Tag Archives: sleeplessness

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 Have Returned

Well, I am back from my holiday and things are getting back to their normal screwed up sameness. After two weeks of really good sleep (going to bed early and getting up at a reasonable time) I am back to waking up before 5 am and not being able to go back to sleep. This morning I just sat in bed and read some more of my book until about 5.45 and then said “fuck it” and came down stairs to start on the days coffee intake.

There really is some big news I am dying to tell you but can’t for fear of jinxing it. But when the time comes and it should be more than a few days now I’ll let the world know.

The weather is shit.. I mean really shitty. I wouldn’t normally complain but this shit is bad. As I said I have been up since 5 and it’s been raining heavily since at least then…and the wind. Bloody hell if it’s this bad in November what’s it going to be like in January.. I dread to think. I know I was the one all Summer long wishing for the winter to hurry up and arrive but I don’t think anyone would wish this kind of weather on anyone. To make matters worse I HAVE to go into town to the Post Office. Oh well just another ordinary in a less than average life.

I have been on Seroquel for about two months now and I think it’s working well for me. My intense paranoia has subsided. It hasn’t gone away but it’s not as bad as it was around September time. I still think that people are watching me and the visual hallucinations are still there. I keep seeing crawling things out the corner of my left eye. It’s always on my left hand side. Maybe there is something neurologically wrong with the left hand side of my brain. Maybe it’s a physical thing rather than a mental thing. Who knows… anyone have any guesses? Answers on a postcard please.

I would like to say it’s funny how my mind is telling me that I am being followed is but now it’s just getting plain annoying. I thought my trip away and the opportunity to get out and about without any of the added pressure of being seen by the natives of this area of the country and the government keeping tabs on me, but it just wasn’t like that. When ever I went out I had to resort to taking extra Lorazapam. I haven’t had to use extra Lorazapam for ages. I guess it was dealing with the unknown and the busy half term streets of a strange town was too much for me. I reverted back to my old type of not wanting to go out. Even in the deepest depths of boredom I resisted going out. I don’t think I felt totally at ease any time I was out of the house the whole two weeks I was away.

Just as an aside I would like to thank Midland Mainline Train staff at London St Pancras for their HILARIOUS joke on Monday night. I thought your jape of sending two hundred people running for the wrong train just the most funny thing I have ever experienced. One thing I can tell you for sure is that my Mother, who suffers from a COPD related illness thought it was a barrel of laughs having to try and get from one side of the platform to the other side of the set of 4 platforms in under three minutes. The only thing I can say is that you shower of pathetic twats were truly shown up by your on train staff who were most gracious to my mother and I when it was obvious that Mum couldn’t make it down to the assigned seats we had they let her stay in first class and use her oxygen and try and recover a little. It’s just a shame that the stress put on her lungs in that 10 minute time span has induced some kid of reaction that has left her with Flu like symptoms and needing virtually 24 hours a day oxygen at the moment. Bunch of fuckers (almost) the lot of you, I hope Santa fucks off with all your presents and gives them to the people you thought it would be fun to fuck around with.

That is all.

Until Next Time…

Sleepless

It’s almost 3.30 in the morning. It’s now Friday. I haven’t slept since 1pm Thursday. Not a big deal you’d think but I have been off the Zopiclone since Monday night and I miss my little Orange friends. As you may recall this is a conscious decision to stop taking them for a while to let my body readjust to normality. I wish I had never fucking bothered. I have had nothing but problems since Monday with racing thoughts sleepless nights and I may add an irritable urge to mow the grass in my garden.

I took Zopiclone on Monday night and slept fairly well (I think… it’s hard for me to keep track at the moment). As I blogged I woke up with a Zopiclone hangover (Thanks Pandora) and I decided then that I needed a break from them, I do like to stick by my ill informed choices. Tuesday night I was awake all night Wednesday I slept for 4 hours By the time it had gotten to Midnight Wednesday into Thursday I had had 6 hours sleep in about 56 hours or something like that. I hadn’t had this reaction to stopping Zopiclone before and if it wasn’t for the fact that I have to be up and alert this morning I would have taken then just to get back into some kind of normal rhythm. Thursday night I went to bed a little before midnight and was up at 3 am and again at 7 am I was up for a couple of hours to take meds and such and went back to bed and died until around 1pm I think my body just gave up and had to shut down. I couldn’t have done anything about it if I tried.

But as I said I have been up all day and I am back to where I was Tuesday night. Wide awake and alert as a Meerkat on acid. I have a pretty full morning taking Mum to Doctors appointments but I hope that by the time We have done the circuit of Doctors and town I’ll be able to come back and sleep for at least a little while. I do know one thing Tomorrow night I am taking Zopiclone and fuck the hangover I’ll sleep my ass through it.

Until Next Time…

We Have No Bananas

It’s nearly 3am and I should be asleep. Actually let me rephrase that… Normally I would be asleep, but tonight is different. Tonight I couldn’t take any sleeping pills because I have to be up before noon tomorrow which is something I haven’t managed in the past week whilst taking the pills. I have been waking up anywhere between 4 am and 8 and having a cigarette and then heading back to bed, it’s that or I fall over where I stand. You would think that after taking these things for a few months my body would have built up some kind of resistance to them like most of my other drugs have done and continue to do so. I am not complaining as I like the fact that I can take two little orange pills and be asleep within an hour, that works for me fella.

I am now into week three of taking Byetta and I really do think it’s having some beneficial effects. I wasn’t a big eater before but I am seriously watching what I eat after a couple of really uncomfortable evenings early on. Obviously I don’t look any different… well at least I don’t see any difference. I wouldn’t I see me every day..lol. I go back to see the diabetic specialist nurse next Wednesday and I’ll find out then how much if any I have lost in the past few weeks and then my dosage will increase to 10 micrograms. Doesn’t sound a lot but that stuff fucks you up the first few days of taking it at 5 micrograms can’t wait to find out what 10 will do:/

I like to think of myself as fully clued in on today’s internet trends. I have two twitter accounts a semi regularly blog I have a Facebook account that I check daily (and I hate FarmVille and all those other game “apps”). But you know something I am so socially retarded that I don’t make use of them. I feel self concious about posting a status on Facebook because I don’t know how my odl school friend will react to my mentalism. I am sure if they took a look at my profile page it wouldn’t take them long to find the link to this blog. Some of the people I have friended over the past 18 months of Facebook haven’t exactly approved of my lifestyle and some of their comments have outraged me at times, but I sat back and hid below the parapets of possible flamage. When I say Lifestyle, I refer to my reliance on state benefits. It would be safe to say that quite a few of my peers from school are probably Daily Mail readers who look at The Sun for the pictures. One or two of them that I have let onto my little roller coaster car have been supportive. I think I have to use exceptional judgement to whom and of what I tell people. When campaigns like Time To Change talk about stigma I guess I am starting to learn that we stigmatise ourselves more than anything else.

Changing the subject totally, I always thought of myself as a man of the people and for the working man, but I gotta say a big FUCK YOU to the the train workers who have decided to go on strike the second week of the Easter holidays. For once in my puny little life I had actually gotten myself psyched up about going out some where and having a day out in public or maybe better yet, going to stay with my brother for a few days. BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Bob Crowe (the fucker in charge of the union) decides that it’s better to strike that to discuss and work things out. He thinks that it’s better to ruin peoples holidays. God that Crowe fucker doesn’t my nut in.. he always has and he always will. So you know where you’ll find me the week after Easter.. right fuckin here.

That’s it from me.

Until Next Time…

Walking Through Mud

IT feels like that some times. I don’t feel particularly down tonight… a bit peeved that at ten to three in the morning I am not tired, Instead I am sat here typing this out and listening to the original concept album of Jesus Christ Superstar.
It’s been a weird afternoon and evening. It started out with Linda getting home earlier than Mum, something that I don’t think has happened in at least a year. That’s not all that strange in and of itself but it threw me for a loop. Dunno why it just did,,, I have my order in the day and that just screwed it right up.

I had my third meeting with the Anxiety Management people on Monday. This time I was given homework. We spent an hour that in all honesty felt like three hours, talking about me. We talked so much I was sick of hearing about it. I think that’s they way it works… you talk about you anxieties until you bore them into submission. My homework for the week is:

  • Keep an Anxiety Diary – Detailing individual anxious moments and how you overcame them and how much anxiety you felt on a scale of 1-10
  • To out into Public spaces and if I feel Paranoid because I think people are staring at me I am to mentally say “NO!!! IT’S NOT HAPPENING”
  • Have at least 1 hour a day of ME time. To relax and just be on my own and not have to worrie about anything else. To try and achieve Zero anxiety

It’s all well and good me having homework to do but it’s being able to get out and put myself into stress inducing situations. I am of the mindset that you only go out when you have something to do… and unless you have something to do don’t waste the energy. But I’ll do my best.

Ok I have sat up long enough… I am going to try and sleep. keep your fingers crossed for me.

Until Next Time…

Sigh….

I swear at some point I will keep a blog running for more than two posts a month. For a half arsed explanation as to my absence it’s down to several things.

I have been plagued by insomnia the past few weeks. I can go a few days sleeping normally and then it’s a week of sleeping for 2 hours a day and averaging out at 10 hours sleep for the week. I end up hallucinating and then my mood crashes and I become withdrawn and moody as a ten year old little girl who got her pretty pink dress all messed up. It usually takes me a week of normal sleep to get over a week of insomnia. I sleep through the night and then end up taking two short two hour naps through the day. I know it’s said that you never really “catch up” on missed sleep but I feel like I do.

Another reason for my absence is because I am starting up another website. A review blog. I watch a lot of TV and movies so I figured I would take some time out to improve my writing skills and have something to show for it at the end of it. At the moment I am slowly building up a stock pile of reviews and articles so I can launch the website with more than just a hello and welcome to WordPress article. I am being helped by my brother with the design elements of the site, but I am taking a more active role in the design process. I am working at learning Photoshop so I am doing what I can and getting the technical info off of Nik. His business is taking off and he is busy a lot more now than he was when he built the theme for this blog. It’s about time his skills were appreciated for what they are… and that’s top notch.

I have been referred to Anxiety management classes at a local support centre. It’s one to one coaching and looks to be interesting. The lady who runs the class has claimed that she is a hard task master and will push me way beyond my comfort zone. Now considering where I am at the moment it’s not going to take much pushing to get me outside of my zone. It’s gotten to the point at the moment that I can’t even go to the shop at the end of my road without accompaniment. I am housebound just like the kid in the film Disturbia, except i don’t have an ankle bracelet and my neighbours aren’t offing people, at least I haven’t seen any suspicious bodies being moved around. I just hope that these classes give me some skills that will help me get out and do my own thing again. I don’t envisage me getting another job before we move but going to Psych appointments on my own would be nice. Mind the paradox of it all is that I attend the anxiety classes on my own…. yeah I get a Taxi door to door both ways is a bit of a cop out but I do it on my own.

As mentioned in the last post, there is an art exhibition coming up. All of the art work is done by service users and people associated to the MHT. Be that users, users carers or actual MHT members. I have entered two pieces. I haven’t heard back from them to say whether they like them or that they don’t think they would be suitable. I will have to get in touch with them some time next week. Once the Exhibition is open and running I will post the brand new piece I have done for it and you can all see how far I have come with Photoshop.

Ok That’s me done for this update. Keep yourself safe.

Until Next Time…