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…

Breathe

I am having problems breathing. I don’t know if it’s a panic thing or if it’s a congestion thing. I can breathe through my nose fine but if i do I feel like I am drowning… hence I am a dreaded mouth breather today and that makes for interesting listening when I am on the phone.

I have a plan for a second blog…. in fact it’s already in place. It has been for several months, I just don’t seem to be able to get up the ooommmppphhh to get it started. Once I start it it will run itself. Well, not run itself but once it’s running I’ll be more motivated to post more often. If anyone reads this sporadic blog will know my track record is not a good recommendation for starting a second one.

I am still going through medication management and we have now gotten me off of Flupentixol all together with very little negatives. I am off Lorazapam and on Diazapam. We have reduced it down to 2mgs a day with the option of a third mg if needed. Today is the first day I have needed it in the past week. I really miss my little blue friends at times. I probably shouldn’t admit that as it probably shows a certain degree of reliance on them… or if you want to put in in plainer terms I miss them because I was getting or had gotten addicted to them. Wow that was a weird thing to admit in the open.

I haven’t been writing much of anything lately… updates for here… my medication management diaries, they have all gone for a burton. I just haven’t had a creative urge in ages. I have all but given up on entering the Art exhibition later this year as I don’t think I will ever be able to come up with anything remotely worthy of displaying to the public. I could drag something up from the archives but that just seems like it’s cheating and no effort has been expended for the occassion and they deserve better than that. But who knows things may change and I’ll have a creative spurt and ream off loads of new stuff and I’ll have an abundance of stuff to offer… ooohhh look mummy pigs are flying in the sky.

Well that’s it from me for now… I can’t think of anything else except I feel blurgh and ack.

Until Next Time…

Feeling Like A Failure

It’s hard sometimes to keep yourself up and alive and active. Take today for example. I originally woke up at 7.30am and came down and had a smoke, and decided that I would go back to bed for a couple of hours just to get the rest of the drugs side effects out of my system. I woke up again at 11.25am and the morning was shot to shit. I crawled downstairs had another smoke whilst I waited for the Kettle to boil for the first of many cups of coffee of the day.
Next stop is the computer and I fire up iTunes and hit shuffle and let that do it’s thing and then it’s the email to see who is abusing who in the world.
I don’t eat much any more… I just don’t feel hungry most of the time so I don’t eat, simple as. I have to eat SOMETHING to take my diabetes medication so I just have a slice of toast but this morning I felt decadent so I had some jam on my toast. I felt ill after eating it.

The rest of my day consists of sitting here at the computer talking with my brother sporadically and surfing umpteen web pages and trying to guess which random choices iTunes will choose next. I ponder doing housework but that involves effort and energy, two things I seem to be lacking at the moment. I have a list of things that need to be done around here but I’ll be damned if i can muster up the enthusiasm to do them. the day is punctuated between coffee breaks and smoke breaks.

Once everyone gets home I spend a little time chatting with them about what their day has been like… they have had shitty hectic days, total polar opposite to me. They are working like dogs on a frozen tundra and we have nothing to show for it. Money is getting even tighter every day. Even pay day is going to be hard as we will see money in the bank but we won’t be able to touch it for fear of incurring more charges from the bank. It’s only going to get worse I fear.

I know times are tough for everyone right now but i never in my wildest nightmares think that it would be this bad. We are actually at the point of wondering if will will have enough money to make it through the month to buy food. We have a contingency plan of sticking up on pasta and eating pasta with salt for added flavour. Hopefully we will have this very very lean month and then we will be back on top of things again. We can only hope.

My mood as you can probably understand is pretty much at rock bottom. I am secluding myself away from the family for as much as possible, but it’s only a matter of time before that starts to piss people off too. My rationale is that If I am over here on the computer I am out of the way not doing harm to anyone else. I cut my nails off today as I felt the urge to scratch myself again. I couldn’t find any elastic bands to try and avoid the temptation that way so I distracted myself by cutting the nails off. I could probably still make a nice mess of myself but the moment passed and I am unscathed.

Well I am going to call it a night and go to bed. I am starting to get an earache so I am gonna take some lovely pain pills and I should be awake by lunchtime tomorrow.

Be Well Y’all.

Until Next Time…

If music be the food….

As you may have noticed things have been pretty quiet around here with the exception of a spate of posts made about my medication management diary. There will be more of those coming so you will see a lot more posts from me in the near future.

I have been mostly absent from the blogosphere for the past month due to having not much enthusiasm to write. I have to keep the diary so I will be writing more from now on whether I like it or not. Part of my “homework” for medication management, apart from the diary was to create a list of what I like doing for myself. It seems that I am not focusing on the positives that I like doing and I need to be doing more of that apparently. It seems so self indulgent to think just of me when Mum and Linda are going through the same hard times I am. OK they don’t have the voices and hallucinations to deal with or the lack of ability to go out unaided. But things are tight here and we are all having to make bigish sacrifices just to make it from one pay day to the next. I dread the next email I get from the bank. They only email me to tell me they are charging me a fee for going overdrawn on my overdraft or to say I have a statement waiting to be read. It’s usually the previous.

Any way back to that list:

Using the Computer
Reading
Creative Writing
Watching Films
Listening to Old Radio Plays
Contributing of various On-line radio Forums
Cooking
Digital Graphic Art
Music

Looking back over that list I must seem like a very insular person. None of it involves leaving the house. I seem to have become entrenched in the house. I wouldn’t even know where to start to find a hobby that involved leaving the house. There is some talk of my joining a creative writing group at the local library but I don’t have any details on that yet. I do need to find something to do outside of the house, especially seeing as I don’t see myself being back in work anytime soon. If the Bipolar doesn’t kibosh me the economy will. Who in this climate is going to employ a liability like me. Oh well it will all sort itself out in the long run.

I am on week 5 of my medication management programme. I am finally reducing some of the medications. MY Flupentixol is down to 0.5mg am and 1mg at night and I have been taken off of my wonder drug Lorazapam and had it replaced with Diazapam originally at 5mgs and today reduced down to 4mgs. I haven’t really noticed much in the way of withdrawals from the Lorazapam which is something they were worried about. The change over to Diazapam has been smooth. The reason for the change in dosage today was because I mentioned that I had been sleeping a lot over the past week so the doctor reduced the Diazapam too see if that would help.

My life skills group ended the week before last and I miss it. OK I may not have gotten the most out of the group but I did get some good info and it was nice to meet up with a group of people every week to talk. The groups were very loose and our conversations often strayed off course and it was all very anecdotal. everyone had at least one story to share each week and it made the two hours of the group fly by. I look forward to any other groups I can get involved with. My spirit seems lifted after being involved in a talking therapy group type situation. I think it must have something to do with getting out of the house and having someone else to talk to other than the dust bunnies growing around my mouse pad.

I sem to be having problems sleeping. I have been up all night now. It’s now 5.30am and I am still not tired. So i figure I will just stay awake until I do get tired or fall asleep sat at the computer. No doubt the later will happen sooner or later. Linda and Mumn will be getting up to get ready for work soon and I will just sit back and wait to wave them bye bye. I don’t know what’s more depressing, not being able to work or having to work when your sick. I wish there was an easy answer but I just don’t see it at the moment.

The sun is coming up outside. So I will confine this to the archive and say:

Until Next Time…

Powered by coffee

This post is proudly sponsored by Gold Blend Coffee and a lack of the tired.

Last Thursday i got a letter from DWP. I didn’t open it as I was kind of worried that it was most likely to do with the IB50 form I sent in a couple of weeks ago. I knew of only one reason they would be writing me back and that was to tell me to present myself to the DWP appointed doctor for a rigorous going over with a fine tooth comb to see how mad the Government thought I really was. I left the letter for about an hour till there was someone else around to console me after I opened it and went bat shit and lost all my marbles in one go.

I opened it slowly, like Charlie with his golden ticket. I really didn’t want to have the grilling medical assessment. I have read it’s a pain in the arse. I slowly read the letter and when I picked my jaw up off of the floor I handed it to mum. I didn’t need to have the medical this time after all, but I may need to take it in the future to ascertain if I am still disabled enough to keep receiving the  Incapacity Benefit. I did a happy dance. There is nothing I find more daunting that having to face up to a doctor who is pissed off that he has to see the great unwashed from the dole centre again to try and convince him that at my worst I am a gibbering wreck and at best I can just about go to the garden gate without medication. At least that’s one hurdle I don’t have to jump over just yet.

Note – This post has taken me a little over 13 hours to write so far. I first opened the page up at around noon Wednesday and now it’s just gone 1am Thursday. I still have more to say… I think I may need more coffee soon…

I start my life skills workshops today. I am (from what I can glean from the leaflet) going to helped in learning how to handle stress and how to relax and overcome the negatives in my life so I can reduce on my drugs. Good luck to em is all I can say. I hate meeting new people and the thought of having to sit in a room full of strangers and open up about my feelings is probably what’s keeping me awake tonight. I wonder if they would object if they gave me the class notes and I just sat there with my iPod playing and I just visually observe the groups activities. Something tells me that that is not going to fly with these guys. Keep your fingers crossed it’s not all touchy feely and hippy claptrap or I maybe discharged from MHS before too long.

I have a date to start my Medication Management… April 7th. So that’s looking up. I’ll be in touch with my flowery side and they’ll be messing around with my drugs at the same time. I see loads of joyfull evenings staring at the computer monitor with Mr iPod blaring for company.

That’s about it from me tonight. I do have a post that I am working on about religion and my stance with for and against it. It’s something that I am learning more about everyday I live this life. It’s an interesting story I think… Your mileage may vary :D

Until Next Time…

Happy New Year

It’s that time of year where I guess I should be making some kind of plans or resolutions for the year ahead. Well, I would but I know I would just break them within a week. So here are some recommendations for myself for the year coming up.

  • Read More – I am an appallingly bad reader. I start a book and give up on it within the first chapter. I gotta get more reading done, it might improve my writing some too.
  • Lose Weight – I gotta do something I don’t walk any more I waddle.
  • Exercise – Just get some is all I am saying
  • Write More – I need to buckle down and write more than I do now… be it blogging or creative I just have to write more and release some of the pent up frustration that my hands feel more and more lately
  • Wise up to my own Health – I am going to find out what I am taking and what they are for. I am starting a Medication Management course through the MHT in mid January. I plan on asking lots of questions.

2008 was pretty sucky for me. losing my job in October was a particular low point. It finaly proved that the illness is starti8ng to win. I had lost control of my life and I still don’t have any of it back. I can’t leave the house unaccompanied (even though I do try… I go to my dentists appointments on my own, but that is just in a taxi out of the taxi in the office out the office in a taxi out of a taxi and back home.. it’s no big achievement really).

I am not including getting out of the house unaided in my list of things to be done in 09 as I don’t think that that is at all realistic and is not something that should be rushed. It will happen when it happens.

Here’s to a prosperous new year and hopefully a healthier one for all of us

Until Next Time…