has been a source of amusement to us both in the intervening years as our paths have met and diverged again.

Mr Smiley was in the Army and I was in the RAF in those days and it was because we both worked in a particular field that we met for the first time, and led to us meeting and working together at various periods since then. But since 1997 we worked together almost continuously until I was retired on medical grounds.

When my husband died, Mr Smiley was the person who helped get me through those first agonising months. He was the person that I turned to when I needed to talk and he was the person who made others at work realise how difficult it was for me to continue working in a place where my husband had worked too. By then I had left the RAF and become a civil servant, but Mr Smiley was still in the Army. A few years later he retired from the Army and became a civil servant too and we continued to work, and talk, together daily until I gave up work.

It was Mr Smiley who took the phone call from my Dad the day that Mum died and who took it upon himself to give the news. That is another day that I will never forget. He had given bad news like this before when a serving Army officer, but when we talked about it some time later, he told me that giving me the bad news was probably the most difficult thing that he had ever had to do.

Mr Smiley helped me through that bereavement as he had helped me after my husband died. He did it again when Dad died. It was shortly after this that I moved back to London and was medically retired. Since then we have kept in regular contact through emails, phone calls, and meeting up occasionally for lunch.

Mrs Smiley's email this morning told me that Mr Smiley has terminal cancer, and that he is seriously ill in hospital. I knew that Mr Smiley was not well, and that he would be going for some tests in the new year. But last weekend he was taken into hospital and they operated on Monday, but there was nothing that could be done. The doctors had hoped that he would be well enough to come home by today, but having just spoken to Mrs Smiley on the phone, it seems that he is not recovering from the operation as well as they had hoped, and now she is wondering if he will ever be well enough to come home.

Yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad dying. To have had this news today, coupled with how I am feeling anyway in this run up to Christmas, means that I am sitting here writing this post with tears freely flowing.

When I told Mr Smiley about having started this blog, he became a regular reader and commenter on it. He thought it was one of the best things that I could have done and that it would be a very cathartic exercise. He felt that the things that I wrote about depression and how I coped with it would benefit others, and he had been reading Tackling the Mental Health Minefield when I started writing these posts.

We last spoke on the phone a couple of weeks ago, and his last email was written on Friday 11th December and finished with the words, "I hope you have a relaxing weekend and achieve what you want to achieve, How are you coping with being at home? Talk again on Monday." Of course, we didn't.

I just have to hope that we can write a few more emails to each other, but in the meantime I am going to have to try to pull myself together enough to be able to write a letter to Mr Smiley telling him how much I have valued his friendship and how much he has done for me over the years. It's not going to be easy.

Tackling The Mental Health Minefield Part 6 - Throwing The Christian To the Lions

(This post continues the story from "Tackling The Mental Health Minefield Part 5 - Please Sir, Can I Have Some More)

Those familiar with how things are done in mental hospitals will probably be able to guess what this post is about from its title. Blood sports may have been banned, but something pretty akin to them is still practised in mental wards up and down this country. It is the ward round.

Ward rounds are something that may occur in any hospital. If you are a patient in one of our large teaching hospitals you may encounter something akin to those seen in Doctor in the House or Carry on Doctor. But ward round in a mental hospital is more like those olden days when the gentry could visit the local insane asylum and view the wretched inhabitants.

My first ward round was the day after I was admitted to hospital. I was summoned to a room with tables in the centre and sat around them was the consultant, the ward SHO, one of the nurses from the ward and a couple of other people, whose function I can not remember. I was invited to sit down on a chair that was placed some distance from the tables, but the position of which enabled all those present to get a good view of me.

It should be remembered that people in mental hospitals, particularly those recently admitted, are very vulnerable. To encounter this sea of faces is nothing short of terrifying. I was,frankly, terrified. I can remember little of what went on other than being asked a raft of questions many of which I found difficult to answer and when it came time for me to leave the room tears were flowing freely.

As this was the admissions ward, there was a ward round each day, Monday to Friday. the first to be seen were those who had been admitted the day before, then such others on the ward that the consultant wanted to see. I was not due to see the consultant the next day but made a request to see him because I needed some leave to get some clothes. I still had nothing but those that I was wearing when I was admitted.

I went in to see him and made my request. He asked me where I lived and I told him, and then said that I was not planning to try to get home to get additionally clothing but would be going to the shops just a few minutes walk from the hospital. He then said that as I was an informal** patient I could have leave and then asked if two hours would be sufficient time. I replied that I thought that this would be plenty of time and then made a second request. I asked whether it would be possible for me to go unescorted to the garden when I wanted a cigarette. He replied in the affirmative and was immediately overruled by the nurse who was sitting in the ward round.

This shows the sheer stupidity that exists in our mental hospitals. I was allowed to go out of the hospital, on my own, for two hours and wander around the shops, but I was not allowed to stay within the confines of the hospital and go about unescorted.

My next ward round was on the following Monday; this time there were also a coule of medical students sitting in. I was still in a very low state of mind and my time in there was short because I just dissolved into tears almost immediately. I was seen again on Wednesday and the consultant asked that the home treatment team (HTT) be contacted so that they could come to see me. (I will write more about the HTT in a later part of Tackling The Mental Health Minefield.)

I wasn't seen at Thursday ward round and that evening I was transferred to another ward. This occurred without warning; I was just going to make myself a cup of tea when a nurse told me to get my things together because a bed had become available on the ward that I was moving to and they needed my bed on the admissions ward for a new patient. It should be noted here that the literature that I was given when I first arrived at the hospital said that I would only be on the first ward for two or three days, or exceptionally a week if it was thought that I could be discharged from there. I had been on the ward for nine days. So much for believing anything in the literature.

The ward that you were moved to depended on where you lived. This meant that the patients on my new ward all lived in my particular part of London. The ward had two consultants, and which consultant you saw was decided on your initial admission to the hospital, so while I had been allocated to a particular consultant while I was on the admissions ward, this was not the consultant that I saw. The admissions ward had its own consultants who saw all the patients on that ward no matter which part of the area served by the hospital that they came from.

On the new ward, the consultants held their ward rounds on different days, and each saw patients on two days. My consultant's ward rounds were held on Mondays and Thursdays, which meant that because I was moved on the Thursday evening, I would not be seeing a consultant until the following Monday. This time the ward round was actually held outside of the ward proper. This was because there wasn't a suitable room available within the ward. However, just outside the ward there was a Meeting Room and four times a week this was used by the consultants for their ward rounds.

At my first ward round on the new ward I went into the room with trepidation, as before, only to be greeted by a lot of new faces, so introductions were made. As well as my consultant and her SHO (who sat at a laptop recording what went on), there was a psychiatrist from the Assessment and Brief Treatment Team (ABT) at the CMHT, the ward's social worker, someone from the Home Treatment Team (HTT) at the CMHT, an occupational therapist, one of the nurses from the ward (who made notes for use on the ward, but obviously not carefully enough because of the problems that followed), and myself. Fortunately this room was furnished a little more comfortably and nice armchairs were provided instead of the tatty office chairs that were used on the admissions ward.

After all the usual questions from the consultant, she decided that I should be given some home leave to see how I coped. So she said that I was to go home for a few hours during the afternoon of the following day, Tuesday, and if that went well I should spend the night at home on the day after that, Wednesday. This meant that I would be back on the ward for the next ward round and further decisions could be made then. The problem, as those of you who read the posts that I wrote while I was in hospital will know, is that the nurse wrote down that I was to go home for two nights.

Tuesday morning, one of the nurses came to see me in my room and told me that my medication for my two days at home was ready for me and asked what time I would be leaving. No matter how many times I said that was not what my consultant had decided, the attitude was that the nurse who was at the ward round had written the consultant's instructions correctly, and that I, the patient who was obviously so stupid that she hasn't heard things correctly, was wrong. I insisted that they check with the SHO, but they wouldn't do this so I was left getting angrier as each minute passed. Things came to a head just after lunch when I was asked again when I would be going for my two nights home leave. I said that I would be going home for a few hours, but would be back in time for dinner. This again caused the nurses to tell me that I was to go home for two nights. Half an hour later I had an angina attack (more about this and the problems that I encountered in a later post) and all thoughts of me going home for any home leave that day were put on hold.

On Wednesday, I did collect some medication and go home for the night. It was not a success. I did not sleep at all, and by the next morning I was in a terrible state. I went up the road to catch a bus and make my way back to the hospital. That afternoon's ward round was almost more than I could manage. It seemed that the whole world had come to sit in on this one. I did a quick count as I entered the room and there were more than 12 people in there, and that didn't include me. Apart from those who had been present for the previous ward round there were a host of medical and nursing students. It was apart to my consultant that things were not well with me and she asked all those not absolutely necessary for the ward round to leave. This left just five of us in the room and although I felt less overwhelmed I was still very upset. When my consultant asked about the home leave and I explained what had happened with the nurses saying that I was to go home for two nights and me saying that was not what had been agreed between her and me. At this point my consultant went mad. She understood why everything had been so difficult for me and when she reiterated that what she had wanted was for me to try a few hours home leave before having an overnight home leave the following day. At this point the nurse(the same one who had been in the previous ward round) piped up that I should have gone home for two nights because she had written that down. I was surprised that my consultant didn't ask everybody to leave before she decided to tell the nurse that she had better listen better in future because she had never intended me to go home for two nights, and was perfectly certain what she had said and that I had understood it too.

This whole episode delayed my recovery. Instead of being ready for a longer home leave in a few days, possibly over the weekend, I ended up having to stay in hospital for another two weeks before I was ready for more leave.

Every ward round that I attended after that went without too much of a hitch, but my consultant always made sure that there were only people who were absolutely necessary present. No more medical students, nor more nursing students, and no-one who was not involved in my immediate care over the next few days.

I found out afterwards that I could have asked for just myself and the consultant to be present when I was seen, but like so many of these things, you don't find out until it is too late. I really believe that ward rounds where there are so many people present are not good for the patient, especially if they are distressed and have no-one who can be with them such as a partner or other family member. I likened it to a blood sport at the start of this post and it does very much feel that you, the patient, are the fox, and all the other people present are the hunt and the hounds. Definitely not conducive to a speedy recovery.

** Informal is a euphemism for voluntary. Political correctness causes the powers to be to use the terms formal and informal in place of involuntary and voluntary.

To be continued.

The End Of An Era

I listened to the radio this morning. It's something that I always used to do as I got myself ready for work and then on the drive in. But these days I just don't bother. However, today was different. It was Terry Wogan's last morning on the breakfast show and I felt that I couldn't miss it for old time's sake.

It's the second time that I have listened to Terry's last morning on the breakfast show because I can clearly remember listening to his last programme when he stopped being on the radio because he was moving to television for his chat show. In those days I was in the RAF and I had been unfortunate enough to end up on a week's duty over the Christmas period. The duty was such that not only did I have to be away from my family but it was a 24 hour a day duty so I was stuck at the base for Christmas week, patrolling during the day and sleeping at night, but there in case of emergencies.

My husband went to stay with my parents for Christmas, without me this time, but my parents loved him and he always said that they treated him more like a son than his father did (his Mum died when he was 10).

Anyway, my duty finished at 7.30 on the Friday morning and my husband came to pick me up, having driven up from London the previous evening, and then we drove down to London to spend the rest of the holiday period with my parents. And it was on that drive down that we listened to Terry's last show, first time around.

Listening today, I was reminded of that morning. Terry's voice has changed little over the years; you would find it hard to believe that he was 71 if it hadn't been said so much over the last few weeks. His humour hasn't changed much either. And it is obvious that there are going to be a lot of people in this country who are going to miss his cheery banter first thing in the morning.

But for me the biggest difference between those two "final breakfast shows" was that I had to listen to it on my own this morning. Since Terry gave up the breakfast show first time around, first my husband, then my Mum, and finally my Dad, have all died. And this will be another Christmas without my family around me, but for a very different reason.

Thank you Terry. You made the early mornings bright with your chat and even though I haven't listened to you much over the last couple of years, I will miss you very much when I put the radio on while deciding what time to get out of bed.

How Am I?

I had a comment today about my last post. Bendy Girl was asking how I was now.

That's the nice thing about bloggers; when you're not feeling your best they rally round with lovely comments and send you virtual hugs to help you feel better.

To be honest, I am not feeling brilliant. I'm trying to take one day at a time and not thinking about Christmas if I can help it. When I was at psychotherapy on Tuesday, the first thing that JR, my psychologist, asked me was how I was feeling. So I told him. I said that I could feel myself going downhill as each day passed. We discussed it for about 10 minutes and then got on with the real stuff.

Perhaps, because he knew I was feeling a bit low, he didn't work me as hard this week as he did last. He asked how I had been after last week's session and when I replied "like a limp lettuce," he laughed. Little did he know that I had described how I was feeling in exactly those terms in this blog.

Today I have been delivering the items that I had been commissioned to knit. 'D' was absolutely thrilled with the cardigan that I had made for her new baby. We had a cup of tea and a good chat about how we had been since leaving hospital. She is a different person to the one who arrived on the admissions ward a couple of days after me, and being back at home with her new baby was all that she hoped it would be.

That took care of this morning, and this afternoon I delivered the cardigan that I was asked to knit by the lady who worked at the assisted-living accommodation that I stayed in when I left hospital. She loved it. The colour that I had chosen was perfect, and it attracted lots of admiring comments from those staying in the accommodation at the moment and from the staff who were there. And there is likely to be another commission in the near future.

So, I have managed to get through another day and while I am not exactly full of the party spirit I am doing my best to keep active and not think about things. When I got home and checked my emails I found one from my OU tutor saying that he had marked my TMA and it was ready for me to collect from the eTMA system. I got 63%, which is not the highest mark I have ever received, but considering I had to cram about 6 weeks work into 2 weeks, and that included asking for a week's extension for me to do the TMA, I am more than happy with it. It's just a short course, but it is helping me to get back into the swing of things, and as it is a creative writing course, there is no right or wrong answer, just how good your writing is. He liked my first and second short stories, but he felt that my third one let me down a bit. I knew that it wasn't as good as the first two, but I have to admit that I find writing fiction quite difficult, so to have written two convincing short stories has pleased me no end.