Still

The last few days have felt both frighteningly familiar, and brand-new, all at once. On the one hand, it seems like every day brings more confirmation that I’m ill again, and yes, I am afraid of being back here, of falling down again. I am afraid.

However, now that I’ve accepted my lapse, and done the practical things (doctors app, seeing ‘the dragon’ today), I’m in a bit of a stalemate  now. Unlike this time last year, when I wasn’t really willing to accept just how bad I was, this time, I’m putting things in place. It’s almost out of my hands now – until I’ve seen the doctor and talked things through, all I can do is keep going and hope for the best. That’s not saying I’m giving up and spending a week with my head under a blanket – but just that there’s not much more I can actively do, now, aside from try to keep things ticking over.

I met L after meeting the dragon today (the phrase ‘glutton for punishment’, comes to mind) and am feeling pretty bulldozered by it. She seemed to start panicking when I told her I knew I was going downhill again, and said maybe I should see someone else – which is ridiculous as I’ve only got a few more weeks till we break for Christmas, after which I’m going to Nepal – and I didn’t really know what to say to that, apart from feeling pretty cross and upset as I wasn’t quite expecting that reaction. I sort of rely on her to NOT panic and be calm – and it threw me off. It’s the first time I’ve felt angry with her. And then she started going on about church healing rooms and suggesting I think about it – which also confused me as I’m really not one for asking for people I know to pray for me, let alone strangers, and to be honest, it sounded like a last resort – as though I’m in need of a last resort. It’s nothing to do with my faith in God not being strong enough, to find healing in these places – it’s that (as she knows) people have inflicted quite a lot of damage by using prayer to say things they had no right or reason to say, and I don’t trust other people with my faith, especially when I’m vulnerable. Not at the moment. And what I needed was for someone who has heard my reasons for fearing medication, to encourage me and tell me that I’ve done right in making these appointments and gearing myself up to try them again. I didn’t need that decision glossing over and marginalising. Her suggestion was so completely out of my range that it makes me wonder if she’s been listening at all, these last few months. Feeling like a lost cause, is never a good thing.

And yes, it’s just this latest drop that making me feel as though the rest of my life is going to characterised by many more troughs than peaks, and yes, it’s just this depression that makes me feel so relentlessly unable to fathom how I’ll manage that – but it’s how I feel, today. It’s how I was feeling after seeing the dragon and being up since 6am after a sleepless night. It’s how I was feeling after finding church on Sunday more painful than its been for such a long time. It’s how I was feeling, as I realised how much I’m playing for at the moment.

I know, that mulling over things isn’t going to help and that there is no gain in regretting past decisions or thinking over mistakes I made – but if I can’t rock up at counselling after a crap week with a pretty big realisation, and cry and say that I don’t know where to go from here, and how I’ll get through another period as black as last year if it comes my way, where can I say that? I have acted to sort this out as quickly as possible, but that doesn’t mean that my mood hasn’t plummeted, and it doesn’t mean that I’m not devastated at the moment by this latest change.

I’m not sure what I’ll do next week. Part of me doesn’t want to see L again. Part of knows that I probably need someone keeping an eye one me. It’s hard, sometimes.

Thanks to all who’ve been thinking and praying for me. It helps.

Read Full Post »

Follow-on and action plan

So – I’ve now got a doctor’s appointment but it’s not till Dec 6th which is a bit annoying – I’m not a good one for waiting, particularly when it’s something I’m already anxious about. I’ve decided to see a different GP this time too, as I didn’t feel like the man I saw last year was really listening to me – so also have that issue to think about.

I’ve also emailed ‘the dragon’, at the medical school, which was difficult, but am meeting her next week. This is probably sensible, as I know, if I’m honest, that my working ability isn’t great right now – the apathy is coming back with avengance, and it has nothing to do with paeds, which I love – but it’s still there. I can’t sit and concentrate. I can’t work my way down a to-do list, which is pretty big at the moment. The paeds department make you tick off a lot of things on attachment, just because we haven’t had much exposure to the specialty yet, so there’s a lot of stress to get assessed regularly, and be proactive. On a community attachment, whe’re I’m in a different part of the city, with a different team who to be honest don’t really notice if I’m there or not, every single day, it’s quite hard to keep keen as you never integrate and never feel valued.

Once again, things feel ironic – this time last year, was when I was running seminars for the first year medics on ‘coping at university’ – whilst falling apart. On Monday, the medical school mentoring team I have set up and chair, met with members of the pastoral care team, which includes a psychiatrist who was consulted (without my consent) about my lack of compliance with medication. I feel like I have one foot in two very different camps. Having met these members of staff essentially as an equal, also makes me keen not to have to plug in to medschool services, myself. I don’t want to have to flag myself up to them, and lose face. Sometimes, if not most of the time, I almost hate being someone who is driven, and builds projects, and follows up ideas. It complicates everything. It muddies the waters. And yes, I love the mentoring scheme – but at the moment, I feel like a fraud again. How far I am from the person who should be leading that sort of venture, how changed.

Going back on medication seems like a huge and daunting decision – the endless GP appointments, the endless checking in, the  constant reminder of needing something external to control my soul and quieten my thoughts. And even though I’ve personally told people that a bad response to one drug doesn’t mean another will be the same, and I know that it’s unlikely – I’m terrified. I’m scared that I’ll give meds another go, and before I know it, I’ll be low enough that I’ll once again be itching to get out of my skin and out of my life in order to stop the thoughts flooding in. I’m scared that if I sink low enough, there won’t be anything holding me back. I’m scared that I’ll lose any sense or hold on reality and certainty, and that I’ll lose everything I fought so hard for last year. And that’s not easy to say to a GP who doesn’t know you. It’s not easy to say to anyone. I’m not usually the panicker – I’m always the one leading and chairing and organising. But now, I’m panicking. I don’t know if this is a good idea. I’m tying myself to a minimum of 18 months on treatment, which is a long time. I hate being a patient. I would literally rather gouge out my own eyes, than be in the patient role. And I wish that there had been someone there six months ago chasing me up and making me take medication and keeping an eye on me – so that this relapse might not have happened and I wouldn’t be back beyond square one again, with all of these decisions to make anew.

And again, I look back and realise I’ve not been singing or talking or praying, as I should be. Again, I feel pretty tarred and marked by this, a stain that is never going to leave me. And I wonder what it is that draws me towards this state and the reason for it – but there is no reason, which makes it all the harder. There is no reason, apart from bad genes and bad luck. There is no answer lurking behind this. This is just the hand I’ve been dealt. I don’t want to play it.

 

Read Full Post »

Falling down, facing up

It’s becoming increasingly clear that  at the moment, I’m just not ‘quite right’. I’m feeling a lot more apathetic and tearful, and just can’t quite be bothered with a lot of things. I’m struggling to work productively and find myself crying a lot more than I have for some time. I find myself thinking about things I haven’t thought of since my last ‘fall’. I can’t sing at church either, which seems to be quite a good signpost for things not being right.

In short, I think I’ve officially lost the race against depression again.

This isn’t really that surprising – after all, I’ve had a good five months of recovery after the last and worst dip, but doing these things cold with no medication, is not the best way. And no matter how much I argue that it was ‘best for me’ and ‘the only way I could manage’, it probably wasn’t. I should have pushed to be put on something that didn’t make me so suicidal.  I should have had more courage. I should have realised that like everything on this earth, depression isn’t something you can beat using your own willpower alone. Apathy is my greatest enemy, at times.

The defining moment was realising that my thoughts are getting progressively more negative and dangerous, and although I suppose it’s a good thing that I recognise that they’re coming from an illness which has a solution, and not myself, I’m pretty devastated. I feel like I’ve failed. I feel like I’ve lost the war, at last.

The thing is, I’m afraid to try medication again. I’m going to Nepal for my elective in January, to work in hospitals there, for two months, so there’s not much time to play with drugs and doses. Last time, no one, let alone myself, quite made the connection between how ill I was, and fluoxetine. This was one time when being the eternal perseverer, did not have a good outcome for me. I can’t feel like that again. I’m terrified of feeling like that again – but I’m not sure I have any options left. I feel like a total hypocrite after spending so much time convincing my flatmate to try them, but it feels inevitable. I’m also not really looking forward to going back to the doctors after spectacularly failing to refer myself to the psychiatrist/renew prescriptions/do what patients are supposed to do. It feels like this is all my fault, and that if I’d been just a little less brick-headed, just a little less obstinate, or, dare I say, it, just a little less depressed and incapable, this fall back might not have happened.

I’ve not got much time to play with as I’ve got two essays that need writing in the next fortnight, and there’s a lot to learn in paediatrics too – so I know that I need to act quickly. I know I need to stand up to this and stop thinking I can do it on my own. I know I need to accede the point and then start again from the beginning. It’s like a dreadful homecoming, an unwanted baseline. It makes me wonder if this pattern is going to be all I know, now, of a few months rising and then, repeatedly, falling back and losing everything I managed to salvage. This is a house I don’t want to be in, a party I don’t want to crash, and yet, here I am. I’m stuck  inside the walls again. I’m looking for God in this, and not really finding him.

So – let’s see what happens. I hope all my readers are having a better week than I am.

Read Full Post »

Counselling blues

I realise I’ve not written too much about my counselling with L of late – mostly just because other things seem to have subsumed them, or my posts haven’t gone up soon after a session.

It still seems odd as the longer I know (as much as you can ‘know’ your counsellor, anyway), the more it seems that if we’d met in other circumstances, we’d probably have got on very well. It’s like that Thomas Hardy poem, ‘the man he killed’ – except unlike in the Boer war, bloodshed is very much frowned upon in therapeutic circles…. The concept is the same though – in other times, in other places, on different terms, our relationship might have been more equal, more balanced. I’ve thought a bit this week about how I’m now past the mid-point in counselling as once I leave for two months in a Nepalese hospital in January, L and I will probably never meet again. I also had an email this week from an old teacher at school, which has also made me think a great deal, as she was the first person I ever told about my dad’s drinking, after I came into school one morning after sitting overnight in A and E, and just completely broke down. She was the first person who listened to me – and when I refused point blank to try any form of counselling, she didn’t push me, and supported me through my final years of school by giving me books (she was a very stoic English teacher and very much subscribed to ‘reading through the pain’ – as do I) and generally being lovely. She also never breathed a word to my parents, which must have been a hard decision to make, but one I am eternally grateful for.

I was sixteen, then. It took another seven years for me to get myself into a counsellors office and capable of staying there. Growing up in a substance misusing household changes your perception of risk, gain, and potential for harm. For me, the risks of opening up were just to great, for too long. I’d lived under the shadow of a tabboo topic and couldn’t break it. There was too much at stake, and too many ways that it threatened to push me over the edge. By the time I had no choice but to go, I was already as far over that edge, that I could go. And it’s taken more courage, each week, every week, than I can often describe.

Yesterday, I hadn’t been thinking too much about what to talk about, but then had an extra half hour to waste as I headed over as I got away early from the childrens hospital, and as I was walking, realised that I’ve felt pretty flat recently. And yes, I’ve been busy and harrassed, and busy again – but I’ve also been a little numb, a little flat, in a way that being busy and somewhat misguidedly listening to the latest deathcab for cutie album,  just doesn’t quite explain (everyone has a band they should have outgrown, but never will – deathcab are mine). I was already crying, by the time I got there. I was already crying, and wasn’t even that sure why. It’s that feeling of mourning something, that I can’t quite shake off, that feeling of being without something, of being tired out and work out and desperate for some relief from the heavy days and all of their requests. I can cry in front of L, now. It does get easier.

Part of it is that I’m over-reacting a bit about a meeting I’m chairing next week for the medical school mentoring scheme that I set up (it’s going very well, which is nice) – and asked for a member of the medical school’s pastoral care counsel to come along to speak to us. The person they allocated is a psychiatrist that the student support person (aka ‘the dragon’, for longterm readers) told about my depression, without my consent, when I took myself off medication and went more than a bit haywire. And although I should be able to say that he’s a psychiatrist and this is what he does for a living, and that he probably won’t remember me by name alone anyway, I’m also terrified that he will and will say something, and I’ll start crying. I’m fed up of feeling as though every single time I feel like I’m getting past all of this stuff, something jerks me back. I’m fed up of feeling like I’m tattooed for life. I’m fed up of feeling as though I will always be judged first on my history of depression, before anything else comes into play.

L was pretty good about all of this, and I do find that I trust her opinion, which after six months, is a good thing. Counselling still leaves me exhausted though – it’s not as simple as being a release, or an outlet. It wears me out. Sometimes everything just feels so dramatic and difficult. Simplicity is a wonderful, enviable thing.

Read Full Post »