Random Witterings!

So today I popped into the Doctors to pick up the prescription for my regular drugs (repeat prescriptions) that I requested last week.  Most of the time it’s a very easy process, I just ask for it and if it’s there and ready, it gets handed over.  Every now and again I have to have a drug review and most of the time I see it’s coming and can arrange an appointment with my Doctor.

Unfortunately I didn’t spot it this time and when I turned up to get the prescription, I find there is no prescription and a note saying I need a review. Great.

Usually I have no problem with the receptionists – they are just doing their job and they aren’t medical professionals.  Most of the time they are friendly.  Occasionally they can be also be bolshy and unhelpful and today was my unlucky day.

I asked if there were any appointments available for my Doctor but was told she was on holiday and there were no pre-bookable appointments left until after christmas.  No further help offered.  Fantastic.

One of the drugs I have to regularly take are Anti-depressants because I suffer from Dysthymic Disorder.  Aside from the depression, another major facet of Dysthymia I particularly suffer with is low self esteem and lack of confidence and at that point I had an overwhelming desire to just walk away and hide.  Where would that leave me tho?

So I grit my teeth and ask if the review could be done by phone (they offer phone consultations which I find usually fantastic) but was told they no longer do reviews by phone.  No further help offered.  Fantastic.

I have to psyche myself up to actually go into the surgery in the first place.  My Doctor is fantastic but it took me a long time to find her and I’d seen a few of the other doctors in the practice before and not got on with them (another story).  So I had to psyche myself up even to go in and pick up the prescription and the thought of having to do it again to go back and actually see someone who wasn’t my regular doctor and who I have no trust with makes me feel panicky and exhausted.

I pathetically asked “so what do I do?” and was told call after such and such a time to get an appointment for the next day with any of the doctors.

By the time I had rushed back to the car I was crying and hyperventilating, and feeling disgusted with myself.  Then I was annoyed at them.

I understand they are doing their job but they also have a duty of care to patients and need to have an understanding that when someone comes into the surgery, it’s not because they are well and happy and a lot of people may be in a fragile state of mind.  It felt like pulling teeth getting the final answer of ‘ring at such and such a time’ when they could have easily stated that after the first question.  If I’d followed the overwhelming desire to get out of there I would have been left with no antidepressants and would have felt that there would be no option to get any until the New Year which would not have been good.

I feel angry on behalf of the people who might be in the same state I was before I was diagnosed because there would be no way I could have continued asking questions or tried to be even minorly assertive.

I’m annoyed at myself for not spotting the review was coming up but equally annoyed that to get to the point to rectify the situation has left me feeling panicky, depressed and tearful.  A little help would have gone a long way.

Ugh.

Tony informs me it’s been too long since I’ve posted anything. He’s usually right A year isn’t long is it?! It is? Bugger

Tony and I are fine, the cats are insane but great and make us laugh daily with their antics – (I so wish I could draw, I’d make a webcomic about them).

We just celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary (10 years?!) and usually we are doing well if we both remember the month let alone the actual date So it was nice this year to both remember and we did the card thing. Then Tony made me cry by ordering me a gorgeous arrangement of Roses with a Helium Balloon and *gasp* CHOCOLATES! Best. Husband. Ever! I don’t think he expected me to burst into tears and then blubber all over him but that’s the price he pays for being awesome to me

Just a few words on marriage (have a snooze if you want)

Over the years it has not been plain sailing. My mental health problems have caused a lot of grief for both of us (mostly for Tony coping with a very sick wife) and my self-destructive tendencies could well have ended it for us. Tony stuck by me however, through everything me and my illness threw at him, until I realised I could trust him implicitly and no matter what I went through, he would be right there supporting me. That’s not to say he didn’t get angry at times, at being helpless to ‘fix’ me and watch me hurt us both in my messed up determination to make everyone hate me as much as I hated myself.

As my treatment progressed and I was able to mature a bit (OK a lot), it got easier to deal with and as my understanding and attitudes towards myself changed and I calmed down, I hope he began to see a lot more of the ‘real me’ rather than the ‘sick me’.

I couldn’t have done any of it without him and I hope I am there for him as much as he has been there for me.

*soppiness alert – this is not a drill*
I love you Tony, thankyou for the last 10 years, be mine always?
*soppiness alert over*

In other news, I have to say a HUGE congratulations to my sister and brother in law on the birth of their third child – Welcome to the world Charlie! I got to meet him last weekend and he is SO cute and has MAD hair

That’s about it for now, will try to blog again before another year passes

Well today I had another Psychiatrist appointment. The last few have not been good for various reasons and I was ready to throw in the towel.

I didn’t expect it to go any better this time but oddly it was very good. I’d decided already to accept some courses I had been offered – Confidence / Self-Esteem and also an Anxiety Management one. The last few times it had been brought up, I had panicked at the thought of having to go to an unfamiliar place and meet strangers and just couldn’t.

Just lately I feel I have been progressing again. I’ve been getting out and seeing friends again, been feeling the desire to get out too which I haven’t felt in a long time. Ok it’s only once or twice a week but better than once a month. My mood has been low but I have also been quite positive about things and that led me to the decision to see if I could gain some insight from these courses. Maybe deciding it for myself rather than it being pressed on me made the difference.

The psychiatrist thought about changing my medication since I was still getting these low moods but I honestly said that since they didn’t last any where near as long as they used to, I could cope with them and also felt that in general they kept me fairly stable. I felt he was listening to me and agreed to keep things the same as long as I felt I was ‘OK’.

We had a chat about Dysthymia in general and how having a positive outlook and be willing and accepting new things to try makes all the difference. I know the tablets won’t cure me but they will help me to have a quality of life I am relatively happy with.

I seem to have had a stair like progression throughout the years with my illness. I climb a step then have to wait a while, until I get used to it and then feel I can progress again. I really think I have taken another step.

Anyway, enough introspection, here’s a lolcat

Feeling much better now, I do tend to panic when I go down like that, out of fear that it will be another deep and long bout. Thanks so much to my great friends for their support and hugs and to my wonderful husband Tony, who is always calm and reassuring and *always* there for me. I really can’t thank you all enough.

So here is a Lolcat

So today I wake up and feel spacey and not quite all there. As usual I tell Tony I’m fine, I tell myself I’m fine and despite trying to stay positive, gradually my mood drops over the day. Now at 15.14 I can’t stop crying and I have to admit I am having a very bad day. No reason, nothing sparked it off, it just happens for no apparent reason. Go Dysthymia!

I hate it. I hate how it makes me feel, that I don’t have anything to look forward to and there is no point in living anymore. I feel fat and ugly and am completely and utterly worthless as a human being.

I know this bout will pass, it may only last a day or it could last a week or a month until I return to my usual ‘level’. I’ve fought hard to get to that level and I get angry that for no reason, I get knocked from it and have to claw my way back up again. I refuse to give in to it tho, it’s not the real ‘me’. The ‘ill me’ and the ‘level me’ are two such very different people and I *really* don’t like ill me.

My usual instinct is to hide and avoid people when I am like this but Tony persuaded me that blogging about it could be a good thing, that it will get some of it out and in doing so might just help. He’s usually right so I am gonna trust him on this

So Blegh for the moment, but normal service should be resumed shortly.

*hugs*

I spent part of today looking at www.facebook.com after a friend sent me an invite. It’s kind of fun and I’ve found a few people I’d pretty much lost contact with and hadn’t wanted to. Then I decided to log onto www.friendsreunited.com as I hadn’t even looked in quite a few years. I love the idea of it, to catch up with old friends from school, those people you spent so much time with and swore you would always stay in touch with.

Why it makes me sad I have no idea.

I do have some fond memories of school and the people I was closest to but the overall experience for me was not good. I don’t know if I was the cause or if just being me was enough for some people to hate me, but I don’t recall ever being nasty to someone just to make them feel bad.

I also suspect it’s in the last few years of school (so when I was about 14), when Dysthymia started to rear it’s ugly head and I was very up and down and confused. I know that’s a common thing for most kids going through the change from child to young adult but I felt very lost. Maybe it’s because my behaviour was so erratic, that I became a target for the bullies.

I wasn’t popular and to be honest I didn’t care, I had the friends I did, and I also liked to be alone, to read or just to think. By the end of my school experience, I just wanted to be left alone.

Maybe I feel sad in part, because I feel I haven’t achieved anything since leaving school. I’ve tried various careers but bouts of depression usually ended my attempts. Or that I couldn’t be that go-getting high flyer with bags of energy and enthusiasm that people seem to want these days.

I don’t use Dysthymia as my excuse for everything but it did take so long to get diagnosed and appropriate treatment going that really, it’s only in the last few years I’ve started to piece everything together and started to figure out who I am. I feel I lost the most important years that most young adults have to figure out where they are going in life, to depression.

That being said, I feel proud of who I am now. I’m a wife, I have a home that I love and a husband who is my world, and not trying to sound overly dramatic, I am alive. That one word means so much to people like me because it is has been a very hard struggle to get to the point where I even wanted to be. I don’t think everyone will understand that, but if you do, feel proud of yourself too, and never give up. You never know what is round the corner.

*hugs*

….. None for a year then 2 come along at once!

I’d like to talk about gardening. I have a love/hate relationship with gardening, I love it when it’s nice and tidy and hate it when it needs attention. I’m not a very energetic person at the best of times, in fact some days I have very little energy courtesy of Dysthymia, but I have lots of enthusiasm, good intentions and of course, no skill

When my back was at its worst, we paid someone to come in and mow the lawn. He did an OK job but then… he sacked us *sob*. Well not really, he had too many work requests and I guess since we were infrequent clients, it made sense to go for a regular contract.

SO… the lawn threatened to turn into a jungle and the nice borders that were there when we moved in had turned into a wildlife sanctuary. We actually liked that but it was getting so the cat could hide in it and we wouldn’t see her. Fun for her I guess, not so much for us trying to get her in at night (I’m a soppy cat mum).

Since I lost 5 stone (so far), my back had been SO much better, I was able to walk without my stick and while it still got grumpy at me, I could do so much more than I could before. Sooo I decided to test it one day and used the lawnmower we’d bought when we first moved in. Yes, we had very good intentions

It went fine, I was stiff and sore the next day but I could manage it (I also lived in fear of mowing over one of the numerous frogs that seem to be attracted to our garden, even tho we don’t have a pond).

The lawn was pretty much under control now, although we seem to have about 8 ant nests dotted around the place. Tony was very happy when he managed to drown one of them out. He should blog about that tho

Then came….. THE BORDER WAR!

I wish I’d taken a picture before I strimmed it all, but this one is after they were strimmed but before we launched our offensive.

We decided that us, being the non-outdoor people that we are, minimal maintenance was the way to go and save us having to do all this again in a year. We bought some lawn edging and Tony use a lawn edging tool to create a trench and bury half the edging to create a nice barrier betwixt lawn and border. In the photo you can see our trusty gardening tool that has been superb for the clearing task. I can’t remember the proper name for it but I call it THE CLAW!

Then came the clearing of all the grass/weeds/ex-plants/small trees that had taken up residence. THE CLAW made it really easy for me to dig everything up without putting too much strain on my back, using my shoulders and legs instead to supply force. The small cache of bird feathers I came across was a bit disturbing mind you, but I’m sure little miss Bubbles could answer a question about that! Here it is at the halfway stage!

And finally, we put down a layer of mulch into the border to help control weeds etc. We plan to put large pots with plants on the mulch rather than plant anything directly in the ground in the hope it will be easier to maintain. That will have to wait a little while tho – in the meantime I am enjoying it looking neat! Bubbles helps us show it off here.

To finish is a pic of Queen Bubbles enjoying the bed/litter tray her minions have created JUST for her

It’s certainly been hard work but I do like seeing it tidy. Now for the OTHER side *groan*

Well I got the courage to go to my gynecology appointment and have my coil (IUD) replaced. 5 years with no periods and no symptoms of PCoS has been utter bliss. Before I had it fitted, every month I suffered stupidly heavy flows, a lot of pain and very bad mood swings. In addition every few months I would also get a week or so of hyper-anxiety. I would be at full tilt the whole time, my mind racing, couldn’t relax, couldn’t sleep unless I was utterly exhausted. It seemed odd that these happened after particularly bad periods. Anyway, after a bit of investigation (and that is another story in itself), I was diagnosed with PCoS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). My hormones were completely out of whack and that is what was causing these hyper-anxiety episodes. They decided to treat it with a Mirena Coil (a progesterone releasing coil) and since it was fitted I haven’t had an episode again. Nor a period… woohooo!

It was very quick this time and it hurt quite a bit but it was worth it and is over fast. The weirdest part is going from a bit of discomfort with the speculum in to full on period pains in 5 seconds flat. After 5 years of not feeling that it was a bit of a shock Anyway, is all done and I can forget about it for another 5 years! I’ll tell the story of when it was first put in another time, was still a very surreal experience!

My friend Lynda came with me and was a trooper, squeezing my hand when I needed it badly… and reminding me to breath lol. *huge hugs* to her and a lot of thanks

*hugs*