Ragbag roundup – stuff from this week

This week did really not get off to the best start – after being fed-up last week over my application scores, there’s been further issues in that my parents may have lost my first degree certificate, which I need to have a scan of in order to get more ‘points’ on it when I apply for my job. I definitely left it at home – there’s no point dragging ‘important’ things from flat to flat as a student. It’s stressing me out quite a bit, and my parents are being fairly difficult about looking for it for me.  I’ve also had a lot of problems with the student loan company as they don’t really understand (or so it seems!) that medical degrees can take six years – queue a lot of being ‘on-hold’, which when I’m spending long days at the hospital with few breaks, doesn’t go down well – it’s taking ages to get sorted so I’m getting really quite nervy about finances. Not fun. Then, I’ve been given a pretty rubbish paediatric placement for Nov-Dec which is a shame as it’s the rotation I’ve most been looking forward to for the last three years. I’m with the community team, which yes, in interesting, but it’s a lot of learning disability stuff, and as I’ve done more than enough summers working in that field to not really need any more time allocated to it, I’m a bit disappointed when I could have been at the children’s hospital doing something that would be more new and interesting. I love volunteering in LD – but I was so looking forward to paeds surgery or paeds neurology. Cue a case of the grumps.

I’m also just quite, well, emotional at the moment. Whether it’s because the last few weeks have, by all accounts, been stressful, but I actually missed not having counselling this week (L was away). Whether it’s just because I’m on week 11 of term already, have been doing lots of long days, and am tired, I’m not sure. I sort of just need to vent somewhere. I’m just a little fragile. Next week will be the one-year marker for me going to the GP’s and officially being put on the mental health bandwagon. Next week marks the start (well, in terms of defining the problem as opposed to running from it) of the long way down. A whole year on, I’m still not back to where I was. Sometimes, I don’t think I’ll ever get back. Sometimes I think the rest of my life is going to be a mix of falling apart for a time, and then trying to catch up for a time, then repeating. I kind of feel like I’ve missed a boat and will never get back to the pace I was at. I’m feeling so impatient with it. I’m fed up, as always, of depression and its sequelae. I just want to be past it. I have a feeling I’ll be neck and neck with it for a while yet. Major case of hitting head against wall.

I think part of it is that I’ve overdone things a bit in the last week or two. I really love it when people lower down the medschool get in touch and ask if we can meet for a chat to go over things like examination techniques, or what they need to be thinking about for the coming year of their training, but by the same token, I realised that in the last fortnight I’ve spent five evenings and three afternoons meeting people to give them a hand, a soundboard or a shoulder, and it’s worn me down. I love that people see me as approachable, and I really do love teaching – but it’s worn me out. I did too much. So much for pacing.

However, there have been some things today to pick me up. I did the lecture on ‘life as a medic’ to the new first years – all 240 of them – this morning, and despite being pretty nervous about it (I’ve never had such a big audience for so long as I spoke for an hour), it went well. They laughed in the right places, were interactive, and gave me applause at the end. I feel quite proud of myself. I’ve also found out that I’ll be listed as an author on another academic paper, which is brilliant – the supervisor I did my neuroscience project with is brilliant at acknowledging contributors, and it will hopefully really help me in a few years when I apply for training posts. My choir had it’s first social, and lots of new people came, and its first rehearsal, and I really have missed it over the summer.  My student charity has had over two hundred people sign up, and that’s a lot of potential man power. It’s things like this that remind me that I’m still who I am – I may not be quite as accurate as God at the whole ‘I AM THAT I AM’ thing – but I’ve not completely lost myself.

I’m hoping that all the stuff that’s massively stressing me out is going to sort itself out in the next few days and weeks. I’m just a bit fragile at the moment. Let the weak say, I am strong.

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Tethered.

It’s been a pretty rough week. Generally, I try not to mull things over too much and dwell on the uncertainties brought by last year – but this week, I am, hands-up, being a bit self-indulgent and letting myself be upset and emotional about a few things. I’m tired of ‘looking on the bright side’ and ‘being grateful’ and ‘not dwelling on things I can’t change’. This week, I’m waving a white flag to disappointment, just for a little while.

The reason for this is that I start my application for my first doctoring job next month. Without explaining the ridiculously complicated and oh-so-pointless system in depth, we get a score out of 100 which is broken into a mark on where we rank in our year academically, plus a mark from answering various questions aiming to show that we won’t stab patients or steal from the hospital etc. Based on your score, you then find out which area of the country you’ve been allocated to, and from there, which group of placements you can apply for. Popular areas, and popular jobs, therefore need a higher score.

I found out this week that after spending five years achieving in the top 15% (roughly), last year knocked my marks off enough that my ranking dropped enough to lost me points. Every point counts. Literally. I’m feeling a bit self-pitying to be honest. I’ve worked so hard from day one – and one bad year has reduced the chance of getting a job I really want to do. Small sad man playing small, sad violin, you know where I am.

There is however another way to get a foundation doctor’s job, which is what I’d always intended on doing. The ‘academic foundation’ jobs are for people who want to do clinical research and who are academically sound. You get a much better choice of jobs, time for research, and are always in professorial units, which are usually the best ones in the hospitals. After being ill and having my research project take more wrong turns than a blind person navigating, I couldn’t really apply anymore – I had too much on my plate thanks to a hefty dose of depression. Something had to go. It was upsetting enough at the time letting it go, after so long thinking that it would be the path I would be on. A bitter change of plans.

Today is the day a lot of my friends found out whether they’d got academic jobs, or not. Some of the are excellent students. Others, I realistically was working either on a par, or above them, easily, till last year. Looking at the successes, I think it’s fair to say that I’d have stood a relatively good chance of getting one too, had I applied. I’m jealous. There is no other word for it. Between scoring lower on the academic ranking, and feeling annoyed that the academic jobs are out of my reach, I’m grumpy. Depression sucks. It really does.

I know it’s ugly, I know it’s wrong, but sometimes, sometimes I get so bloody fed up of all of this. I’m fed up of finding excuses every single week to a different consultant as to why I need time off. I’m fed up of having to constantly evaluate myself and my performance and measure it against a scale, and find myself wanting. I’m in mourning that not only did I lose last year to it, it’s still impacting me now. It’s changed my future. It’s still got me, tethered. I know that ‘poor little me-ing’ does no one any favours – but today, I’m upset and annoyed. Today, I’m just wishing that depression never happened to me. Today, I’m just wishing it would bugger off and let me be. I’m sick of struggling to breathe against it. I’m sick of living with it. I just want it gone. I just want to move on.

Magic bullets, this way please!

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Green-eyed and grumpy

I’ve had a nice weekend off, seeing a few friends and chairing the meeting for a new medical school mentoring scheme I’m heading up. I rounded things off with an evening service at church, but found myself not quite at ease as I listened and sang.

I’m back in counselling tomorrow afternoon and it’s been quite tricky sorting my timetable at the GP’s to get the time off – and after spending a few days with them, am not really that keen on being completely honest about why I need it. I’m also just getting completely fed up of having to always, always be thinking about how to get the afternoons off I need, where my next attachment will be (and whether I can get back from it for counselling), of knowing that on Monday evenings, I may well be capable of no more than collapsing in a heap and crying. I’m fed up of having to keep marching to this constant drum. I’m fed up of being constrained, first by depression and now by recovery.

I was sitting in front of a girl in my medical year tonight, and sometimes, I just feel so jealous – jealous that other people haven’t had to deal with juggling depression and medical school, recovery and medical school, counselling and medical school. I get envious about the things I miss out on, as for example, I can’t go to a lot of the teaching hospitals at the moment as I would’t be able to get back in time on Mondays, so am stuck in the city. Recovery, as so many of you will know, takes so much time and so much effort. Sometimes, I really do just get a fit of the ‘poor-little-me’s’ and want to say, why, why is is me that was brought down in this way, why was it my life that had a year, if not more, completely wiped out of it, why is my grades that, after four years of working so hard to stay in the top end of the year, have now slipped, thanks to last year? Why is it my life that was turned upside down, my mind and reason that went AWOL, my body, that didn’t take well to medication? The list goes on.

I know, so well, that it’s pointless looking and envying people. A lot of people, if not all, have significant struggles to work against. A lot of students take a hit from illness of one sort or another. A lot of people go off to counselling and survive to tell the tale. I’m not usually one prone to self-obsession (that would be my older sister). And yet, sometimes, I just feel so frustrated I want to cry. I feel so tired of this ‘journey’ that I want to sit at the side of the road, and not move another inch. I want to hang up my hat, turn in my chips, leave it, leave it all behind. I don’t care, for the reasoning that for all I know, this girl, or anyone in my year, probably has a shedload of stuff going on, behind closed doors. I don’t care, for the reasoning that no one had a clue that I was falling apart last year, so how can I assume things about anyone else? I don’t care, that it’s unfair, unjust, unreasonable to crack out the envy and let it seethe. I don’t care, that having the odd hissy fit at God, won’t get me anywhere. Sometimes, I just have to hiss. I just have to stamp my feet and let it out.

I think part of it is that at the moment, I’m feeling quite alone in all this. Sometimes I wish that I had a family who rallied round and helped me through things, rather than the dysfunctional, corrosive one I have. I get fed up sometimes, of managing on my own. Sometimes, like at the moment, when I’m having a few days of feeling oh-so-vulnerable, oh-so-easily wounded, all I want is someone to take it all away and help me know what to do. Last year proved that I’m not always good at making my own decisions, and as a result, I don’t feel quite as capable or invincible as I did before. Walking wounded. After the whole run in with the substance-misuse doctor the other week, it’s as though all my armour has been stripped away and suddenly, it’s only to obvious to the world that I am defenceless, fragile and not quite as bullet-proof as I’d have it believe. I’m back to square one again. I hate square one. Sometimes, depression feels like a game of snakes and ladders, but with no ladders and extra snakes. It’s hard enough to stay in one place, let alone move forward.

God – please help me stop being so grumpy and ill-thinking. Please help me see the way through this. Please help me keep my eyes fixed on you, and not on things I can’t change. And please don’t let counselling finish me off. Love, Char48.

So – let’s hope that this week isn’t quite as grumpy as the last.

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Painfully fragile

It’s not been a good day. I was in clinic this morning and was already feeling cross as the junior doctor I was sitting in with didn’t seem to think it was important to tackle the fact that one of the patients was drinking 16 units a day, and had what his GP called ‘unexplained stomach trouble’. You don’t need a medical degree to join the dots, sometimes. It needed sorting out. It’s tough, asking about drinking, especially as ‘problem drinkers’ don’t exactly respond well – but at the end of the day, it’s in the job description. Sort. It. Out.

At lunchtime my current hospital had a talk scheduled from.  one of the mid-grade doctors who was speaking on ‘how health professionals can stay healthy’. Most of it centred on his battle with dependancy on alcohol, prescription opiates, and non-prescription drugs. Let me be clear that I’m so impressed that he’s now off everything, giving back to the abstinence programme he went through, getting his career on track, and is brave enough to stand up and say what he did in front of colleagues – it’s brilliant.

However, what is not brilliant is being taken aside at the end and told I didn’t look as though I was engaging with his talk, and was it because I have the mistaken view that addiction is not a disease, and certainly not one doctors get? Because, you know, it could happen to me too….

Excuse me, for getting angry when he said that although he has not used since the birth of his son, that his son is not why he abstains – his own self-love, is. Excuse me for not wanting to look in depth at his AA keyrings (which are given at certain time points of abstinence – a month/two months etc) when I’ve seen my dad come back with them enough times, and when he falls off the wagon, start over. Those keyrings represent a lot of achievement, but they also represent a family who are waiting on eggshells for someone to start again, at the beginning, and plunge everything back to uncertainty. They represent months of children being neglected as they are less important than sobriety, which is  just one more thing they love more that you.

I’m sorry, but I believe that when you chose to bring a child into this world and raise them, they should be your first priority. Call me an idealist, call me old fashioned, but if you don’t want to do that, give that child to someone who will. Parents should be staying sober for them, over themselves. They should be protecting them. My father loved his whiskey more than he loved us. My mother loved our reputation as a clean living, achieving family, more than she loved us. Yes, you get sober – but the first reason should be for your children and spouse, who’s lives you have turned upside down. Otherwise, you’re just chosing yourself again, as always. This doctor said he stayed sober for himself, not his young son. I have an issue with that.

I know that substance use, misuse and dependancy is something I struggle with, and I have worked to tackle this head on by doing placements, projects and assignments within the field of substance misuse medicine. I do not bury my head in the sand. I tackle my issues head on. Sometimes I learn a valuable lesson. Other times, like today, I get completely incinerated. I don’t need some evangelist for recovery telling me about the difficulties he’s had; I’ve seen it. I’ve come through it. I remember it, every time I see someone drink more than they should, every time I have a sip of wine, and every time I don’t, because I know that it will be too much, too painful for me. Coming off alcohol and other drugs is so difficult. I have a lot of respect for those who manage it, including my dad, and I will correct anyone who claims otherwise, who claims that it’s just a weakness of will, and that  people chose a life of dependancy. Just don’t expect me to congratulate anyone for sorting their life out and leaving their family in the lurch. My dad is sober at the moment, yet I am in recovery from depression not entirely unconnected to his prior habits and am still tethered to counselling. His drinking has left me scarred and scared. His addiction has painted me black, too. It, among with other things along the way, broke me and I still don’t know if I’ll ever achieve that elusive ‘wholeness’. I don’t know if I’ll ever stop bleeding out and hurting. The effects don’t stop when someone puts down a glass for the (yet another) final time. The damage grows and continues. It continues to infect and supporates in quiet corners, in quiet people.

So – I’m feeling pretty fragile today. Strangely enough, this time I didn’t seek it out, the pain just found me. It’s never far away. I know that recovery from depression is a tale of hills and valleys, a trail that we follow for months – but I was hoping for just a few more days in a row without crying. I was hoping for a few less reasons to feel that once again, I just can’t handle parts of this world we’re in. I’m trapped again. I hate that out of nowhere, my issues with drinking spring up and crowd me out. I was upset enough that I left the ward early. I never do that. It got the better of me. It beat me. I can’t, can never, let it beat me.

The odd thing is that the other day, I was back in counselling after a month off and we were talking about drinking, and L (counsellor) asked if I would seek a medical specialty that didn’t have a large number of patients with substance issues – and I said, and stick by it, that although I wouldn’t dedicate myself to it, I want to be part of the solution to this. I want to give something positive back. I want to help people get clean. I want to stop the cycles and the sickness that flows through families. I will not bury my head in the sand. I tackle my issues head on.

Today, though, it was a bit much and I could do with a hug but am home alone.

God, how long is this going to be too much? How long?

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