Sad SAD Days: Winter Appears To Be Arriving

It’s been a miserable day today. The weather has been awful; really cold, wet and miserable. I changed my wardrobe over this weekend. I moved all my summer clothes and shoes out and put all my winter clothes and shoes/boots in. Looks like I just did this is time by the look of the BBC weather 5 day forecast for London. Autumn has arrived in style. Mind you, it is the Great North Run this Sunday, and I always mark that and the Last Night of the Proms as the end of summer, so it is about time.

I don’t like the rain and I particularly don’t like the cold. I seem to have a totally screwed up internal thermometer. I’m either always too hot, bright pink and sweating like nothing on earth or really cold, with frozen fingers, toes and nose and can’t put enough layers on to warm up. When I was an under-grad in Newcastle I shared with a girl who was really tight with money and avoided putting the heating on at all costs (even if it was snowing outside) and I used to go to bed in fleecey pyjamas, a hoodie over the top, 2 pairs of socks on and then under a duvet with my dressing gown laid over the top of me. At the moment I’m cold even in my parents’ house, and they have the heating on every morning and evening. My Mum keeps whining on about how it’s too hot in here, but my nose feels like ice and my toes are so cold I can barely move them. I think I have something wrong with my circulation, as well as not being able to regulate my own temperature. I put it down to being a premature baby and living in an incubator for the first god knows how many months of my life where the external temperature was monitored for me and therefore my body didn’t have to think about it.

The change to Autumn has got me thinking though about how my depressions always get worse in the winter. Most of my major breakdowns or crisis moments have been reached in the months between November and April and I am determined that I don’t want this winter to be the same. I have talked to GPs in the past about the possibility of having Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) but they have all just shrugged it off as a passing possibility. I know everyone feels a lot lower in the winter but I think I suffer worse than most. It’s a miracle I even passed my final year at uni as most of my lectures were at 9am in the first semester and being in the far flung frozen North meant it got lighter a lot later and invariably if I wanted to get to uni on time it would have meant getting up and walking to the campus in the dark, which I never did, so I just didn’t go to lectures.

I do like wearing winter clothes though. I can indulge my passion for skirts and knne-length boots, for fancy coloured tights, scarves and funky coats. I feel a lot more comfortable in winter clothing, maybe because I can hide the scars more easily but also because under layers of clothing to keep you warm, no one knows how fat or thin you are, whereas in linen trousers and a thin tops every roll of flesh is there on show. I went out onto Kensington High Street this afternoon, dodging the showers, and looked at lovely winter shoes. Most of them are way out of my price league, but I would dearly love a nice pair of wearable heels and by that I mean higher than kitten heels but not so high I fall over. I spent all of earlier this year wearing flat shoes thanks to buggering my foot up and having an operation on it, and although it still twinges at times, I think it is time the tendon got educated into the art of heel wearing. I may venture into central London this weekend and see if there’s any nice cheap shoes.

This is my 99th post and therefore my next post will be the milestone 100. I already know what I am planning as a special treat; it is going to be some photos showing an insight into my life (well, all the other cool kids are at it). However, I go back into hospital tomorrow for another 3 day session of chemo, but I am planning on taking my laptop in and have already taken the photos so the post should be up in the next couple of days.

Luckily the piggy eating of yesterday hasn’t meant that my winter clothes are too small on me, which is my ultimate dread every time the season changes. In fact the scales told me this morning that I had only gained 1lb, but I’m not even sure if that was the case as I didn’t have my glasses on and I’m not very good at reading the dial without them on, it all gets a bit blurry. I’ve eaten less today though and because of the chemo for the rest of the week I’ll spend the next 3 days completely nauseated and off food so in the long run they’ll be no harm. I seriously need to stop being so obsessed with my weight, but it seems to be controlling me. Almost like a compulsion every morning, lunch and evening to stand on the scales and weigh myself. Then I have to weigh myself 3 times to ensure the number is accurate and then I can get on with my day. I am going to bring it up in my appointment with Allison next week as I know something has to be done about it. I mean I’m not fat, my BMI is in the ‘healthy’ range, but that’s only by chance. I know if it were up to me and if I wasn’t living at home then I’d weigh a lot less, and that isn’t a good thought.

Anyway, enough of my moans. I’m off to bed in nice warm PJs and bed socks with my laptop to watch Holby City on iPlayer – my week just gets better and better.

Ruth

Same Old, Same Old: How I Feel Stuck In A Loop

Things feel as if they are on a loop at the moment. The same things keep happening. The same thing keep going wrong. I keep doing and saying the same things, which are detrimental to myself and to others around me.

I need to break this cycle. I know that eating a large bar of Cadbury’s Caramel won’t do that, but it tasted good. I’ve eaten so much today. Been an absolute pig, but resorted to old tricks so the consequences shouldn’t be too severe.

I know that now would be the ideal time to ask for help. I know I am sliding down the slope towards ‘crisis point’ but my GP is on holiday (I tried to get an appointment today) and I can’t face ringing the CMHT and speaking to Allison or the duty worker. Plus, at this hour of night I’d get the crisis team. What joys!

I guess I’ll just cope alone, as per usual, and go and have a night in my pyjamas watching Coronation Street. Classy life I lead, isn’t it?

Ruth

Easy Come, Easy Go: Pushing People Away & Then Regretting It

After my recent bout of honesty I decided to test the water and see how manipulative and callous people think I am. I did this with the self same friend with whom I had been honest the other night and it hasn’t turned out well.

I decided to lie and to tell them that everything I had ever told them had been a lie, from what had happened in my past with my Dad through to being sectioned this year. Their reaction was not as I expected. Possibly because I have tried to push a wedge between myself and this friend before to keep them distanced, but maybe, just maybe because I am a manipulative, scheming cow at heart. They believed me and in no uncertain terms told me to “fuck off”. I have never been very good at taking hints so I rang them and a conversation ensued.

The outcome is that the person I thought of as a friend hung up on me after proving to me that we weren’t really friends at all, more a support network. This was proved by me knowing no basic details about them, like their favourite film or book. In fact I couldn’t even provide an interesting fact about them. I still don’t think that this means that we were not friends. I have people I have known for a long time and consider them friends and I do not know their favourite band or food. I don’t get into conversations like that usually.

They told me that they pity me. They pity me because I admitted to them that I do not have any real friends, instead I have acquaintances. This has been the case for a while. I am scared of letting people get too close so I act off-hand or try and distance them from me. I don’t know why I do this, I had a good friend in the past when I was at school, but she tragically committed suicide. I felt awful when she killed herself, as if I had failed her as a friend because she hadn’t confided in me and I hadn’t listened to her or tried to find out what was going on in her head. From that point on I became very independent and determined that I wouldn’t be reliant on others in my life.

This friend was the one person this year who I had let into my life. I had told them secrets that others never knew. I had laughed with them, cried hysterically with them, sat saying nothing due to paralysing depressions with them, rung them when I ran away from the psych unit, when I wanted to rant at the world, when I wanted to realise there was someone out there who cared, who wanted to talk with me and found me interesting.

I have now lost that person. They hung up on me the other night and I sent them a text to which they haven’t replied. I don’t want to chase them. I sounded desperate enough when we were talking. In fact I turned into a very typical borderline girl who was terrified of abandonment. I spent most of the night crying because I know I have ruined a friendship, and despite what they say I counted the person as a friend, and it was through my manipulative behaviour that I did. I don’t even know why I tried to find out how manipulative they believed I was. Sometimes my actions escape logic, I just know that the consequences are fairly logical.

This friend left me with the piece of advice to “go find some friends” to which they meant people nearby with whom I can talk and find out trivial pieces of information. I tried to find people on Friday night to go out wit, but no one answered my calls or texts. I guess thay had a point to pity me. I am a loner and it is all of my own making.

I don’t see Allison until October 7th and I have no contact with the mental health services until then. I could go and see my GP but I don’t know what I’d say. I avoided self-harming on Thursday night after this all happened, despite wanting to. I am taking the tablets. I am surviving, not particularly living, but surviving. The friend was right, I have a support network that is too small, possibly even non-existent now, but I am notoriously bad for asking for support and when I do, I usually get pushed away until I reach crisis point. I know I need to change my life around but I have no idea how to do so. I guess I need to be honest with the right people, the people who can help me, and not push away the others in my life.

Ruth

Honesty Is The Best Policy: Unless You Are Me Of Course

I was honest with a friend last night about a few things that have been going on recently. I was drugged up on painkillers and sedative antihistamines, plus crying hysterically, so I’m not entirely sure I was convinced I knew what I was saying. That being said, I know what I told them was the exact truth.

Trouble is, the exact truth sounds confused, chaotic, warped, freakish even. I’m now concerned that I have let someone know what I am really like and that they will now see through past the ‘charming glossy exterior’ and into the ‘warped, twisted fuck up’ that lies inside me.

I haven’t told anyone else what I told them, mainly because the conversation hasn’t arisen again, and because I feel such shame at admitting what I told them.

I lie all the time, big things, little things, insignificant things. It’s a part of me. Sometimes it’s as easy as gritting my teeth and saying “I’m OK” when I answer the phone despite being in floods of tears, sometimes it’s saying I’m not suicidal to a mental health professional despite thinking about nothing else. These are lies that don’t, on the whole affect my relationships or the way people perceive me.

The lie(s) I admitted to last night make me out to be a whole different person. One I wasn’t even sure I was, let alone wanted to admit to being. Now I’ve shared that persona with someone else, luckily someone I trust implicitly, but I still want to go back 24 hours and not tell them the truth.

In fact I’d probably like to go back 72 hours and not have to go through the whole situation which lead me into the maze of lying, but I did and now I have to face the consequences.

As Sir Walter Scott wrote (and not Shakespeare as it is frequently attributed to):

“oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive”.

Ruth

Voodoo Doll: Back Home And Not Being Prodded With Needles Anymore

I am alive. Still feel pretty rough but back home.

I was admitted to hospital on Friday with chest pain, hacking cough, shortness of breath and severe tachycardia. Being a cancer patient with a low immune system due to chemo they took it all quite seriously and admitted me. I had a chest x-ray which came back clear (thank goodness) so it wasn’t pneumonia, an ECG, numerous arterial blood gases (very painful, not at the time but the bruise left from having a needle in the radial artery is spectacular), IV fluids to rehydrate me and try and bring my pulse down, on constant oxygen as my saturated oxygen levels were only 90% on arrival and constant observations.

They discharged me on Sunday with the diagnosis of a viral chest infection which has led to pleurisy and pericarditis. I’m on antibiotics to ensure nothing bacterial is growing in me and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories which is the treatment for pericarditis.

However, on Monday night I was coughing badly and couldn’t catch my breath again. In turn I fainted and cracked my head open so ended up in A&E again. It’s been glued and steri-stripped but they decided to look into the cough/breathlessness/chest pain again. This meant another chest x-ray, more bloods, another set of blood gases, another ECG and more sitting around until they determined it wasn’t a blood clot or anything sinister.

Back at home now and determined to stay here for a while. The cough is easing but the chest pain is still sore and occasionally catching my breath is hard. I have bruised wrists from the blood gases, a bruised head from cracking it open and bruised elbows/hands from having blood taken and venflons put in and out. In short, I look distinctly un-sexy.

Ruth

Exhausting Money: My Car Is Turning Out To Be Very Expensive And Other Moans

Somehow I managed to break the bonnet catch on my car on Monday night. Well actually it was quite simple, I pulled it too hard and it snapped off, rendering it useless. Luckily my car was already booked to go into the garage on Tuesday as the rear wiper has an intermittent fault where it stops working, this of course had righted itself by Monday night but I booked the car into the garage yesterday as I needed the bonnet catch fitting.

The car stayed in overnight as the part was due to arrive this morning and after I’d done the bits and pieces I needed to do today I went to pick it up. Unfortunately it needed new bonnet cables, a new bracket and handle. These, plus an hour and a half labour came to £120. I have no idea where I am going to find the money from. My Dad has agreed to pay for the moment, but says I have to pay him back as I was the person who caused it to need to be fixed and it wasn’t a fault of the car’s. I don’t have £120, equally I barely have enough money to put petrol in my car at present, but I feel really bad for breaking it and then it costing so much.

Otherwise today hasn’t been too bad. I had an appointment at Plastics as an outpatient to get the wounds that were sutured under general anaesthetic looked at and the sutures out. They are healing well and there appears to be no longer lasting damage so I have to go back on Friday to get the dressings changed and then that should be the end of that.

I feel horribly ill though. The headache/toothache of yesterday has spread into a pain around my eye socket and down into my cheekbone and back teeth. If I had a blocked nose I would say it was sinusitis, but my nose is as clear as, so it isn’t. I’ve also developed a hacking cough and a sharp pain in the middle of my sternum when I cough or take a deep breath. Hopefully it will ease overnight, or I’ll make an appointment to see someone. This may sound a bit drastic, but apparently it’s the correct form as a chemo patient when your immune system is completely non-existent.

Ruth

Fitting The Mould: Being My Usual Self & Having To Face The Consequences

Yesterday was a mixture of a good day and a bad day. I spent most of the day, from 9.30am until 4.30pm, in hospitals/medical settings and I feel as if I have wasted everyone’s time, but I suppose the outcome has been good, which is all that matters.

What Could Have Been An Absolut Disaster: How Copious Amounts Of Vodka Are Not Good For Me

I got drunk last night, on vodka. Not a little bit tipsy but all out totally drunk. So much so that when I went to bed I had to prop my head up as lying down made me feel sick.

I also had a very bad urge to take the 2 months worth of venlafaxine that I had acquired in my drawer. Luckily I texted a friend, they guessed what was up and rang me and managed to get me to see sense.

Today has been a little better. I have had no alcohol and have even managed to complete some things I have been putting off for ages, namely my ironing. At least I’ll turn up to the CMHT appointment tomorrow with clean, ironed clothes. I’m sure that ticks one of their boxes.

I’m quite nervous about tomorrow. A friend of mine has a mantra for me “tale your time and be honest”. I plan to do both tomorrow but the trouble is, time is limited in a CMHT assessment appointment so everything will be whizzed through and I will feel as if I haven’t been able to cover things in depth. Also I’m not very good at being honest with people I have only just met, and the idea of two people sitting in front of me taking notes just totally freaks me out. I don’t know why but one person assessing me is one thing, but two, well that’s a step too far.

I have to go back to Plastics Outpatients on Wednesday to get my arm looked at. Surprisingly I haven’t picked the dressing off or at the stitches, which is fairly remarkable for me. It seems to be healing, in that it is itching at hurting, and I don’t think it’s infected, so hopefully they’ll be quite happy with the way in which it is progressing.

I have a bad urge to want to get drunk again but I know it would be a bad idea, a very bad idea. I’m just anxious about tomorrow and instead of confronting why I am anxious and what I am going to do about it, I’d prefer to blot it all out. Maybe I’ll have a bath later, although it seems like hard work. There isn’t even any Top Gear on TV tonight to make me laugh. Plus I’m having a crisis about what to wear tomorrow, as per usual. I don’t know why I worry so much about what I wear to mental health appointments, but I do.

In better news, I’ve lost 2 kilos!

Ruth

Figure Watching: How A Set Of Scales Is Running My Life

Things are getting out of hand.

I haven’t self-harmed again but the thoughts are constantly running through my head, as is the thought of running away. You see, I don’t face up to feeling depressed very well, I try to hide from it and running away and self-harming are the key ways I manage this. The thoughts of running away are compounded by the fact that I now own a car that has a full tank of petrol so I could go anywhere. Trouble is I don’t have the courage, or the energy. It’s hard work running away from life and creating a parallel existance, even if it is only for a few days.

After a few months of eating relatively normally, which means eating at least one meal a day, I have reverted to my usual screwed up eating patterns. My Mum was out at the hospital yesterday afternoon and her appointment was late, plus as she had the procedure under sedation she and my Dad were out for a while. My Dad rang me to tell me to get something to eat, but I didn’t fancy the pasta that was in the fridge, I didn’t fancy anything. However, I went through the whole process of boiling water in a pan, heating some of the sauce, putting it in a bowl and then throwing it away. Why? So it looked like I had cooked (pans washed up etc.) and eaten (dirty plate in dishwasher). Today I ate lunch but promptly threw it up shortly afterwards.

I’m back to weighing myself at least twice a day and when I weigh myself I have to stand on the scales at least three times to make sure the reading is accurate. I know this isn’t normal but controlling my weight and trying to slim down makes me feel in control and I have this perverse logic that if I can lose half a stone then I will feel happier with myself. The trouble is, deep down I know that no matter how much weight I lose,  will never be totally happy in my own skin.

I see the CPNs from the CMHT on Monday morning. I doubt I’ll tell them about the eating, everyone seems far too overly concerned with the self-harm at present, especially after the surgery at the beginning of the week. This is the trouble, people get fixated on helping me with one issue and I try desperately hard to work on that issue, however, in the process my other maladaptive coping strategies become worse to compensate for having one less due to trying to overcome it and thus I am still in a mess.

I know I need to help myself. I know I need outside help to do this. I know I need to talk to people openly and honestly to enable this help to materialise.

If I know all this, why can’t I act upon it?

Ruth

Sharing With Strangers: The Support Of Voluntary Organisations

Yesterday was a fairly nothingness day. I went out to see a friend and when I was halfway there she texted me to say there had been a change of plan so she couldn’t make it. I continued to go to where we were to meet, as I already had spent the money on a bus fare, and sat and had a coffee. Whilst I was sitting there my French teacher from senior school walked past and recognised me. She sat down and we had a chat about what I did at uni, what my career plans were and most other things. She told me I didn’t look very well, and for some strange reason I told her I was fine, just a bit tired. I love my old French teacher, we kept in contact until my second year of uni and she was one of the few people at school that knew things at home weren’t very good and therefore that was the reasoning behind my poor behaviour. Despite this I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I have cancer and am undergoing chemotherapy. Not even when she told me that another teacher at the school had gone part-time because she was diagnosed with cancer. I just sat, keeping it to myself and yet knowing that if I had told her she would know exactly the right words to say. In the end she gave me her phone number, told me she was retiring at Christmas and to ring her sometime to meet for a coffee. I gave her my phone number in return and told her that I’d love to meet up with her, which is true.

I got back home to the usual home situation. My Mum was sitting on the sofa watching crappy cookery programmes on TV (although I have discovered Come Dine With Me on Channel 4 is quite amusing) and the dishwasher needed emptying and refilling. I sauntered around sorting out my important bits of paper that I had just thrown on me desk, posted a letter to the car insurers telling them that the car is as it was when made in the factory and posted off a P60 to the Inland Revenue in the hopes of getting my tax back and getting some money. Just as I was about to start making dinner my Dad arrived home, an hour early. This sent me into a bit of a state as then I got confused as to what time it was and such things.

Later on in the evening I crashed badly. I was in floods of tears and was cursing myself for filling the two prescriptions I found lying in a drawer. This meant I had a large amount of tablets in my drawer now and all I could see as the best solution to life at present was to take them. I now have a date set for the trial in court for the attempted rape/sexual assault. I have to get character witnesses to prove I am of good character and at the moment I cannot find anyone who has known me long enough, is not related to me or wants to do it. In the end I rang the gateway worker’s number at the mental health trust to discover it was engaged. I knew the next step was to ring the crisis team, but I don’t like involving the crisis team so I didn’t bother. Instead I rang the Samaritans and was on the phone for about an hour to a lovely bloke who sat and listened to all the nonsense that bubbled out of my mouth. He told me I clearly had a good brain and the common sense to help myself, I just needed to remind myself that I was deserving of help and to keep pushing for people to help me, no matter how much energy it took. Talking it over with someone who didn’t know my history or wasn’t going to patronise me with the whole “you’re borderline, what do you expect?” was very refreshing. After I spoke to him I took a zopiclone and cried myself to sleep.

Today has been equally as dull. My Mum has a hospital appointment this afternoon which my Dad has taken her to. She’s having steroid injections in her foot to suppress some inflammation she has so will be off her feet for at least the weekend. This means that I will now have to do everything in the house as my Dad is being less than useless.

Ruth