This morning I weigh 92.7 kilos, even though I ate very little yesterday. I basically lived on raisin crackers and cheese and wasn’t in the mood much for eating. I forgot to eat on time and had to remind my self to grab something quickly when I did get hungry.
Yesterday morning, after I wrote my post and walked the dog, I decided to start reading my older posts, so I started to read in the month July and I completely got hooked doing that. After I finished reading July, I cleaned up the kitchen, but then I decided to read June as well. It made for fascinating reading and before I knew it, it was time to walk the dog again and after I did that, Eduard came home again to watch the Tour de France. I felt sort of guilty for having sat there all morning having done nothing much but read my blog, but he didn’t seem to notice that I really should have vacuumed. I stopped reading June and Eduard took his turn behind the computer while he waited for the Tour to get started. I made myself a cup of Senseo and watched some of the preliminaries of the Tour and the big to do about Rasmussen having been kicked of the Rabo Bank Team.
Then I had a brilliant idea and asked Eduard if he would take some more photographs of me by natural light to see if these would turn out better. So he did that and I put on my best face and tried to smile becomingly. We took pictures of me with and without glasses and maybe one of them will turn out right and be posted on this blog. We also took some pictures of Jesker and we still have to take pictures of Toby to be posted here also. I also took some pictures of Eduard with his hair and beard trimmed and if they turn out well, I will post those also. Eduard is more photogenic than I am, so chances are they will show up here.
Then I continued reading my blog while Eduard watched the Tour. I was so fascinated by what I read, that I forgot everything around me and pretty soon it was four o’clock and Eduard had to leave, because he and a volunteer of his had an interview with a local TV station because the volunteer had been picked as Volunteer of the Month.
I briefly lost my Internet connection and the telephone and the TV also stopped working, so that was a perfect time to walk the dog again and when I came back, everything was working again and I picked up reading where I had left off.
Now, you are thinking, what is so fascinating about reading your own blog? But it was truly an experience. The further back I read, the less I remembered and the more I was surprised by what I had written. I thought I had been very even tempered these last months, but I saw lots of changes in my moods and in my ways of dealing with things and I saw how I sometimes got completely off the track and started having all sorts of convictions about things that later on cleared up magically. So, I still do get fixated ideas and I thought I didn’t have those anymore.
I kept reading into the evening and when it as ten o’clock, I realized I would have to stop, because it was getting late and I still had to make some cigarettes. I was getting a bit tired, but I called Eduard to find out what time he was getting home. Well, he said he wouldn’t be home until after midnight and that was a little late for me, so I ended up going to bed at eleven, after I made myself a lovely cup of foamy decaf. I was asleep very quickly and didn’t hear Eduard come home.
The good part is, that I read the blog all day long without once putting my reading glasses on.Yes, that’s right, I read the whole thing with my regular glasses! My eyes didn’t bother me once! The little bit of TV I watched went fine too, so maybe things are getting better with my eyes. I’ll have to watch more TV to make sure before I can make any pronouncements about it for sure.
In the past months my daily ratings have gone from fives to eights. Sometimes it is clear why my ratings go down, they are clearly influenced by an outside occurrence, but it is not always clear why they go up. Sometimes I worry very much about getting to bed on time, but at other times, this does not worry me at all and I do fine regardless of when I go to bed. I nitpick about my food and make an issue of that sometimes, when at other times I just eat and loose weight. Sometimes I am just a bit neurotic. I see I went through a bit of religious mania, although that may be too big of a word for that. It had grabbed me quite a bit and I was very convinced of it for awhile. I really and truly thought God was influencing daily events involving me and my loved ones and that I could influence that by going to the chapel often and praying fervently about those things. I am much more tempered about that now. Sometimes I don’t go to the chapel when I could. I see I had some hypo manic episodes that I didn’t recognize as such back then. When things definitely had a movie like quality. I also see that I got down in the dumps several times and that I saw things very somberly every now and then. When I was too contemplative and doubtful and insecure.
Well, it was all very interesting. I realize that I am in a good space now and I have been for some weeks. I give myself sevens without having to think about it much. Sometimes I get an eight.
I talked to my friend Lucien recently and she said how she was suddenly feeling so much better and that she thought that, looking back, she had actually been depressed for the past eight weeks or so. So, very often you don’t realize how bad a shape you are in until afterwards when you feel differently. If you keep functioning to some extent, you don’t realize how much you are not really doing well until it is over and you feel better and the depressed mood slides off you like a blanket off your shoulders. It’s like living with chronic pain and suddenly having that stop. Likewise, you learn to adapt to the depression like you would to chronic pain, you calculate it into your daily routine as far as that is possible. It does color your perspective though and you think much more pessimistically about things under those circumstances. The glass really is only half empty and getting emptier fast.
Yesterday I did clean the computer and the computer desk after I washed the dishes. It needed it badly. I took all the odds and ends of the desk and saw all the hair and the dust on it. I had kept putting off cleaning it. Things dirtify quickly here. Today I must vacuum, I have no excuse not to, even when the cats are sleeping peacefully and the vacuum cleaner scares them out of their sleep. The dog is so much easier, he stays put until I move him with the nozzle. My sister vacuums her dog, but I don’t think Jesker will go along with that.
God, it is so nice to drink coffee in the morning. I just can’t get enough of it first thing. I think I will have to take a nap today, because I woke up at five and I don’t think I got quite enough sleep yet. Eduard is the sleep master. He sleeps long and hard. I haven’t really slept well for many nights in a row for years. It is like I forgot how to do that. I have the odd normal night, but mostly they are very short.
When I was in the hospital and I couldn’t sleep, I would get up and talk with with the night nurse. She would allow this for a little while and then chase me off to bed again. Patients aren’t allowed up at night. When she was done with her rounds, I would sneak into the patients’ living room with a cup of tea and my cigarettes and get through the night that way. Inevitably she discovered me and sent me to bed again, but I just kept getting up while she watched TV in the nurses’ room. The nights are hard to get through in the hospital. The day times are better, because there are all sorts of planned activities and the meals and other patients to talk to. Some of
them are even more depressed than you are, but it does create a bond. You see some people who will never get better again and that is scary, because you don’t know what your destiny is going to be. You hope that the medication starts to work and that all the therapeutic activities will help you, but there are no guarantees.
The first time I was there, I was there for five months and I went from depression to hypo mania and then to normal after my medication had been adjusted. When I say normal, I mean as in acceptable, I don’t mean as in, there is Irene as she normally is. That person was gone. Going through an experience like that certainly alters your state of mind and it takes a long time to get over it. The hospital wasn’t a bad place to be. We were well looked after and well cared for. Sometimes things seemed unreasonable and slow, but in the end, the system worked and they did the best they could. I was a difficult patient. Rebellious and unreasonable when I was hypo manic and very immobile and passive when I was depressed. There were only ten patients there to take care of and each patient had her/his own room, so it was all very luxurious. The activities were well thought out, although when you are really depressed, you don’t appreciate that and it all seems senseless. It all does start to work after some time and you slowly do get better.
I haven’t been to the hospital for more than five years now, I think I am coming up on six years. I only go when I am very depressed and I can’t manage on my own at home. So, that has been awhile. I’ll knock on wood and hope I never have to go there again, but it is the best place to be when you are in dire straights. For awhile there this winter I felt like going there, when I was drinking a lot and I was waiting for the Topamax to start working. I was scared about being on my own then and getting through the day. My psychiatrist discouraged me from going and in the end I didn’t need to, as things quickly changed.
I don’t know how things are in psychiatric hospitals around the world. I was in a psychiatric ward once in California and it was all sort of archaic and run down and not very uplifting. This hospital here is good, as far as I can tell. All new buildings have been built now and I haven’t seen where the mood disorders are housed now. There is also the psychiatric ward of the hospital that is also quite nice and well run and has a friendly staff, although their activities are less intensive and less interesting. The woman that runs the activities center is actually kind of a bitch, but the only bitch working there. The rest of the staff is fine. Some of them you end up liking better than others, but that is normal.
I have heard that psychiatric care in England is not so good and I have met English psychiatric patients who were quite militant about their efforts to get good care. A lot of them sounded bitter about the system and I guess things aren’t that bad here then when you compare it.
Regional health services are a bit swamped and some of the psychiatrists don’t have enough time to spend with their patients, or clients as they prefer to call them. I am very lucky with my psychiatrist as he spent a lot of time with me when I needed it. I don’t know how he managed that. My first psychiatrist didn’t have the time and only wrote prescriptions basically, there was no real therapy. I don’t know if I need any therapy now. Sometimes I think I need to talk about my feelings about my mother, but I think there is no real rush or urgency. And I don’t think I necessarily need to talk to my psychiatrist, any other therapist will do. Someone with a good listening ear. I solve a lot of things just by writing this blog and talking to Eduard.
Well, speak of the devil…
Eduard is up now and I have to start my day. The second pot of coffee has been made. The dog has been walked in the meantime and the cats have been fed. I have been multi tasking again while you all thought I was just sitting here writing this post.
Have a wonderful day everybody, ciao…
Vacuuming the dog – a great idea, though not for timid dogs.
I was in a psychiatric hospital 20 years ago and it was a very frightening experience. I was too frightened to go to sleep as there were disturbed people wandering about at night. The they used the ‘chemical cosh’ which means that everyone lined up at night to receive pills which presumably zonked them out.
I had what my psychiatrist called ‘a serious nervous breakdown’ where I was delusional etc. However, I recovered and now lead a normal life, though the experience has left me a little odd, or what my son calls ‘Freaky’. I find my brain jumps about from one thing to another and sometimes I say funny things, which I can’t help. However that has not stopped me from raising a successful family, and being trusted by people.
In England at the present time they have something called ‘Care in the Community’, which is great in principle because it was a way of trying to get people out of the big forbidding hospitals, like the one I was in, but not so great in reality as it means that mentally ill people are left to their own devices living in flats and things on their own. Round and about Hull you often see mentally ill people doing things like directing the traffic on roundabouts or walking about with bikes carrying loads of carrier bags, being taunted by youths. I myself have chased off youths on a few occasions!
I don’t know what the answer is, though it is probably got something to do with money, and the fact that the mental health services do not get enough of it as they are what is termed the Cinderella Services, ie raggedy and unloved.
Mental health services are a strange thing. I think different things are considered to need treatment and incarceration in different countries. I have known people in the past who lived perfectly productive lives without any treatment at all, who would definitely have been taken to a psychiatrist in their teens, probably medicated and considered to have mental health problems in UK, just considered to be mad in other places I’ve lived, but not considered to be sick or in need of treatment.
Here we have the whole issue of sectioning and all that, of unwillingly treated people and of others who are desperate to be treated but who can’t get help. Patchy. One problem seems to be that so much of it is treatment rather than cure or help with coping with life. Just taking away unhelpful or unsocial symptoms. As Eleanor’s Mum says – care in the community is quite common now. I like that, I like to see the range of behaviour and I think it is good for ‘normal’ people to see and interact with people who have a different reality. Only for some, like a friend of our family, who is a danger to himself when he doesn’t take his medication and that’s what happens on a regular basis when he starts to feel better. He stops the tablets and then becomes very unstable, unhappy and dangerous. That is so sad, because on medication he is sort of withdrawn and druggy – loses all his edge and personality – like a sleepy person. So we never see the real him. He is either drugged or manic or delusional.
What I find really interesting is your own response to your past blog. When I first found you via your visits to me, I wanted to understand you so I read some of the earlier blogs. Then I realised you were far from them now – so I stopped reading them – your tone has altered so much. For one thing, you sound to be enjoying things, not just saying I should be happy really but I’m hopeless. It is great, I hope it is a long term thing, like Eleanor’s Mum – just something to keep you an individual person but not someone who struggles so hard with existence.
sorry – I deleted because for some strange reason the comment came up twice – not sure why – I find the technology odd sometimes.
LOL
You hope that people seek help on a voluntary basis and go to hospital on a voluntary basis also. Sometimes it can’t be helped and they need to be forced. There are people who can’t cope on their own, who need permanent help and permanent medication. It’s a shame when the medication also alters personality so much. Luckily I don’t have that problem. I apreciate Eleanor giving such a candid answer, adding to that, that it is important to be a unique person as long as you don’t suffer from it. I think people who really can’t cope here are still put in hospital, but you do see them during the day sometimes, wandering about town if they are allowed out. It does add to the local color. When I go to the hospital I only get put in with people who suffer from mood disorders, mostly people who suffer fromm depression, so it is not a scary experience mostly. They do keep all the different psychiatric problems seperated, so you are not confronted with people who are schyzophrenic for instance.