Too Busy For My Own Liking May 11, 2008

Sorry that the updates for this blog are getting further and further apart. This is the curse of not having the internet at home and although I have been issued with a laptop at work I am still not sure what sites I can an cannot access via it. Also I don’t think updating my blog with all it’s secrets about me at work would be a very good idea.

On the whole I am loving my job. It is nice to have something to do. At first it was hard and I felt as if I was being ganged up on a bit by the rest of the technicians but I seem now to have proved myself and proved that I can do this job. I do seem to keep having all the extra crap (laminating, colour printing, rearranging computer resources etc) dumped on me which I am sure is outside the remit of a school science lab technician but I keep doing it to please everyone else, even if this does measn that I’m still cutting, glueing and printing well into the early hours of the morning.

I am enjoying it so much that I have applied to complete a Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) for Secondary level general science starting in September at the Institute of Education and Goldsmiths College, both in London. I’m not sure if I really want to live back at home but Newcastle doesn’t have any vacancies anymore as I have left it really late to apply, and it is only a year course so I’m sure that I’ll manage.

I’m not sure if I should be making any plans for September yet. I got my plaster cast off on Tuesday which is lovely because as the weather now turns warmer I am not stuck with a fibreglass heat enduring thing round my leg. However, now that the cast is off and the foot appears to be healing, even if the orthopaedic surgeon did have a bit of a go at me over the fact that the scar wasn’t as neat as he thought it should be (not my fault - for once I couldn’t pick and stratch and interfere with it as it was in a cast) we have to turn to the more pressing nature of the fact that the tumour is still in my tibia. They took another x-ray on Tuesday and compared it with the pre-op and post-op x-rays and with the MRI scan I had back in February. The tumour has grown, quite significantly and they are now concerned about it.

A few months ago they told me that they were 90% certain that it was benign, although as the boyfriend said, that always left a 1 in 10 chance. They did a biopsy which showed an abnormality so they did another one which proved inconclusive, because of this they decided to watch and wait and treat the injury first. Now it has grown quite significantly they are worried that it is quite aggressive.

They even mentioned the C word and were talking about possible treatment options. These range from amputation, through to removed the tumour and completing a bone graft or inserting a metal rod to support the bone (the tumour is now occupying about 35% of the bone space in my tibia), through to drug treatment if it does turn out to be malignant, through to watching and waiting. I’m not good at coping with the unknown and this is one of the biggest unknowns I have ever had to face.

I have an appointment with the North of England Bone and Soft Tissue Tumour Service people on Wednesday. There I will see a nurse specialist and another orthopaedic surgeon to see what is the best way to progress. I will have some more tests, including a bone scan and be booked in for another biopsy, possibly an open biopsy, and undergo another MRI scan. As the boyfriend said earlier in the week, it never rains but it pours!

Otherwise things are OK. I have been preoccupied and nearly on the verge of tears with the above and on Wednesday morning I nearly didn’t go into work, but I did eventually, but then went to A&E straight afterwards after cutting myself. The doctor who treated me tried to be kind and sympathetic but acknowledged it was a stressful and worrying time for me and if I needed to cut then I should get angry with myself for doing it. She gave me the basic talk on harm minimisation and then steri-stripped me up, stuck some dermabond on top and let me go. She did ask if I wanted to see the Deliberate Self Harm Team but I said there wasn’t any point and she agreed saying that they probably wouldn’t see me as there is a clear stressor for the event. I also saw C (my psychiatrist) on Friday who said she was glad that I was panicking because if I was calm then she would have been worried and that it is a great improvement on a few months ago that I actually care about my life and my future.

It’s been glorious weather and I actually braved Newcastle city centre in a t-shirt and knee length skirt yesterday. I got some odd looks and some stares but I don’t care anymore. I also went for a mooch round Leazes Park where I bumped into one of my named nurses from when I was on the section and her little girl who were feeding ducks. I also got told that I was ‘well cool’ by a group of wannabe emos who were sitting and smoking. One of them made me sad as she stared at my scars and told me that she was ‘well impressed with them’, as I looked at her she had faint lines all over her arms. I really wish self-harm wasn’t seen as the cool thing to do, it makes me angry and sad and scared that people are doing it to fit in. Of course it is a topic that makes me agry and sad and scared anyway, but the idea of teenagers damaging their body permanently just to fit into a social circle distresses me somewhat.

Ruth

5 x 5 meme May 5, 2008

Sorry this has talen me so long… but better late than never

I got tagged.

5 Things Found In Your Bag

1. My mobile phone which is far too old and the battery life is failing rapidly but I love it. I will however, be trying to get a new old this summer when I am due an upgrade.
2. My Radley purse which was a birthday present from my sister last year.
3. A nail file just in case I break a nail or something.
4. My lip balm.
5. A pack of Marlboro Menthols and a lighter

5 Favorite Things In Your Room

1. Dougal, my white sugar cube shaped laptop with the attitude of his namesake.
2. My hair straighteners.
3. My bed.
4. My fairy lights that are strung from the ceiling. 
5. My filofax.

5 Things You Have Always Wanted To Do

1. Learn to dance the tango in Buenos Aires.
2. Have a PhD degree.
3. Learn to speak Spanish fluently.
4. Travel every mainland US state by Greyhound bus.
5. This is cliched but learn to be happy and comfortable in my own skin.

5 Things You Are Currently Into

1. Fondant Fancies.
2. Fruit tea.
3. Waking The Dead.
4. The boyfriend.
5. My Pandora bracelet.

5 People You Want To Tag

I’m so late doing this that I’m not going to bother tagging anyone as I think everyone has done it.

Search Terms April 18, 2008

I have decided to compile a post incorporating some search terms that have been used to find this blogs and my thoughts, comments and responses to them.

Admitting self to mental hospital

This is bloody hard to do. Somehow the psychiatric services know when you want to be admitted and do everything in their power to ensure you aren’t. However, when the last thing you could ever want to do is be admitted then they suggest admission straight up. In practice most places now have Crisis Resolution Teams, or Home Treatment Teams, to cut down on the number of people admitted because they don’t have the beds, which isn’t what the government will tell you, they’ll say it’s because service users (sic) - I hate that phrase - prefer to be treated at home. However, this search term proves that sometimes people want to be admitted.

Is tramacet used to keep patients quiet?

Tramacet is rarely prescribed as a drug as a first-line treatment, it is usually only prescribed a long way down the line. This is because it is expensive to the NHS as a compound and the individual ingredients (paracetamol and tramadol) are much cheaper to prescribe as individual generics. I could not say if it is used to placate patients. It is a opiate (tramadol) and this tends to have a calming and sedative effect on the majority of people so it could have the benefit of quietening disruptive patients. However, I think that haloperidol is probably better at doing this and tramacet wouldn’t be used for fear of liver damage due to the paracetamol found in the compound.

Tubigrip A&E don’t

A&E don’t tubigrip patients? Well it probably costs too much money. When I broke my big toe at uni I got told by A&E that they weren’t going to give me crutches as I was a student and I’d only run off with them. Some ankle/foot/wrist/elbow injuries aren’t treated with tubigrips anymore. Things like bone chips are often treated by leaving the swelling to come out and then apply a crepe bandageto stabilise. The problem with tubigrip is that when a joint is swollen it’s difficult to get the right size. Maybe you meant don’t go to A&E for a tubigrip which is particularly sound advice asmost major pharmacies, supermarkets and chain shops will sell a tubigrip so you don’t need to bother some poor harassed junior doctor for a piece of elasticated bandage.

How to not be clumsy

When someone has the answer to this question I will be eternally delighted. I guess look where you are going, don’t leave things lying around and remove all elements of danger are tactics that I have used. However, I find accepting your clumsiness and getting used to the bruises is a good plan too.

Throw yourself under Tube train

Don’t do this. I don’t advocate it. It’s very messy, extremely traumatic for the driver, annoying for the Tube passengers and disrupts the line for a while whilst they have to fish you out. Plus the tracks are electrocuted so if the impact of the train doesn’t get you then you will be frazzled, and even that might not work. In short, not a good plan. I’m not pro-suicide, I’m pro-choice but I do think if you are going to kill yourself that do something that doesn’t directly involve other people in your decision.

Psych ward knitting competition

I doubt this would be allowed as knitting needles could be seen as either a ’sharp’ or ‘lethal weapon’. Anyway I can’t knit. Never have been able to, have tried to learn but get bored. If I was on a psych ward though and there was a knitting competition the ‘click-click-clackety-clackety-clack’ of the needles would drive me insane and I’d probably just go around making bad references to Madame Defarge.

Unusual self harm

This begs the question, is there such a thing as usual self-harm? I mean surely everyone’s self-harm is personal and tailored to their own specific needs, wants and requirements. I know people who won’t self-harm if they don’t have an entire first-aid kit. I know people who won’t self-harm if they can’t make the scars symmetrical or identical. I know people who don’t give a damn about those things but can only use a razor. I know people who will use anything to inflict any kind of damage onto themselves in any location.

Ruth

Blogroll Update April 17, 2008

I was going to write a post today about my drug (mis)use, but it needs careful planning so expect it later on either today or tomorrow.

However, I have updated the blogroll at the side of the blog to accommodate some newcomers to this blog, particularly those who have posted comments as it seems only fair.

Ruth

Edit: Whilst waiting for my own post on the subject may I suggest that you check out this post on Experimental Chimp’s blog which makes perfect sense and sums up my opinions perfectly.

But I Don’t Think That’s A Very Good Idea April 16, 2008

Or why psychiatrists should listen carefully to their patient’s requests.

I saw a CPN and psychiatrist from the mental health NHS trust where my parents live this afternoon. This is the third time I have had contact with this particular trust this week.

The first time was on Sunday when I suddenly realised that having stopped taking my meds a few days earlier was a really bad idea after I started hearing a voice that was telling me derogatory things and encouraging me to cut myself and seeing things. I called the Crisis Team who sent someone out to see me, gave me a script for a few days worth of meds and arranged for me to be visited on Monday. Without forgetting of course to tell me that stopping taking my meds when I am prone to lability of moods and psychotic episodes was a “very stupid move” and would only be done by “a very silly girl”.

The CPN I saw on Monday was nice enough, in fact too nice enough. She had nothing about her that I could dislike, even though for some bizarre reason I really really wanted to dislike her. I told her that I haven’t been able to sleep since the beginning of February and I am having very bad nightmares and flashbacks about what happened, particularly at night. I told her that I had spent 5 hours on the phone to my boyfriend the day before sobbing my heart out about how much the rape has affected me and how I am trying to put a brave face on life but I can’t do it for much longer. She just shrugged, told me that nightmares and flashbacks were normal after a traumatic event and I could have some lorazepam if I thought that would do any good and to double the dose of quetiapine. She said she would contact Northumberland, Tyne & Wear NHS to get my notes from my most recent couple of inpatient stays faxed down to them and arrange for a full assessment to be conducted on Wednesday (i.e. today).

Yesterday wasn’t too bad on the whole. I did very little during the day and was absolutely shattered. By 2pm I just wanted to sleep so I took the entire daily allowance of tramacet and a few codeine on top for good measure and slept for a good 5 hours. I then woke up and wanted to go back to sleep again so I sent the boyfriend what could probably be construed as a somewhat alarming text and planned to take some Nytol, codeine, tramacet and co-codamol and snooze. I decided against it in the end and spoke to him at about 11pm last night when he was concerned for me and at 4am this morning when I rang him in a complete state after not being able to even close my eyes without panicking, let alone sleep.

I also saw the acute pain management people at the Chelsea & Westminster yesterday in relation to the almost constant pain I suffer through having ankylosing spondylitis and being hypermobile. It was quite a worthwhile visit as the dose of gabapentin I take (for neuropathic pain) has been doubled, I am now taking diclofenac regularly with co-codamol or tramacet to take interchangeably when the pain worsens and have some codeine to top all that off with if the pain becomes totally acute. My GP here in London sent a referral off to a rheumatologist at University College Hospital who specialises in hypermobility as she thinks it is worse than everyone first thought, but the Chelsea & Westminster told me that he is a very busy man and so have cancelled that referral and sent one off to the rheumatology department in Newcastle as I move up there on Saturday.

Today’s appointment with the psychiatrist and CPN was just stupid. Neither of them had to listen to anything I had to say. The psychiatrist decided that the quetiapine wasn’t working and couldn’t see why I had been prescribed that as a first line treatment so has moved me onto olanzapine, must to my utter disgust. I tried to protest the swop as I don’t want to take olanzapine, the concept of a drug that is pretty much guaranteed to cause weight gain scares the freaking hell out of me. When I told him this, he asked me which I thought was more important; my mind and sanity or my figure. I tried to explain that I fall into the bulimic category and was liable to probably become extremely non-compliant with the medication at the first sign of weight gain, but he just told me to stop being melodramatic and threatening him. He also prescribed lorazepam to be taken at night to try and calm me down and to help me get some sleep.

I am insensed that my views have not been taken into consideration. Luckily I am seeing C (the psychiatrist I was under when I was an inpatient in Newcastle) on Tuesday afternoon so will discuss it through with her then. I can’t see that she is going to be too pleased that I have be put on a drug, without her knowledge, that I am not happy about and quite willingly not going to take to avoid the side effects. We’ll wait and see if the proverbial hits the fan next week.

Ruth

Pavement Pounding April 14, 2008

Congratulations to Golda, Ellie, Sarah, Jake and Eli who all ran the London Marathon yesterday in aid of  Cancer Research UK, Shelter, Tommy’s, Great Ormond Street Hospital and RNLI respectively.

They did brilliantly - I could never run 26.2 miles!

Ruth

The Words You Never Really Wanted To Say April 11, 2008

This post has been being formed in my head for a while. I’ve been meaning to write it for a while as well, but for one reason or another I always found something better to be doing, but now I am doing it.

Plummeting Into A Large Black Hole April 6, 2008

I was relatively cheerful, upbeat and optimistic yesterday. However, sometime around 7.30pm last night that changed. There was no trigger, no apparent cause, nothing happened, nothing changed, no one said anything to me and I hadn’t done anything. I was sitting watching a repeat of ‘The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency’ which I had downloaded onto BBC iPlayer a while ago when half way through I felt my mood change. I decided to watch to the end of the programme as it was quite sweet and uplifting the first time around and I thought it might make me feel better, but it didn’t.

When it finished I literally threw my laptop to the end of the bed, shuffled to the bathroom to get a large glass of water and sat back down on my bed in tears. It then dawned on me that I wanted to do myself some serious damage, and I didn’t neccessarily mean suicidal damage, but there was that ambivalence over if the damage was enough to kill me, would I really care?

I threw the glass of water over my extension lead, making sure water got into the sockets, I then unwrapped a paper clip and pushed one end deep into the earth pin (thus ensuring the appliance earthed through me) and pushed my light plug into the socket. I then held onto the paperclip and switched then light on and…

Nothing. A small electric shock and the lights went out. I managed to fuse the upstairs of the house and wreck my extension lead but did no damage to myself. I then rang the boyfriend, with whom I has spent about 2 and half hours on the phone to prevously that day in a cheerful mood, and tried to convince him that I was fine, until my voice wobbled and I started to cry. He asked me what was wrong, I had to tell him I didn’t know. He asked about stressors and triggers and all the normal things you would associate with such a mood swing, but there wasn’t anything. He seemed worried, scared and confused that someone’s mood could suddenly drop so low with no warning and no reason. I sat on the phone sobbing, interspersing the crying with some melodramatic phrase about how he shouldn’t stick around because I would only hurt him, or the words “I need to cut”.

He kept telling me that he wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t need to cut because rationally it wouldn’t make anything better and it wouldn’t solve anything. I then said that I was just being a melodramatic borderline case, which he said he didn’t think I was being. I said that no one ever believes me when I say my mood can change so fast and I can do really stupid, dangerous things; like trying to electricute myself, in a nano second.

It’s true though. Doctors and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists all sit there looking at me as if I am exaggerating life when I say I can plunge from high to low, or OK to low with no warning and once there I can go from crying hysterically to laughing hysterically faster than it takes to pour a drink. I think that they think I am melodramatic and trying to make some kid of point that there is something wrong with me, but I make it seem worse as if in some way that will get me treated. I’m not though. It is true, and the boyfriend can now vouch for me (well you know what I mean). I want this moodiness under control, and I don’t just want to be told to up the dose of lamotrigine or venlafaxine, or both. Or to have some minor tranquilliser added into the equation to take the edge off life. I still want to be able to feel and to enjoy life, just maybe on one level, not many.

I didn’t cut in the end. I took my meds and some pain killers for my foot and went to sleep. I maybe took a few more tramacet than I should have done but I got 9 hours of complete zombie sleep. I didn’t dream, I didn’t wake, I don’t remember any of it. That was exactly what I wanted. I don’t know how I feel today; down still but nowhere near as bad as I was 15 hours ago.

I can’t keep track of myself anymore and it’s scaring me.

Ruth

It’s Been A Funny Old Week April 5, 2008

I was back in Newcastle this week, which is why I’ve been so very, very quiet. I have been staying with a friend who was worth her weight in gold when it came to picking me up from the airport.

So I had my stitches taken out of my foot on Tuesday and the old cast removed and a new one put on. My foot is in the neutral position now, rather than inverted and I can start to partial weight bear, which is a god send. 5 weeks of being in this cast and then we’ll see. Probably some kind of splint or orthotic put in a shoe, probably still on crutches for a bit. It all seems to be healing rather well and the sutures came out beautifully, were put in exceptionally neatly and the wound seems to have healed nicely.

I have managed to find myself some gainful employment in Newcastle as a science lab technician in a school. My friend is a Biology teacher in the same school and found me the job. It’s only a maternity cover for the next academic term, but it is something to do and it gives me some money to play with and a purpose in life. However, my search for a flat in Newcastle is not going as well. Perhaps it is my strict criteria at present - ground floor or if not then it has to have a lift. I can’t do stairs very well at present.

Some other crap things have happened, but I’ll talk about those later. I am now back in London and my sister is over from Gibraltar ’till Sunday. She wants to go and see ‘Horton Hears A Who’ so I might go with her, especially if she pays.

Ruth

Headfuckery March 30, 2008

I feel crap today and what is more I feel guilty for feeling crap. I had a lovely, long, surprised phone conversation with the boyfriend last night. When I say surprised, this is because he was going out with friends and I knew he wouldn’t be back until late, so I didn’t expect a phonecall, however, his evening finished earlier than planned so he rang me. Our conversation made me feel amazing, and special, and very very loved and this is why I feel so bad that my mood has dipped so low today. After a nearly 2 hour conversation with someone telling me how much they love me and how much I mean to them and how special I am, in the early hours of this morning, and spending most of the night awake thinking wonderful thoughts, I did not expect to feel like this less than 12 hours later.

I hate this fucking disease. I hate all the fucking labels I have. I hate the fact that I can swing from one extreme to the other in the blink of an eye, with absolutely no warning and no trigger. I hate the fact that I have to swallow god-knows how many tablets every morning and evening just to put me on this level of stability, which let’s face it, isn’t exactly stable. I hate that I have had to quit my MSc and therefore have lost my funding and place for the subsequent PhD because of it. I hate the fact that my tutor emailed me the other day begging with me, almost pleading, for me to reconsider my options when it came to my university course and was telling me that we all have ‘bad spells’ and maybe getting back into academia would help. Plus apparently I was one of the best PhD studentship researchers he had come across. He sent me details of a PhD studentship the Health Protection Agency are advertising for, but I can’t apply. I can never apply for a post-graduate course again. It was meant to be my fresh start after a whole pile of shit on my under-graduate degree. I was meant to enjoy it, and have fun, and feel like it was my calling. Not dip out, have numerous breakdowns and feel like a complete failure.

Something I really don’t want to face has been brought forwards from 10 April to 3 April. I don’t want to go into too many details about what thi sis until it has happened and I know how it is going to proceed but needless to say a lot hangs on the outcome. When I say a lot I don’t mean my future, well I guess in essence I do because my emotional state depends entirely on the decision and this will affect how easy it is for me to pick my life up and move on in the next few months.

The mother is being lovely, as always. She is very practical, pragmatic and logical. When something awful happens, she doesn’t go into a state of blind panic, like I do, but she sits down calmly and works out the order in which she needs to deal with things to make things better again. I wish I could be more like her, but I’m not. She is a realist, she works on what has happened and what needs to happen and how this can happen. I am an idealist, I freak out at what has happened, sit and daydream about how much better things would have been if it hadn’t happened, stick my head in the sand in the hopes that if I ignore what has happened then it will disappear and then a bit later realise I have to deal with it but have no bloody clue how to go about it.

I hate my body. I hate the fact it bends so much and because of this hurts. At the moment I don’t know which hurts most… my ankle (which is healing and thank god I have a cast on it because I have this bad, bad urge to itch and pull at the sutures), my back (which hurts from time to time - a side effect of ankylosing spondylitis), my joints (I have hypermobility syndrome, or Ehlers Danlos III, or the ability to be a contortion artist when I choose) or my head.

I am cracking up, both physically and mentally, and there is a large part of me which wonders whether it is actually worth trying to glue me back together again.

Ruth