Category Archives: Anxiety

I’m Calling Our Next Baby Iris

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Ah music, the invoker of memories, the inspirer of moods, food of love, understanding comfort in floods of despair…

Music used to be the prevailing background noise in my life but was all too quickly replaced by a louder internal monologue of self loathing so really (not really), I consider myself lucky to spend the amount of time that I do waiting rooms at the moment.

Waiting rooms always have the best music, the kind of stuff that is so ironic it means you have to laugh or you’ll cry.

This place has a newly installed intercom thingy, one of those microphones that means that the receptionist can hear you from the other side of the safety glass as you declare yourself arrived from an appropriate distance because safety first in these offices potentially dangerous mad people.

“Sorry, the microphone isn’t working” she bellows, gesturing at the speakers on her side.

“…not working” she points and then does that mime thing like she’s cutting her throat.

“Did you say 3 o clock?”

It’s 9:55am. I shout back, from my safe distance that “no, I said 10am” – holding up my fingers to indicate ten but at the same time probably looking like I’m showing that I have no concealed weapons.

I sit down and wait to be called while the receptionist resumes her conversation with the man who has come to check the microphone. Through the thick glass. Shouting.

“I’ll put the music on out there and see if I can hear it in here” she yells, annunciating sharply: ‘mew-zick‘.

She pushes some button somewhere in her office behind her glass and the dulcet tones of Now That’s What I Call The Best Mental Health Unit Album In The World Ever Vol.582048 drifts from hidden speakers.

Whut whut, put your rave hats on patients. Psych yourself up for that dreaded psychiatrist appointment as you sob-laugh your way along to Track One.

I mean, I do love this song. I am yet to meet anyone who doesn’t love this song. Thank you Goo Goo Dolls for helping me through some rocky times but there is a time and a place and really, this is neither.

When everything’s made to be broken…

Chuckle chuckle, sob sob, wringing of sweaty palms.

You bleed just to know your aliiiiiive…

Brilliant.

Somewhat disappointingly I’m called through before I’m able to find out what the next song is. Gutted.

I had a psychiatrist appointment last week, a private one. No suicide soundtrack in that waiting room and a ninety minute delve into my psyche. That’s a party in itself let me tells ya.

This dude was NHS and therefore not costing me the equilivant of a months rent. But free did unfortunately mean not quite scraping the top layer from all of the layers from the top of the iceberg. It meant a different diagnosis and different advice, all of which I am still processing.

I’m not great in these appointments. They make me nervous and reciting everything makes me hurt and above all the pressure bares down hard because I need this, I need this to get to the next step so that I can get better. My brain chooses these times to go on sabbatical, deciding to recline on a  towel on a sandy beach and work on its tan leaving me totally in the lurch. Thanks brain.

I struggle to take in much information on the spot and it’s usually hours and days before it sinks in properly, once my brain is back with its tan lines and holiday photos and has finished unpacking.

It’s not the best sign though when thirty minutes in I find myself thinking I’m going to have to do this all on my own, all over again.

It’s not great when a bombshell is dropped that is so destructive that whoomph this is all you will take away from these forty five minutes of purgatory because everything else is just shrapnel now.

For confidentialities sake I’ll call him Dr Fuckwad* (PHD). Dr Fuckwad with my thick file of notes with my maiden name crossed out in biro and my married named scrawled below in felt tip and all of his questions and the stifling suffocating atmosphere of his office with his name on the door.

I have generalised anxiety disorder he deduces, not depression at all. He is pleased that I am not self harming because, says Dr Fuckwad, it would be much harder to help me if I was so I should keep not doing that please.

Dr F confirmed that the six weeks of hell I endured was indeed withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation effects and that I should stay on the medication because it works and sure, I can’t actually feel emotion or hunger or anything, nor can I poo – I mean like at all. I haven’t had a good poo for over two years and that is exhausting let me tell you – and as a result I have piles that honestly deserve their own names (ideas on a postcard please) and possibly even hand embroidered little outfits.

The bombshell is coming. Wait for it.

Really, I promise it’s worth it.

Now, my reluctance to stay on these meds for any period of time boils down to:

1: all of the points above
2: they numb me and therefore how can I learn how to deal with any emotional issues that arrive once I stop them?
2b: how can I get better from something that I can’t feel?
3: they are not a cure
4: they are not a lifestyle choice but a tool
5: the longer I am on them the more brutal the withdrawal *ahem* I mean discontinuation will be
6: because I said so

I know I need them now. I know that for whatever reason I am a very, very ill person without them. So, Dr Fuckwad, I dutifully swallow one every morning of every day while I endure all of this and while I struggle to get well again. I know that I am not well now, that my life is, and has to be, on hold until I am well again because that is what is right and what is fair and good and proper. For everyone. I’m not happy about it but I’ll do it, deal.

But, the quicker I can get my nervous sweaty mitts onto some other treatment of the non chemical kind, the quicker I will recover thus saving myself and my family a lot of pain and the NHS a lot of time and money and for that matter, the benefit system too.

So, Dr Fuckwad, mate, lets do this shit! Lets be positive and proactive. Be my cheerleader, tell me I can do this and I’ll be OK and we’re going to get me the therapies that I need and it will be tough but it will be worth it because I can get back to life and myself and my baby. Yeah? Yeah!

My life has been on hold enough already, the husband can’t work, we would have had more babies – we wanted more babies by now – if I was well so lets just focus on getting me well. Lets do this thing.

“No more babies for at least six years please” says Dr Fuckwad.

(That’s the bombshell right there *thwack*)

Now I’m not one to shun medical advice, to put people (or babies or already made children or husbands) at risk but nor am I one to be dictated to. I mean fuck, six years! Am I going to be like this for six years, at least six years?

No. Nononononono.

Please no.

* I can’t even pretend to take credit for this name, twas my muse; a gorgeous vision, an epic writer, a local freakin’ celebrity and reader of my l-o-n-g and garbled text messages of doom.Cheers dude x

How Will I Know?

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Once again I slide awkwardly across the seat of an oversized and uncomfortable plastic upholstered chair while it creaks in embarrassing accompaniment to my every twitch.

Whitney Houston blares from the radio, piped in through speakers set into the ceiling somewhere, the disembodied voice an attempt to muffle the coughing and spluttering and miserable receptionists and sound of germs multiplying.

My left foot taps along with the bass line, fuelled more by agitated anxiety than love of the song. Although it is catchy.

How do I know if he really loves me?

Because he says with me during major depressive episodes and brings my child up while I contemplate suicide alone upstairs, that’s how. *

* This may not be the correct lyric, don’t quote me.

Seven weeks ago I quit the meds and in that time I have spoken to three different GPs and my therapist and my mum christened the newly operational 111 service on its very first day because once again she had to mercy dash to mine (it wasn’t snowing this time but it was 1:30am, sorry mum) when the mental took over and once again the drop from my bedroom windowsill looked particularly inviting.

I went back on the meds five days ago by the way – I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment. I know when enough is enough and I’ve battled long and hard enough to want to draw a fast, firm line through such fucked up thoughts.

The thing is, antidepressants take time to kick in.

On the day that I relented made the ‘positive decision’ to start them again every breath was like sucking setting concrete up through a narrow straw. (I don’t like straws as a general rule; someone always swipes my drink for ‘a sip’ and the next thing I know I’ve got the mangled, gnawed end of a bit of plastic someone else has chewed in my mouth).

Breathing shouldn’t hurt, having a brain inside my skull shouldn’t hurt, moving my eyeballs shouldn’t hurt…Everything hurt so much and it was terrifying and I was exhausted and, well, terrified so I pushed the little while pill up through the silver foil and held it between my thumb and my index finger and literally begged it to work

please. Please work, please help me. Please take all of this away. Please work

before washing it down past the lump in my throat with half a glass of Ribena.

The super fun (lie) bit about antidepressants, aside from the total all consuming numbness, is the waiting game while they make everything worse. Sure, taking that tablet did ease things a little but given the following should be the editorial on the leaflet in the box things are still far from awesome.

Suicidal intention? Depression? Anxiety? Hate yourself and your life and feel shitter than shit? In so much physical and mental pain that you literally can’t take another single second of the torture?

Take this magical pill!
We don’t know too much about it or how or why or when but we can tell you that they will numb you enough to plod through your days!
But first!
While they rebuild your broken brain up a little, they will in fact increase your suicidal intension, depression, anxiety, self loathing and pain infinity fold!
Hang on in there, don’t do anything silly, they’ll work in the end! Kinda.

The appointment was not fun (true). For someone so verbal about things when I can articulate through a keyboard from behind a screen I clam up hard and have to stop myself choking on every word that I force out of my mouth in person.

I also get total mind blanks and answer half of the questions I’m asked with a series of single syllable noises and ‘eeeeeeerm’s. The answers always come to me as soon as I close the door behind me afterwards, obviously (thanks again, brain).

It is beyond awkward sitting before a stranger as their gaze burns holes in my hot, sweat slicked flesh while trying to answer questions about Not Very Nice Things.

I’d rather have a smear test. While every boy that I have ever kissed, that blonde girl who bullied me in school and my ex boss (the one I had a bit of a crush on) lined up to watch.

Not because I’m embarrassed about saying how I feel (and not because I’m a big old vagina show off) or because I’m ashamed or because I think that the poor bloke stumbling over the questions that he has to ask, feeling just as awkward as me, probably, has never heard similar before but just because it’s hard.

So hard and so exhausting and it leaves me feeling like I’ve run a hundred thousand miles. Saying things out loud makes them real, it often begs explanation or expansion or explanation or reason and I have none of that.

And, y’know, that I’m obviously quite British and when asked how I am I’d rather reply a bright and breezy ‘fiiiiiiiiiine, and you?’ than a monotone and spluttered ‘I have all I have ever wanted but I want to jump out of the window and leave it all behind…and I don’t like when people chew the end of my straw’.

On the plus side, I am (finally) being referred to a psychiatrist.

Flying

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With pyjama bottoms tucked into boots dusted in freshly falling snow I picked my away across the garden to the car, leaving behind my baby tucked into bed and my husband watching from the door.

I didn’t know what else to do. It was like a chasm had opened in my mind and it was pulling me in and although I was clinging onto my sanity with all that I had I just didn’t know, I couldn’t trust myself.

Earlier that night I sat in bed in my nest of pillows and blankets and one minute I was fine and the next…?

I don’t know what happened.

I had a pen in my hand and I knew exactly what I would write because suddenly everything was clear and yes this is exactly what I should do right now.

‘I’m sorry’ I would write. A cliche but true because I am and I always will be.

‘This is all I can do to make things better’ because it is isn’t it? It’s the fairest and kindest thing to do, set my family free from me and set myself free from the pain.

I rolled the pen between my fingers and in that moment the reality dawned and its cold plastic became red hot. I dropped it behind the headboard, the household wasteland of things never to be retrieved.

Out of nowhere in some crazy out of body experience I saw myself sailing through the air, snowflakes falling around me, smattering themselves through my hair and onto my cheeks, a picture of calm.

It was a relaxing thought and that’s what added another level of terror. So peaceful and resolute was the image that I mentally reacted in the same way as I would if I was offered another cup of tea. Yeah, that would be really lovely, thanks.

I stared unblinking through the gap in the middle of the curtains at the snow and the waving branches of the tree and the darkness, stuck in a space between blind panic and resigned necessity.

And so, an hour before midnight and in the middle of an icy blizzard, my mum pulled up outside to take me away to be safe.

Today

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Off I plodded to the doctors surgery this morning, for the 345734015th time, to ask again for help. My mum took me so that I didn’t have to drag the Bean along for the ride – ‘see doktor’ always ends in disappointment when she discovers that it’s not Dr Ranj – and for this, and infinity other things she will henceforth be known as The Most Awesomest Mum Of All Time Ever™.

We waited and waited and while the waiting room swayed around me and the radio played Return Of The Mac (classic) I played spot the PND leaflets – zero. It’s always zero –  to pass the time. We had to sign a consent form before going into the consultation to give permission to be filmed for training and I signed wishing that I’d put make up on but happily because, well, if it’s being recorded then I’m not going to get crap service am I?

I spoke to the GP for 45 minutes and I told him as much as I could as succinctly as I could while trying to be strident about not wanting to take a step backwards and he listened. It felt so good to be listened to.

In brief I wont be going back on my meds just because my stupid body is crying out for them and punishing me in the process. I know that I don’t need them, that I can make it through the final stretch of recovery on my own. In your FACE depression you life stealing bastard.

I’m not on my own though am I because I have the husband (he needs a new suitably brilliant title too…I’ll work on it) and Beans and my family and you, all of you with your tweeting and messaging and loving and wonderfulness.

I am armed with antihistamines to help the vertigo and the nausea *crosses everything that they work* and I have been reminded that I have come so far and although at three weeks medication free I am exhausted and scared and frustrated and hurting, I will find a way through this.

Look at me being all positive.

Paradox (With Tongues)

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So I made the decision and with all the rightest of reasons and best(est) of intentions. In sound mind I know this. I know the ins and outs and whys and everything’s because I’ve lived it and breathed it and agonised over it and rolled it over in conversations so many times that my voice is horse and all the words have dried up.

The reality of sitting in the middle of it all, cross legged on the floor surrounded by looming towers or doubt and worry skews the plan somewhat.

Is it just me or is it more than a little ironic that medication for depression can cause depressive symptoms? Precisely, these depressive side effects are most prevalent when the medication is first started – leading to weeks of desperate oh my this is just me and I’m all wrong and I’ll never be OK ever again ever - and, of course, at the other end of the scale when you’re trying and willing to set yourself free.

I was OK. Not better, not perfect, not totally there yet, but OK. I had levelled out. The physical effects became stronger than the soothing mental effects. I felt strong enough to go it alone, ready.

Even during the stationary swaying and rocking of the vertigo brought on by reducing my dose by a teensy (medical term there guys) amount it still felt good you know? I mean, obviously I had felt better, but I was positive and I pushed through it.

As the veil lifted I really did start to feel more like myself again which is such a cliché it just has to be true. I did stuff and I did it automatically and happily and just because it needed doing and it wasn’t simply the background notice to another session of self loathing and internal destruction.

The husband even noticed a difference. I felt good. I made stuff and sang and played and smiled and it was all good and it felt good and good good good good good.

And I’ve been wanting to write this post for days. And other posts about everything else and the fact that in the last five weeks when I have been relatively quiet I’ve actually managed to reduce from 150mg to 37.5mg all by myself and it’s a bloody achievement and I’m still here and still battling and still surviving.

I just haven’t wanted to jinx it.

I’ve wanted your support and encouragement because last night was the last time that I reached for the little blister pack beside my bed but I’ve been too scared to ask because what if I can’t do it and what if I don’t want to do it and what if times a million.

I’ve known that I’m going to stop for about a week. It’s time. I can’t keep pumping these drugs into my system when all they were doing was sustaining a level that I’m able to sustain myself now only with a cloud of heavy fog smothered thickly across all my senses thrown in for good (bad) measure.

I need to stop them to get better properly. I need to feel again and to learn to cope again and I can’t do that with the meds. I want to know that I can survive without them and frankly, I just want this whole long chapter to be over now.

I can see now how far I have come and as much as it fills me with pride because I kicked some ass it also makes me want to double over, clutching my stomach in pain because it was all just awful.

I swallowed that last pill.

Hopefully the last one ever but let’s face it, probably not as they say once affected always afflicted and I’m likely to have to battle this all over again to have more babies. Lets not go there just yet. One thing at a time.

The familiar feelings washed over me.

A gentle dizziness, fuzziness, creeping up on tiptoes before quickly closing in on my mind, wrapping it up in cotton wool and…and…making me incapable of finishing sentences.

The feelings that I’ve hated and been so keen to forget suddenly aren’t so bad. As I lay back and allow the stoned waves to gently wash over me they lick at my toes and gently drape my mind in thick, soft velvet. It’s nice. It’s nothing like last night and all the nights before where I felt like these effects were trying to pin me down with arms of steel and knees in my chest as I kicked and struggled and begged to be free.

These drugs, although for the most part absolutely horrible, have been a necessity. They have kept me alive and held my hand and consciously or subconsciously they have been there for me to fall back on when I have needed to.

They pulled me back from the absolute depths of breathtakingly painful misery and they set me down lightly on a tightrope, balancing somewhere between good and bad, up and down, me and…?

There were no great ups or terrible downs rather everything just was. It’s impossible to expect that for something to take the pain of one emotion away it won’t drain out the delight in another isn’t it?

Slowly, very slowly over the last few weeks I have been getting used to feeling again. Like rediscovering your own tongue after its been dormant and numb for hours after a dentist visit, suddenly there it is! and oh god does it really feel like that and I can move it and wow I really take my tongue for granted because it can do all this stuff.

I can cry and laugh and neither are forced and both hit me like a clenched fist in the pit of my stomach. I can feel my nerve endings tingle as I nuzzle into the husbands shoulder and his chin brushes across my head, his stubble catching on my hair. I can feel the love jumping from every cell when I just look at Beans and she does something a bit kooky (ie; all the time).

It’s weird. It’s like I’m being absolutely bombarded. We’re not in Kansas any more  Toto and someone’s switched on the colour and the lights and the sounds and the smells and the feelings and its all so intense and don’t I get ruby slippers as part of this bargain?

I do want to do this, I do. And I am ready. But I am scared. This drugs are addictive and I have used up every ounce of my strength to get to the point where I can say ‘let’s do this’ that I just don’t know that I have enough left to be able to say done.

I’m terrified of going back to where I was. And that’s why it’s so hard to say goodbye.

MAD Blog Awards

This blog has changed saved my life. You have changed saved my life. I would be thrilled if you could take one minute to vote for me in the MADs 2013. If you want to…Maybe? Please? x

This Shit Just Got Personal

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…because never let it be said that this isn’t a barefaced, no holes barred kinda blog.

 

The internal monologue of anxiety is an exhausting never ending tirade of doom and dread and fear and every single worst case eventuality that you can think of as well as thousands that you never could. It’s constant at times, like an endless buzz and crackle of static set to play on a loop, in surround sound, right in the middle of your brain. With the volume turned up to eleven.

Anxiety makes me tired and on edge, white knuckled, restless. It makes me want to slide between the inviting sheets of my bed, the safest of safe places, to lay quiet and undisturbed with my eyes scrunched shut while I shout internally that EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OK in an effort to drown out the fear and the lights and voices and sounds of the world turning and lives being lived that try to penetrate through the cracks.

Only going to bed and burrowing hamster like under the covers isn’t an option. Because I am rational enough to know that the cotton soft, feathery fortress that I drape over myself means that I am giving in. And as much as I want to, need to sometimes, I simply can’t.

No. Giving. In.

The exhaustion and desperation and sheer tooth gritting agony of anxiety leaves me spent after it has built up and up and up and up and OH MY GOD SOMETHING AWFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN ANY SECOND AND I JUST CAN’T BREATHE AND… over hours days and weeks until I burn out.

I burn out and I sleep a sweaty and restless sleep plagued by vivid dreams and even more vivid nightmares until waking at dawn feeling physically and emotionally ruined, turning back over and slipping into the sleep coma of intense malaise. And it lasts for days.

Oh hi depression. It lurks in the molecules of my own shadow, always there, always following, waiting.

When I’m OK – OK as far as the anxiety is there but quelled, pushed down as deeply as I can manage, the depression is there, chipping away at my spirit with its crushing opinions of self and worth and apathy, this is my OK – I can live and I can function and sometimes I can even have a really nice time but its all there, waiting to creep back to the forefront of my everything.

So when the depression does hit good and proper it knows that I am a captive audience. It knows that it’s done all of the groundwork of slowly pealing away layer after layer of my confidence and my belief and my defences to enable it to jump straight over the crumbling walls and paralyse me with emptiness.

The endless crackle and fuzz of anxiety is replaced by nothing. Funny really when all I want when I’m super anxious is for EVERYTHING TO JUST GO AWAY AND BE QUIET that the quiet that follows is so unwelcome.

It’s not a peaceful silence. It’s not the silence that surrounds you on a summer evening, floating in on a sweet breeze and enveloping you, leaving you invigorated and relaxed and rested, bright eyed and smiling lazily. It’s an all consuming empty silence. So heavy that it sucks the life out of every cell resulting in heavy limbs that simply don’t move, a brain that is rendered completely incapable of thought either trivial or profound. Empty empty empty. I can’t even be bothered to see, to hear, speak, swallow. Blink.

And there’s nothing I can do.

I know that as my anxiety has built over the last few days, even as the breath catches half way up my throat as I try to breathe, while my palms are slick with the cold sweat of fear and my mind races to pinpoint exactly what that fear is for, I know that it’s not real. There’s nothing to be scared of. Nothing. But my god, I am. And it’s just going to build and build until my body and my mind cannot take another second and slumps with an almighty thud into darkness and despair.

And then I’ll likely be OK again for a few days, maybe even a week.

Before the cycle starts all over again.

And I have my period.

Everything

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I wrote down what I wanted to say because I knew it would get lost once opinions and information flew around the room and because if it was written down I would have to speak it, a promise to myself.

My head was in my phone as I waited to be called out of the pink glow of the waiting room. I read and checked and double checked what I wanted to say even though I had it committed to memory word for word and bullet point by bullet point.

I have lived with this for nearly two years. I have spent every day trying, just trying. I know where the illness ends and I begin even when it takes over and the only bit of myself left is hovering above my prone body, floating to the ceiling and looking down on what I look like when it threatens to take me over.

I talk myself through panic attacks and guilt and the impulses to drag something cold and deliciously sharp across my hot, soft skin. I understand. How could I not after more than twenty months of trying?

I do want help I really do. I want support and guidance and someone who can coax me back out of my shell and stand close as I pick myself up, battered and bruised but with all my thoughts ordered, rationalised.

I have my own coping mechanisms and they are why and how I have come through all these months without a single physical scar, they are the reason I managed to avoid hospital and avoid worse.

What I want now, what I need, is to go back to the beginning and actually say out loud all the things that I never did at the time. I need the distance that verbalising things gives, I need to say the words and hear myself as I do. I need someone to help me understand them so that I can learn that it’s ok and this is why and maybe next time…

Suddenly a hand is being proffered in introduction and I rise and the fake leather cushion creaks and squeaks as it expands back into shape as I am lead into the windowless room with the forms and the tissues. There’s always tissues. I never cry.

I settle into the chair against the back wall. It’s blue and it’s scratchy and one of the front legs is loose. I kick it idly with my heel while my psychologist clicks her mouse until my details fill the screen. I peer out of the corner of my eye and try to read what it says.

June. It was June when I first made the call? I count the months in time with the thud of my Converse on metal.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

The leg moves half an inch and I grip the seat to steady myself. Feet firmly on the carpet I register that it has taken four months to get to this point.

I look at my palms and I think while eyes locked on her monitor the psychologist scrolls and scrolls and outside a car drives past and crunches into gear. I have appointment palms, pink and hot and covered in the sheen of my own sweat that tries to compensate for my dry mouth when I feel under pressure to say the right things.

I go over and over my bullet points in my head until I can see them so clearly it’s as if they’re scrawled in ink down my fingers. And then I realise something. Suddenly it’s really obvious when I feel the most shit. The times when I’m a bit slower to pick myself back up again, a bit more anxious than usual.

It’s this.

It’s the constant asking and begging and pleading for help. I have asked and asked and asked but every time, every single time, I have been put on hold or redirected or turned down or overruled.

And it kills me.

Harder than almost anything else is siting in a box like room sharing stale air across a table with a stranger who has boxes to tick and risks to assess and I just don’t quite fit and they just don’t quite understand.

Because its not just about boxes as ticks and scores and totals and whatever the preferred method of treatment is in that given month. It’s personal and varied and emotional and there isn’t anywhere on the forms for that.

I have to answer whether I think people would be better off without me, whether I’d be better of dead.

Dark.

I answer honestly. I answer yes.

Do I know how I would do it?

No. I have no plan that I would follow or processes in place. It’s not like that for me and as much as I think I’m not worthy to be a mother sometimes I would never ever take myself out of my childs life, just like that.

But these two boxes don’t tally. If you have thoughts then you must have plans because that’s what the official form says and I guess training doesn’t cover any what ifs outside of that. Grown ups shouldn’t colour outside the lines. I try to explain but it comes out jumbled because frankly I find discussing the fact that sometimes it hurts so much that I want to die is pretty…ugh.

I explain how I have made it this far. I explain the revelation that came to me. Is it a revelation? I ask. In a room lit by strip lights and filled with the buzz of a 1990s computer and the stare of this woman who is there only to judge exactly how broken I am my conviction feels just as likely to collapse underneath me as my chair.

When I was pregnant I had everything that I ever wanted; a husband who is gorgeous has a wicked smile, brilliant sense of humour and kisses that make me melt, a baby in my belly, a lovely house in a lovely town, Cath Kidson wallpaper, two cats…everything.

And then there was all of that and a baby and that should have (could have?) just been the most amazing thing in the world. I had it all, the girl with everything.

Only my hormones went a bit mental and sent me a bit mental and made me think that I didn’t love my own baby and that I was going to throw her down the stairs and drown myself in the bath.

Every night for the first twelve weeks of her life as she lay on the husbands chest and learned to hold her tiny new head a little bit steadier on her neck or flex her little pink fingers around the corner of the blanket that cocooned her against her daddy I lay in a hot lavender oil bath. A bath I had been told to have daily by the midwives to help me heal after the birth, a bath that the husband made sure that I had because it was doctors orders.

A bath that I would sob into, hot tears rolling down my cheeks and splashing into the water that lapped at my chin.

I would lay there for a long time just staring at the tiles on the wall opposite me while my skin reddened and wrinkled and life carried on outside the locked door. If the baby cried I turned the taps on so that I couldn’t hear. I would slide down the smooth plastic behind my back until I was submerged, looking up at the blurred ceiling from underneath rippling water.

I didn’t want to come up. I had to stay there.

Every night.

And then there would be a noise or movement or something and time suddenly sped up and I pushed my way up to air and coughed and gasped and took hungry lungfuls of steam filled air and pushed the hair from my face. What the fuck? I don’t want this. I have to get out of here. I rip the plug out on its chain and clamber over the edge of the bath dripping all over the floor and my discarded clothes and some magazines and a forgotten dummy. I rub my hair aggressively with a towel before hanging it across my shoulders so that I can pick my way across the floor and click open the lock. I can’t be here. I have to go.

I leave wet footprints behind me all the way up the stairs in my hurry to get dry and shake the feeling that’s hanging over me. A feeling and a pressure and something outside of me, bigger than me, telling me I should have stayed under water.

Five minutes later, avoiding the damp shadow of my hurried path up, I walk shakily down stairs and into my family asleep on the sofa. The room smells of baby and the husband and the congratulations on your beautiful little girl flowers. I stand leaning against the door frame and watch the rise and fall of their chests in the half light, listen to their snuffled sleep sighs. I feel jealous. Empty. Nothing.

But I’m ok. They’re ok.

I had everything but something had made it sour, made me ill.

And now? Now we have a council house that is still unsafe after more than nine weeks of graft, debt, no job so no income…we lost it all but we are finding each other. Which is such a fucking cliche it makes me itch but its true.

I have a husband who has been my rock and we have a daughter who does love me and who I do love back.

When I was well and life was lovely and wrapped in Cath Kidston print and money and ease I was fine and then I wasn’t. But now look at all that has happened in the time since. The husband left his job, we lost our home and our money and our cats. He lost his wife and she lost herself. We left the lovely town and we fought and battled for housing until we got a total dive…

But we made it though. I made it through. Just how strong must I be to have done all of that while I was empty and shattered and broken and our world was falling apart?

She’s not taking notes anymore, her pen rests in the spine of the notebook and her head rests on her hand. She blinks. I take a breath and shuffle in my seat. I’ve more than said my piece.

Five slow seconds tick by. A dog barks outside. Someone comes and goes in the room next door. The screensaver starts up on the computer (it’s the fish one).

She ticks another box.

‘In our meeting we decided that something called behavioural activation would be best for you. It’s the step below CBT if you like. It’s all about getting you back into doing things slowly by planning on a time table. For example, on Monday you could try to wash up. That would do for a week. And then I will call you in two weeks and we can discuss your readiness to move towards more tasks until you’re functioning normally…’

Are you joking? How…wha…How can a timetable and chores see me beat this?

She carries on. In that room I managed to say more than I planned to and I saw it all more clearly than I ever have before.

Isn’t that more important than continuing the battle for some counselling? All I want is some counselling.

I washed up on Monday night. And then I cuddled my baby and tickled her to make her laugh so she would curl up with delight and nestle in tighter to my chest so I could bury my nose in her hair and smell her smell. I promised the husband that I can do this and we’ll be ok and I’ll be ok while I wrapped my fingers around his and rested my head on his shoulder.

Everything will be ok. It’s my family that will continue to see me through, nothing else.

C7: Where The Mentals Are

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My old psychology lecture room. I walked the same floors as I did ten years ago, to the same room that I sat in doodling while studies and theories seeped out of the tutor’s mouth and bounced off the walls. The hot afternoon sun beat in through the open windows casting long shadows as the marker squeaked across the whiteboard and I planned my weekend. It was also the room that housed my exam results one August a decade ago. I was scared to go in and then scared to look and then ohmygoodnessIdidok!

Everything is the same but different as I walk in after all this time. The chairs all face the opposite wall, the whiteboard has been moved but cobwebs still cling to high corners and sway gently in the breeze, the sun still pours in through the windows. No longer a room where I would study psychologists and daydream about seeing friends and boys and boyfriends on Saturday, it had become what I desperately needed to be a glimmer of hope, of help, and a way to access treatment.

I jumped through all the compulsory hoops (again); I filled in the forms, scored my mood out of eight and ticked the relevant boxes to get here. The next step. The place where I would decide what treatment would be right for me to help me to recover. It struck me as odd that the best way to do this would be to assemble the mentals sufferers of anxiety, depression, panic disorders, phobias and similar in an enclosed space, close proximity, away from home and extremely publicly.

I feel far from comfortable about being in a room full of people with various mental illnesses of varying degrees of severity. In no other aspect of my life would I ever smile at someone I had never met before and, holding out my hand in greeting, divulge that I have a mental illness before I have introduced myself.

A PowerPoint presentation begins; every cliché, stereotype and misnomer about depression and anxiety presented in 72 point comic sans as each slide is read aloud for emphasis.

Stress.

Low mood.

Stress.

Common.

Change.

We all have to deal with stress, the projected slides tell the room, sometimes we don’t deal with it correctly and it becomes a vicious cycle. You, yes you, can learn to change that vicious cycle. We will give you workbooks and homework and group meetings where we will explain to you in fine detail all of the mistakes that you are making in life and how to put them right. And then if you work really hard you won’t be stressed anymore.

Shit, I’m in the wrong room. Did my feet carry me here because it’s a path that they were so used to treading? I should really put my hand up or something. Or just leave…A quick glance at the sign stuck with blu-tac at a jaunty angle on the inside of the door tells me that I am in the right room. Oh.

And then I want to leave. Are you telling me that this is a choice that I have consciously made for myself? I have been living this for nearly eighteen months, if I could have changed it I would, it’s taken everything from me. It’s taken me.

Break flashes up onto the wall, projected in looming letters (I hate comic sans) and bends and distorts around the woman who moves forward to tell those who want to stretch their legs to be sure to return in five minutes. I want to go. I want to sulk and flounce and close the door behind me on my way out. This isn’t what I need to hear or anything close to what could help me. I soak in my own private pity party on my chair in my old psychology room in my old college missing my old life. The last thirty minutes told me that I can choose not to be this way, but they also told me that depression makes you cry all the time. Over nothing. I want to cry; nothing.

The slides start up again. Not one person left the room. More animated bullet points about stress and its vicious cycle. The pity drains away and leaves anger in its wake. Slide after slide after slide of information about workbooks and healthy eating and exercise and homework and courses and spider diagrams and flow charts.

A person who feels a little low may put things off, for example, they may keep putting off washing their hair because of lack of motivation.

What about looking after a newborn baby? What if I can’t even look after my own child? I didn’t choose this. Fuck washing my hair. I want help. I want to be a mum.

My inner voice screams.

I have just ticked a box to say that I think about self-harm, that I think things would be better for everyone if I wasn’t around. How is any of this relevant and why should I give a shit?

Ten minutes later we are dismissed. I float out of the room, outwardly blank but internally screeching.

This Is Why

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So, what happens when you pen a lengthy and (hopefully) well thought out letter to the big boss man of the local NHS trust? When you try to articulate through your anger and explain how and why you feel that the wrong choices have been made and the wrong (ie: zero) care provided.

On the final day of the twenty five that, legally, a response has to be received a white envelope did indeed drop through my letterbox. Four sides of A4 that would make interesting reading to no one but me as they detailed every single doctors appointment that I attended from January 2011 to the present day. Words and dates and facts and excuses.

Why was a detailed care plan not set up before I had even given birth? Quite simply because it falls to the health visitor assigned to me to make said plans and unfortunately we had to cancel that appointment as I was in labour on the morning that she was due to visit. Although not something that’s particularly ideal (to say the least) to discuss between contractions or while crowning, it is being implied that the fault lies with me for not being available at that time.

Perhaps I should have crossed my legs.

Perhaps they should have written up a plan with me at the next earliest available opportunity?

Until the final paragraphs the letter continues in the same vain; documenting every single contact with GPs and services and insisting that I reported to be ‘feeling better’ and omitting at least another three pages worth of information about side effects and tears and begging and pleading and…

Finally, inches before the end of the last page the questions that I asked about my care are answered. No they say, my condition was not worsened or prolonged, yes they followed the guidelines set out by NICE. All this written not very clearly or transparently, making the hypercritical sentences that follow even harder to decipher. No, they haven’t caused me any harm or inconvenience by the treatment that I was given, but yes they are sorry for any harm or inconvenience that has been caused. No, I do not have a valid complaint, but yes my complaint has been partially upheld as it has highlighted the need for further training.

Eh?

Without going into the NICE guidelines, which I now know very well after pouring over them to check I wasn’t completely wrong, I can tell you that without a doubt they were not followed (antidepressants as second line of care following CBT/IPT or alongside, referral within one month and therapy/support no longer than three months following, communication to rule out the need for repeated assessments, support and understanding of the stigmas and emotional impact, support for family…).

I spoke to my community mental health worker (yes, I finally have one of those after refering myself) after I had received the letter and she immediately said that she would write a letter stating that the delay in my treatment and the lack of specialist advice I was given regarding my medication did indeed cause my condition to worsen and become more prolonged. She then went on to tell me that I will need to remain on my current dose of medication for at least one year before deciding whether or not I am ready to start the weaning process to come off it.

This means that at the earliest I will not be free of medication until the end of 2013. That’s nearly three years since I had Beans.

PND is a treatable and curable illness. It can be wiped out in a matter of months if it is caught early enough and treated correctly and with the right support. I saw the doctor to ask for help in February 2011 (according to that letter he ‘wasn’t worried, all feelings are normal but patient to report back in one week if still feeling the same’ and the notes from the appointment I made the following week ‘patient suffering from severe postnatal depression. Immediate treatment advised’. What had changed in a week?) I put myself in the right place to be given the right help to have not need to go through all of this.

I feel so much better than I did, I am coping with more, having less bad days and finally finding more self confidence with Beans. But I’m still not free. I wont be free until Beans is nearly three.

PND hasn’t just affected me, it has hugely impacted the husband, Beans, our families…Our lives are still not our own. The choice over when we can try for another baby doesn’t even belong to us any more, it’s down to how soon I can come off my medication.

It is no ones fault that I became ill, I don’t think that anyone deserves to be struck off or fired from their jobs. But. But it is clear that I have suffered in ways and for an amount of time that simply wasn’t necessary. It is clear that training is needed for all staff dealing with mental illness. PND is the number one reason of death for postnatal women in the UK. I have a daughter, she might need that care one day.

And for all of that I want a proper apology.

Absence

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I’ve been here in spirit only for the last few weeks. Pining away for my blog like I used to pine for ex boyfriends; desperately wanting to tell them something but not being able to call them anymore. But nothing’s changed, my blog is still here. I could have written if I had wanted.

And I have written. There are snippets and essays and novels and doodles and stuff everywhere. It all remains unpublished though.

At the beginning of April, Beans was with the husband while I was far, far away at my parents. And then the husband felt poorly and I found myself offering to swoop in and rescue him, take the toddler away and allow him to rest and recuperate.

It was an out of body experience, before I realised what I was saying and what it meant Beans was here and the husband was there. What have I done?

My first day alone with her was terrifying. I scraped by piece by piece, hour by hour.

I just need to make it through to 9:30am.

I just need to make it through to 10:30am.

I just need to make it through to 11:30am.

…

I made it. I more than made it.

Since then, with intermittent visits from the husband Beans has stayed with me. Because I don’t want to let her go.

So why haven’t I blogged? I’ve been telling myself that it’s because I’m too busy, too tired, too focused on other things. While all of that is true, none are the real reason.

Truthfully, I don’t want to embarrass myself or jinx anything if I whisper that things have been ok only for them to rocket back into a downward spiral again.

Most importantly, for the first time I have been enjoying being a mummy. Savouring all the time I’ve spent with my nutty toddler and her kisses and cuddles and giggles and tantrums. Everything else has taken a backseat and all my energy has gone into pushing aside all my worries and negative thoughts, like a heavy velvet curtain, to let the light in.

I no longer see myself as that girl who has postnatal depression that got so bad she didn’t move for a week and thought that she was dying. I’m that girl who is fighting, recovering, living. Laughing. 

And that girl is back.