Today was a good day. I felt good, even after only 5 hours sleep. I don’t know what changed but I just felt energized, like my batteries had been changed and I was running on full power. I got a phone call from my CPN and we discussed how things are going, if I was having any problems with my medication, how was my mood doing. He asked if I thought we needed to meet up and catch up.. it felt good to be able to say no, use your time on someone who might need it a bit more than me (he mentioned that while he was off on leave they had increased his patient load quite a bit and a few other things that were taking his time.)
Tag Archives: CPN
Cancelled
So there I was psyching myself up for my Medication Management meeting at 3pm, when at 11am I get a phone call from the clinic saying that the Nurse who was to be sitting in on the meeting wasn’t available today so they would have to cancel the meeting and rearrange it for next week. As the call went on I felt all my energy slip away from me. It was like a big vacuum cleaner stuck up my rear end and sucking my will to live out of me.
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the meeting… I had been told there would be a lot of talking and I just wasn’t in the right head space to be revealing my inner soul today. I have been down now for about 2 weeks and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I am putting on a face for Mum and Linda but the cracks are starting to show. I don’t want to be chirpy and chipper, I want to take to my bed and never come out.
My CPN is coming Thursday, so no doubt I will get the usual I should go out more and take the Lorazapam as much as you need. You would think she was trying to get me hooked on the stuff. Maybe they get points for referrals to different sections. 10 Pts for a Bipolar referral 20Pts fpr a Lorazapam addiction 30 Pts for a schizophrenic meltdown. first one to 100 and you get a set of steak knives. Sorry that was cynical and I know she only has my best intrests at heart but I am sick of being dependant on drugs to get through my day. I would never be allowed to get rid of the drugs by my family, I would drive them nuts inside of a week. Hell, missing one day is cause to my have my balls chopped off just to remind me that I should take them every day.
I really shouldn’t complain as I don’t know where I would be with the pair of them nagging at me to get things done. Dead or on the streets at the very least. Maybe even dead out on the streets. My mortality is become oh so real to me lately. There is a race going on in my body. It’s between my Mind and my Pancreas. They are duelling over who will get the final blow in. My diabetes is out of control due to the medications I take for Bipolar and my Bipolar is casuing me to freak out about my diabetes. I actually think the stress of worrying about whats gonna kill me first will actually kill me first.
I am not going to keep writing tonight or else I will convince myself that it’s a good idea to do something stupid. I am just going to surf around looking for picture of cute kittens and puppy dogs just to make myself feel better.
Until Next Time…
Another Day
Yep just another day in my life. Well not exactly JUST another day but it’s been pretty mundane. I have been freaking, as usual, about something way out of my control. This morning when the postman delivered our mail I was presented with the IB50 form from the Incapacity Benefit people. I knew that getting IB was to simple. This is just the start i tell ya, it’s going to end up with me having to go to Stalag 13 and have a medical and then my benefit will be stopped because they will find out that I am a fraud and am not really ill because I was having a particularly good day on the day of the medical. See what I mean, Freaking out of my own head. I have tried to pretty much keep this to myself but I don’t think I succeded to well. Mum being the form filling demon that she is had a look and said it was a cake walk to fill in and half of the forms don’t apply to me. We’ll see… I have a bad feeling about this.
After my ponderance yesterday about my CPN making an appearance sometime soon, I got a phone call this morning and she has asked to see me tomorrow afternoon at 3pm. No doubt I will get the usual health lecture about my weight and lack of exercise. It’s a bit difficult to excercise when you can’t face leaving the house unattended. Hell I can’t even walk to the shops just around the corner on my own without having a panic attack. I would take more Lorazapam but I am afraid I will become addicted to the stuff. I only get enough for 2 pills a day for a month. I take one every evening and have one spare if I do have to go out. If I went out the amount that is suggested by the doctors and CPN I would run out by mid month and be screwed for the rest of the month. I guess I will have to ask the GP to up the amount of pills he gives me or really start to suck it up and start going Lozzie free.
That’s about it from me this evening.
Until Next Time…
Almost Missed That One.
There I was sitting there thinking that I was forgetting something and the phone goes. It’s thhe secretary of my Pdoc:
“Can I speak to Paul please”
“Speaking” I croak (my voice has gone for some reason I had a three day bout of death warmed up and then after I am over the worst of it my voice goes… I now sound like a cross between Barry White and a Nun who smokes 40 a day for thirty years)
“Just ringing to remind you that you have an appointment tomorrow at 3.30pm”
“Ahh There’s the problem I have an appointment with my CPN tomorrow at 3.30pm”
“OK Let me speak to your CPN and I’ll call you back”
“OK Thanks”
10 minutes later the phone rings again and I croak it …. I mean answer it
“Hi It’s your Pdocs Secretary. Your CPN is not here today so I think it’s going to be best that you come in to your outpatient appointment and I’ll let your CPN know in the morning that your coming in and that she needn’t worry about coming out to see you tomorrow”
“OK Thanks I’ll see you tomorrow… Happy New Year Pdocs secretary”
“Happy New Year”
That was not what I had forgotten allthough I had forgotten it. I still don’t know what I was supposed to rememeber. It’ll come to me eventually. But I digress. My Pdocs secretary is great like that she will call me (and I assume all of Pdocs patients) to remind them that they have appointments. I guess it helps cut down on missed appointments which is always good seeing as Pdocs don’t come cheap.
So that’s my first appointment of the new year. Today also marked the first cancelled appointment also, my CPN has the flu so she called off today… which I guess is a good thing seeing as I wouldn’t have been here to see her in the first place.
My appointment was pretty much the same as every other appointment I have had with the Pdoc lately. He reads off my medications two maybe three times and then we sort of discuss reducing at least one of the medications. Today we actually decided to reduce one of them He cut the Mirtazapine by 15mgs from 45 to 30 a day. Normally I would have railed against changing anything, but seeing as I am going to be seeing the Medication Management team starting the end of this month and the sole aim of those meetings is to reduce my medication intake, i figured we may as well start today.
I am and am not looking forward to reducing my medication. One the one hand I know that with virtually every change we undertaken up to date I have had an adverse reaction and I have ended up worse off in the end. All med changes have invariably been reversed within a month or so. On the other hand I really want off of all these meds so that I can start to feel undrugged for a change. I want to be able to be clear headed and alert. I want to be able to write during the daylight hours and not have to wait until just before bed when I am most awake.
I know I am in for a rough ride the first half of this year and I know that there are going to be dark days ahead and who knows what other colours of the rainbow my days are going to become. I just hope that we can finally find some medication combo that will shut the voices up and make the fella in the garden go away. Maybe July onwards will be my half of the year hopefully by then things will have sorted themselves out and I will be on a stable combo that is finally working.
Stay tuned for more info…lol
Until Next Time…
Sleep
I don’t know when it began and I don’t know how it began but I haven’t been sleeping at all well of late. I have been getting plenty of sleep just at the wrong times. I have been getting up at 10.30/11 o clock and feeling so wasted from my medication that I have been going back to bed after eating something and taking my pills. I usually sleep until 2pm or 3pm and then I will be up until 2am or 3 am. Then the cycle starts over.
Now your probably saying to yourself that “It’s not the medication that’s making you feel wasted it’s your f*cked up sleep patterns.” Well that’s what my CPN who visited me yesterday suggested. We talked it over and she suggested that take my evening medication MUCH earlier than I normally would.(ie 6pm) and then go to bed at about 10pm and try and get myself back on to some kind of *normal* sleeping pattern. I agreed and last night I complied. BIG MISTAKE.
I went to bed at 9.45 and duely fell asleep pretty much straight away. I did however find myself awake at 1am unable to go back to sleep. So i come down stairs and check my email and have a glass of milk to try and help me get back off. I went back to bed about twenty minutes later and did get back to sleep pretty much straight away. All was going well I thought to myself as I dozed off again….that was until 4am when my eyes pinged open and stayed that way for 30 minutes until I could stand laying down no more. So up I got and came back down to have a cigarette and to check my email again ( I check my email an unhealthely amount each day… it’s a habit I can’t break). This time I was up for close on two hours I watched an interesting film on Hallmark about teh Enron thing, it went well with the bowl of Coco Pops I had.
I had planned on staying up for the duration but by 6.30 I was ready to try for at least a couple more hours.
I woke up at 10.45.
The medication was not really a problem this morning I don’t think as I had taken it plenty early enough. I took my morning pills and got on with my day. But by 2pm I was knackard again. I should have stayed up but my eyes were closing on me. So I wimped out and went back to bed. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it’s not as if I am overly depressed about anything at the moment. My anxiety about going out is still in full effect but the mood has been pretty stable.
I have been up now for the rest of the day and I have taken my pills at around 10pm so hopefully I will get to sleep at some reasonable hour. I know I have to get my sleep patterns sortedout but it’s always easier said than done.
Until Next Time…
An Update
I think i started writing this blog at a time when I wasn’t ready to write… but enough of that.
Since my last visit I have been pretty busy in a not very busy way. I a series of meetings with my employers and it was decided that they thought it would be a good idea if they were no longer my employers. To be honest I can see their point of view. Over the past 4 years I have had close to 400 days off work (that’s the best guess I can come up with today, I don’t remember the exact figures they quoted at the time). I had had 127 days of work this year up to the point of the final meeting when it was decided that my services would no longer be required. As I said I can see their point of view and I was expecting the push sooner or later. It still feels like shit to be unemployed again for the first time in 6 years, doubly so seeing as it was all caused by the symptoms of the Bipolar.
At my last meeting it was all very offical, the head of the contact centres HR dept and the top office manager. They were talking like company drones all very officious and not at all human. When they actually gave me thier decision the spiel went something like…:
i would like to thank you for you constructive feedback about your position within the company. With that said I have to inform you that we are going to summarily terminate your contract with immediate effect.
There was no “Unfortunately” no “Sorry but”. I think I felt like I wasn’t important to them, I guess I wasn’t really. I was just a little cog who had dull teeth that didn’t work properly, the only saving grace is that apparently it was commented that I was good on the phones and that had been said by a couple of the office line managers. At least Someone thought I was worthy of a decent comment.
Leading on from that I had to make arrangements to go and claim Incapacity Benefits as I don’t feel that working is an option for me at the moment. I had heard of dreadful stories about long waits and gruelling medicals when applying for IB and with the rules and the IB being phased out on the 27th October I was a bit worried that my case would be a long drawn out procedure, but it needed to be done. Mum found the telephone number of the claims line and I duely gave them a call After a 45 minute phone call I thought that that was the first stage completed. I was given a long list of things I needed to supply the job centre with to help get my claim sorted.
I was told that it would be quite a wait for the claim to be processed but I should get my payslips back in a few days. Well it took about two weeks for my payslips to come back to me and the next day I recieved a ltter stating that I had been granted IB. NO medical, no long detailed forms to be filled out. Just granted it just like that. We can only sumise that it was because I had the letter from work stating that they had finished me on medical grounds and they had taken that as all the proof they had needed. No complaints there. The only thing I have to do is supply sick notes every month to the benefits office and they keep paying me. The benefit isn’t a massive amount buit the monthly total will pay our loan payments, and we will just have to really tighten our belts so the rest of the bills get paid.
I had my psych appointment last Thursday and my Pdoc has increased one of the pills to help the Paranoia that I have been crippled with the past few months. It’s gotten to the stage now that I can’t leave the house unaccompanied. I can’t even go to the doctors on my own, hell I can’t even go to the corner shop to get a pint of milk (black coffee time soon folks). Linda and Mum have been great about all of this and I know I have some work to do to get myself back on track and it’s going to be a hard path to travel but I have to do it to get my life back. Whilst at my pshyc appointment, the Pdoc asked if I was interested in having a Community Care Worker again to help me out in the times between my appointments, I jumped at the chance. It’s something that we have all been thinking about ever since my latest bout of depression and paranoia kicked in. He filled out a form whilst we were in the meeting and he told us someone would get in touch to let us know either way in a few days. Anywho the next day I get a phone call from the psychs office saying that I had been allocated a CPN and would it be OK if she came around on Monday to introduce herself. I thought:
“Things are coming to easily for me at the moment.”
FAst forward to 4pm yesterday and I am sat in my front room talking witha CPN about what she can do for me and where our meetings will be going. Could she come back Wednesday to start off my Care Plan and sort out some paperwork:
“Ummm Yeah”
My head was in a bit of a whirlwind, everything seemed to be moving so fast. In fifteen minutes it was all over and I felt strangely relived that I could sit back and take a breather for an evening. Nothing was hanging over me that could or should stress me out. My CPn is going to work with me to sort out my medication and manage how I take it… I thought I was doing quite well just by opening my mouth and popping the little suckers, but apparently she can help me with it… so I will see where that takes us.
That about brings us up to date. Sorry for the length but things have been happening a pace around here and I had left it so long between posts there was a lot to catch up on.
Until next time…