Category Archives: Other General Health

It’s About To Begin

This past Thursday I got the letter I had been waiting for from the local CMHT. Or at least I thought I had. On first glance it was all well and good they wanted me to phone up and make an appointment. Good  thought, then I went back over the letter and read it properly (damn my scan reading abilities.)

They wanted me to make an appointment to see “what they could do for me.” The penny then dropped for me that they know nothing about me and have obviously NOT sent for my notes from up north. So my initial fears of not getting seen by anyone properly till Easter is actually coming to fruition.

So I phoned them, they seemed very nice on the phone. I think all CMHT’s train their receptionists to be uber nice and to instil a sense of calm in patients. When i finally got put through to someone to make the appointment, I was put through to the access team. Now I don’t remember what it was really like when I first got referred to the Corby CMHT. Maybe I went through their Access team and didn’t quite realise it, but having to explain myself again after all these years is a daunting prospect. My illness has changed so much of the past 7 years that it is hard to know where to start.

I have my Care Plan from the last psych I saw but it’s a two page brief that doesn’t really say a lot about me and my Bipolar, just how I was on that particular day in that given three month period between appointments. I never think that the care plan that was sent out after each appointment was much use… now they are all I have to support my illness. Scary Eh? I guess I need to sit down and actually think of all the components of my illness and write them down so as I am not sat there umming and arring over each question. I hate making lists though… it makes it all seem so forced and premeditated. But if it helps then that’s what I need to do.

I am still waking up with the really bad lower back ache and am having to pop pain pills the first thing I do before I even have a cigarette or make a coffee. I hate pain and all that comes with it. I don’t have a real clue what’s causing it. I know I alluded to it being linked to my smoking and I will quit and then see if that helps. I know it can’t be my weight as I am still losing with the Byetta (diabetes drug.) I am going to flip the mattress on the bed today to see if that helps any.

*Jump forward a few days, It’s now Wednesday*

I never did get around to flipping the mattress and my sleep has been shot to shit ever since. I didn’t sleep at all last night and I only managed to get three hours this afternoon. I am wiped out, I just feel like sleeping for a week. I know I couldn’t do that but if just for once I could go to bed and not worry about waking up in pain it would be nice.

My mood has been all over the place. Monday I couldn’t do anything for the voices in my head screaming. One part of me felt like going out with Mum and Linda but the head said NO!. I wouldn’t have been able to handle the paranoia that would have gone with it. I haven’t had that much paranoia since I moved down here, so it was a little disconcerting.

This post is so bitty and bobby I should probably scratch it, but I have done that with about ten posts over the past couple of weeks so I am just going to post this sight unseen and pray that it makes sense to some one.

Until Next Time…

I Can See

I had a crappy nights sleep last night. It wasn’t due to being excited, but it could have had something to do with sleeping for over 8 hours during the day yesterday. I was up at 6am this morning and relatively pain free so I crashed out on the couch rather than sit around staring at the computer again. When I say pain free, I mean that for the past couple of weeks when I wake up in the morning I have an awful pain in my lower back and moving cuts off my ability to breathe. I have put this down to a possible weight gain or that it’s time to quit smoking and get rid of the junk in my lungs. I think 20 years smoking is more than enough. I am bored by it all anyway… so to that end when I have run out of tobacco I will try and quit…. cold turkey.

This may change depending on what happens when I run out.

So, yeah… I got my new glasses today. I went into town with Linda as she had a group meeting at the job centre this morning. I didn’t quite realise that I would be left to my own devices for quite so long. My anxiety levels went through the roof after I left the opticians. I was suddenly very exposed and I felt everyone was watching me. The CBT side of my head said

“don’t be silly”

The voices in my head were saying..

“There gonna catch you, You’re gonna get busted HIDE FATBOY HIDE”

Needless to say the voices won over any CBT solutions I had ever learned. I kind of wish that the react-a-lite lenses in my glasses were more sensitive so they could have hidden my eyes and I could have hidden away behind the darkened lenses. Not that it would have helped much. My glasses are only so big.

I wrote in my last post that I would post a picture of them. I tried quite a few times to get a good picture of me wearing the but they all look like a fat headed idiot wearing some rather fetching glasses. So I scrapped all of them and plonked them onto my printer and took this picture:

My New Goggles

Apparently the technical term for these glasses are skull grippers… at least that’s what the nice lady in Specsavers called them. So I have skull Gripper glasses, just as long as they don’t grip as tight as the last pair that left my head with tram lines that a large gauge train could have run down. Here is a slice of me wearing them, I had to cut the rest of my face out… this is a respectable website… I save the horror for Stumpfinger.

Me with the Glasses On

My mood hasn’t improved greatly. I think I tried to escape it all yesterday by sleeping and I admit that I did go back to bed for a while when I got home from town. Not that it helped much as I still feel stressed and on edge.  I am doing my level best at trying to pull myself out of this funk. but it’s a sticky bugger and it seems to want to stick around. It seems that there is a lot of depression around the Mentally Interesting Blogosphere. Mine is by no means as bad as some that I have read and my heart goes out to anyone that is struggling with getting through each day. I just hope that once Spring starts to show it’s little head through the grey murky clouds, things will start to improve for people, It’s been no real Winter here. We had the snow before Christmas that virtually ground the country to a halt and ever since we have had a few cold days and a shit load of rain. It seems to have rained virtually every day around here for the past two weeks, and not the heavy pounding rain it’s that pissy little dribbles of rain that soak you to the skin and leave you chilled. At least with the heavy rain you get wet and that’s that, this stuff is like acid and burns through every layer of clothing you are wearing.

Oh well I seem to have sunk as low as an English Man can writing on a blog… I started talking about the weather… and moaning about it at that. I think it’s time for me to go and fix Dinner… Spag Bol tonight.

Until Next Time…

Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Well it’s not really lazy.. but it is Sunday and It is the afternoon. I guess in a vague sort of way it could be classed as lazy as I don’t have anything to do and am just sat here staring blankly at the screen. I do have stuff I could do. I have work on my Stumpfinger rebuild I could be doing but I have no motivation to do it.

The end of this week has been stressful, and kind of hard to handle. I missed two lots of morning medication this week and that has sent me on a bit of a downward spiral. Everything has made me testy and an argument with my brother didn’t help matters. I have been sat in my little corner of the dining room all alone for the majority of the weekend. It’s not healthy I know but the isolation is the only thing that stops me from getting so riled up I take it out on everyone else.

I really am starting to hate my life. I am sick and tired of feeling beaten up all the time. The point of life is becoming more and more tenuous. I am no big shot, my childhood dreams have come and gone in a haze of pharmaceutical pill popping. I am no longer able to function for a full day without needing a nap to get me through until bed time. How is that a life. How is that nothing but a bare bones existence.  This move was supposed to be a big change for everyone. So far it’s been a fucking nightmare to live through. I am still paranoid about leaving the house… alone or with people. I am running out of excuses to carry on. Nothing seems to be falling right. It’s all so fucking hard. I really wish there was an easy out, but unfortunately it all includes pain for one person or another. So I am stuck with choosing life… for now.

To make matters worse I still haven’t heard anything from the CMHT yet. Linda pho9ned the Doctor’s surgery last week and was told that the referral letter was only sent out on the 28th of January. So they must be really busy as It’s now the 20th of February and I still haven’t heard a peep from them. If I hear nothing from them in the next few days I will ring the number that is on the Doctors handy leaflet that we were given when we registered with the surgery. To be honest this isn’t filling me with much hope that these people are going top be as helpful as the Corby CMHT were. I guess we will just have to wait and see. If my mood doesn’t pick up i’ll need the crisis team before I see anyone. Such a fucking mess.

In Other distracting news:

I finally got a phone point put into the dining room so I can have the internet router in here and I don’t have to rely on the wireless card that was causing no end of static problems when I played music on the computer. Considering that I spend most of my time here at the computer having decent sounding music and radio is of most importance and the past few weeks with all the static has been most difficult. If anyone else needs a phone point installing I suggest you avoid asking B.T. to do it. Before we moved in the quoted £128 after Christmas and now we have been moved in they quoted £200. I did a quick search on yell.com and that gave me a wealth of choices in the local area. So I phoned a few and the best deal I got was with a local company who did it for £78 inc VAT. Granted they had to postpone by a day but they were good to their word as to when the rescheduled guy would be here, almost to the minute. Drills blaring at 8am aint a barrel of fun, I am sure my neighbours hate me for that. But hey I now have a phone line next to the computer and my speeds have never been faster, here or back in Corby.

I went for an eye test on Wednesday. I thought I only needed new glasses as the ones I had bought late last year were digging into the side of my head and making it very uncomfortable to wear them. We couldn’t find my glasses prescription so I went ahead and had another eye test and my eyes had only changed slightly since I last had them done so I get a new prescription and two new pairs of glasses. Hopefully these will be more comfortable. The main pair I ordered are lightweight and are plenty wide enough so as not to dig in and the second spare pair are the same size and should be OK if anything should go wrong with my main pair. I am not a fashion victim and don’t go for the designer ranges as… well basically… they are either too small (same with clothes) or too expensive (again the same with clothes.) I get the new one next Wednesday. Will maybe if you’re really unlucky I’ll post pics of them when I get them.

That’s it from me for this time.

Until Next Time…

Hello Lungs

Here I am sat writing again at close to 3am because of my health. This time I have a killer cough that woke me up at 2am last night and it wasn’t until I took Night Nurse to ease the cough that I got any sleep. I’d take some more tonight but I have to be up in 5 hours to get ready to go to a Diabetes check up at my Doctors surgery. I pretty much know what is going to be said there as I had my Byetta check up on Tuesday and I know that my H-test score is down by 1 point to just over 9 which is what the specialist wanted when I started on the injections, but I am not losing weight fast enough for my liking. I feel like I have lost more weight that the scales actually show me losing. I had only lost 4 pounds in the past two months. I was hoping for at least half a stone in that time. I guess it just means I am going to have to start doing something physical on a regular basis that doesn’t just involve me getting up from in front of the computer and going to make a coffee..yaboosucks.

I am still having major problems with my moods. I seem to be constantly down and miserable. I caught myself starting to scratch my arm yesterday and stopped myself before I did any damage but it was scary that my head was in that harming place. It seems that any little thing can set me off and when something kind of large happens that’s it for the foreseeable future. Modesty forbids me in relating what happened this time. This blog is too open for me to go into details but needless to say I was let down and it hurt a lot. I find that the drugs are not helping but I see no possible help in changing them. I seem to have exhausted my Pdoc’s casebook and although he does tweak what I am on he is reluctant to change anything or try something new. It’s always the same comment. I can’t take one drug because I have Diabetes and all the drugs I haven’t tried and would most likely do me more good mentally are bad for my weight gain (which as I have mentioned before is non existent. I have gained a pound of weight in over 18 months).
I would love to try Seroquel as everywhere I turn in the Madosphere I hear good things about it. It has some nasty side effects like weight gain and over sedating, but then again I haven’t had any problems with any other drug in regards to sedation. The only one that gives me any respite from the Insomnia is Zopiclone, but that’s designed to do that so it doesn’t count. If I could start again with my drugs I would like to be as aggressive as possible to start with and not have to go into the long battle like I am doing at the moment with the massive amount of drugs I am taking at the moment.

Daily Pills

This is a pretty crappy shot of my daily pill intake

One of these days I will properly list what I am on so I have a record of what i take and don’t have to rely on Linda to make up my pills each week. God knows what I would do without her. I’d have to make up my own pills which would lead to many mistakes which would lead to missed doses which in turn would lead to many more crazy attacks which in turn would lead to my probably ending up in hospital or jail which ever caught me first. So ya see my wife is a godsend and without her I am much less of a man.

Oh well I have rambled on enough. I may just take myself off to bed for a couple of hours so I don’t look like a complete zombie when I get to the Doctors.

Until Next Time…

I know how the Wicked Witch felt

It’s seems that Summer has finally arrived and I fucking hate it, hate it with a passion. I hate to feel over heated all the time to have my arms stick to my sides when I take of my shirt. The only positives of the heat is….. oh wait there are NO fucking positives.

On to other non moany stuff, it’s been a strange week around here. I have been playing Florence Nightingale… yes that’s right folks I have been prancing around in a nurse outfit and getting my jollies off. No seriously. Linda had surgery on her shoulder this week and has been rendered almost incapable of doing anything that requires two hands. So I have been running around doing my best to make sure she is comfortable. It’s no mean feat when she is such an independent person who thinks she is Supergirl and can do shit for herself. As the days go by she is getting more use back in her arm and consequently more more use she gets the more pain she is in. So my work won’t be done for a couple more weeks (at least until she gets her stitches out in 10 days time.

Oh Yeah… some one is having a Bar-B-Q outside my fucking window and the smells are driving me nuts. It’s a smell that reminds me of better days. This particular smell reminds me of August 19th 1999 when i went to see Bon Jovi at the Milton Keynes Bowl. We stopped at a pub and they had Bar-B-Q food for sale there and damn if it didn’t smell and taste the best food I had ever eaten. It’s little memories like that that make a First Concert experience special and unforgettable.

Health wise for me… I am doing OK I suppose. My depression is being forced to the back of my mind as I have so much on my mind to keep Linda from doing more damage to herself. But it’s there and at 4am when I am waiting for Linda to need help out of bed or an escort downstairs so she can have a smoke, the blues rear their ugly heads and not much can shift it until I am called into action again. I am tired a lot of the time and I must admit that I got up at 7am this morning and waited for Mum to come down and I went back to bed and didn’t surface again till 13.30 and I no have a heat headache because a, I slept to long and b, it’s frikken hot here

Oh well it’s Doctor Who time.. time to wake the troops for a trip to see Vincent Van Gogh and some crazy alien of the week.

Stay cool and Stay safe

Until Next Time…

The Hangover

(As a disclaimer… I saw the phrase Zopiclone Hangover either on Twitter or a Blog this morning whilst being in the middle of a Zopiclone Hangover. I can’t attribute exactly the person who said it but if you read this and recognise your words… thanks for the inspiration.)

I go in spurts of needing to take Zopiclone. I take it for about a week and then I try and sleep without it. I think I have reached the point where I need to take a break from the drug. Personally for me I think it builds up in my system and leads to a point where I can spend a whole day in bed in actual deep sleep. It’s one of these trigger things I have noticed.

Zopiclone was prescribed for me on an as needed basis. I have serious bouts of insomnia where I can go days on VERY little sleep and in the end I end up depressed and so miserable and the hallucinations get to a point where I would do anything to shut them up and just die. That’s the point I know I should have been taking the big Z for a few days already. I usually manage to take it for about a week to 10 days a month and I get evened out and am sorted for the same type of period.

When I get to the breaking point after taking it I get the worst drug induced hangovers. I am not a drinker any more but I used to be and I never suffered that much with Alcoholic Hangovers. I felt a bit rough if I had really tied one one but I was generally pretty lucky not to suffer to much. I think it helped that I was a big fella and I had a lot of system to mess up and when I was drinking I was usually working in the theatre at the same time so I had the incentive to be on the top of my game. I was also gifted with a sense of knowing when to give up. I had my little tell of when enough Alcohol had been drunk… My Nose Went NUMB. I knew it was time to stop when the old schnozz went fuzzy wuzzy.

The Zopiclone Hangovers are much worse. They don’t let me get out of bed to get a drink of water, they tie me to the bed until I hurt. Maybe it’s because my bed is old and maybe the mattress needs turning but I ache in my back and stomach muscles most hangover mornings. I think the drug knocks me out so far that I find the worlds most uncomfortable sleeping position and stay there until my body decides it’s time to move. I am not even sure a Tempura Memory foam mattress would help at this point. Well anyway I have reached my limit for taking the drug at the moment. I need a break and some natural sleep. I’ll handle the headaches for the next couple of days while it gets out of my system totally, I’ll take the slightly broken sleep while my body realises that it doesn’t need the drug any more for now.

It’ll take about three days to get fully back to normal. I’ll get the sleep I need and hopefully it will stop the over excessive sleeping during the day. I know the pattern now and can gauge myself accordingly. I may have some pretty late nights because of it but I have a whole bunch of TV Sky+’ed waiting to be watched not to mention all the stuff I have downloaded.

That’s it for now… I am off for my 5th cup of coffee of the day. Keep yourselves safe

Until Next Time…