Drugs, Diagnosis and Meeting

Last night my doctor met with my parents again, he was kind enough to let me sit this one out as last time was a disaster. The meeting seems to have gone well, he got information from them about me and they got to hear some things that I don’t have the strength to tell them. I am having another drug increase, this time of the pristiq, that’s the antidepressant. Last time I was on this higher dose it made me quite agitated and sped up my heart but the Seroquel should take care of that this time. When my antidepressant dose changes I tend to be a little wild for a few weeks so please forgive any insane posts or conversations for those of you who talk to me. Doctor finally told me that I do have borderline personality disorder, on top of anxiety and depression. Borderline is a tricky beast and I can’t explain it to you, if you’re interested Sane has a good factsheet about it.

I’ll probably be in hospital for another few weeks - it’s one week today. Please visit me, I’ve not had many.

Three Months On

It is three months today – well tonight around 8pm – since I lost my love, my M. Since coming to hospital this time around I haven’t shed a tear, whereas even up to the day before admission I was crying heavily every day. I don’t know if I’ve suddenly got over the whole ordeal, just a little bit, or if I’ve buried the hurt further than I had been able to. I am leaning toward the latter due to the suddenness of the change. Although this may not be a good thing I am enjoying not seeing that ghastly creature with puffy eyes staring back at me from the mirror.

One good thing has come out of the breakup and that is the discovery of my new church, I wouldn’t have found it without the suggestion from pastoral carer here, and I wouldn’t have come here without the breakup. In the next few months I hope to find a nice place to rent near church, somewhere I can share with two other people and where I can have a dog and my precious cat. I don’t have a dog yet so I also hope to get a Great Dane puppy in the next few months, the house will have to come first. That is my ideal plan, I also have a more sinister plan which tempts me greatly, but which I am terrified of. At this point in my life I wish I knew nothing of God, had never heard of Jesus and thought there was no eternity; under these circumstances I would happily take my own life today, but I am blessed to know the Lord. The blessing is also a burden, for I know that eternity can either be very good or very bad. I don’t believe that suicide sends one right to hell, but I don’t want my last act on earth to be sinful and I haven’t done much in my life to please God, I’ve accepted salvation and rested on my behind ever since, I think that would place me on the periphery of Heaven.

I don’t know if I have the strength to battle on through this illness and I don’t know if I have the courage to end my life, knowing that it won’t actually be the end. I am truly stuck.

Sorry for the depressing post, I’ll try to write something chirpier next time. K.

Hospital Food

The food in here varies more than you could imagine. Last time I was here I had one of the best roast dinners I’ve had the fortune to consume, but also some of the blandest and outright revolting food I’ve come across. The food so far in this admission has been rather pleasant. Today for lunch I had roast lamb and salad in a mountain bread wrap and I asked for some of the roast potatoes which were meant to accompany the other meal. The wrap was quite nice, but the potatoes were amazing, simple, yes, but so good. I’ve always had a thing for potatoes, I couldn’t live off them as I’m sure they lack nearly everything one needs to survive, but I could definitely eat them every day.

Day Four

I write this at the end of my fourth day in hospital, I’ve seen more familiar faces and plenty of fresh ones. I hate my therapy group and look forward to there being an available place in art therapy, the talking groups run at a snail’s pace and I feel slightly insulted by them, plus I disagree with a lot of what is said. I understand that a therapist can’t stand up and say that all hope is lost and we should prepare for a mass suicide, but they are overly optimistic and I don’t think there’s much truth to what they say. From a Christian point of view the therapy is crappy too, very self focused; I suppose you can’t expect much else from secular therapy. I think I’ll sit therapy out until I can get into the art one and have a chat with the pastoral carer on Friday to make up for my absences, my doctor may not like this approach though.

I had a nice chat with a patient today I will call him R. R was here last time I was and was re-admitted one day before I was this time around, he seems very friendly and smart, he’s the first person I’ve spoken with at length since admission so it was a breath of fresh air, I hope to speak with him more in future, though this may be hard since I rarely leave my room.

My night time medication was increased by 50% last night, this is Seroquel, the drug which sends me to sleep whether or not I’m lying down (refer to 8/6/10 post Seroquel and 11/6/10 post Seroquel 2). I’ve read about the drug many times, but I don’t know what it actually does for me except send me to sleep. My doctor is keen to change the antidepressant too, this scares me a little because it means I have three weeks of dizziness and wild moods to endure and then it’s entirely possible it won’t be the right drug for me and will have to be changed again. This is all too much for a K to deal with.

Please visit, it’s lonely here, just contact me first for details and to make sure I’m up to seeing people.

Familiar Faces

I thought it was a little soon for me to be back in hospital, I’d only been out seven weeks. Imagine my surprise when the first person I saw when I walked through the door was here last time, then on my way to my room I almost bumped into another person from last time, a lovely lady who was in my art therapy class. Over the course of the past two days I have seen no less than six people I recognise, some of them I suspect have not been home at all.

I think I’ll be here longer than I initially thought. My doctor wants to change my medication and mentioned a ‘non medication alternative’, which I’m hoping isn’t ECT, but apparently it is very effective...

I don’t have much else to say yet. It gets a little lonely here so feel free to visit. I’m not going to post details on the blog, so private message me through facebook or send a good old fashioned email and I’ll give you the visiting hours and name and location of the hospital. If any of you have invented an invisibility and muting collar for animals I am still in need of one, I was unable to find one during my last minute shopping trip.

Rush

This had to be done in a hurry because until today I thought I'd be going in early next week, at 6:30 tonight the hospital called and asked me to be there at 10am tomorrow!

Pre-Admission Shopping List

• Mattress topper in-case I am put in one of the nice new rooms with the rock hard beds. Refer to 23/6/10 post Five Mattress Protectors Don’t Make a Hard Bed Soft

• Ear Plugs in-case I am put in one of the rooms near the nurses station or one of the rooms near the main road.

• New earphones, the apple ones are too big for my ears and constantly fall out and my awesome koss ones got damaged from me sleeping with them on last time I was in hospital.

• New summer pyjamas in-case I am in one of the nice new rooms with the rock hard beds and the central heating which doesn’t get turned down at night.

• A big knife to defend my-self from the mean en-suite heater hog in the room next door, who wants to kill me in my sleep, (Refer to 22/6/10 post The New, New Room) this will need to be carefully concealed to get past the admission bag check, any smuggling tips would be greatly appreciated.

• New winter pyjamas and slippers, these were bought for me last time and they are far too bright, pink slippers and bright blue pyjamas – yuk!

• Tea and coffee bags, they have bad tea and only instant coffee, but there’s a great cafe only a short walk away.

• Something to make my room smell pleasant.

• An invisibility and muting collar for Lester so he can come with me.

• Hand soap, you’d think being a hospital and all they’d be pro clean hands, but no. Provide your own soap or it’s gastro for you my lovelies.

• Chocolate, just a little bit, they feed us far too much in there.

• Audio books, don’t have the brain power to remember anything I read so hopefully these will help me not rot my mind with movies and television

• And after that last comment about rotting my mind... A handful of weekly movie rentals

Hi Ho Hi Ho It's Back to Hos-pit-al I go

So I mentioned yesterday that I had some not so great news... Following some disastrous home decorating it has been strongly suggested that I return to hospital this week. I wanted to wait until I had confirmation before posting it on the blog, but it still seems a little up in the air regarding admission date. It could be as early as tomorrow if some other person’s discharge meeting goes well, otherwise it should be early next week. Hopefully I won’t be in there for a month this time, but I think a short break from reality will be good for me.

Boring K

Sorry I haven’t been posting as often lately, I don’t feel I have anything of worth to say, all I can offer you right now is a little update.

My time has been spent driving between appointments, working on my art therapy book and wasting time watching television shows on my laptop. I’ve finished Six Feet Under and Lost, and I’ve watched seasons one and two of United States of Tara. Church is still going well, small group is great – although I wagged last week – and the people are lovely. I have a new friend who I will call F and she lives only three buildings down from me, we get along really well. My last three Friday afternoons have been spent teaching drama to 8-11 year-olds at a drama school I went to as a child. It was only voluntary work but I need to learn some teaching skills, it’s over for now but I might return next year, I’ll explain why that’s over in my next post. I have a little news of the not so good variety.

Alcoholic Flowers

I wanted to drown my sorrows so a couple of friends and I went to a local liquor store, it’s just a quiet, dingy stand alone shop in Monbulk. I went in alone whilst my friends went to get some bits and pieces from another shop, we left our circa 1985 blue van parked outside the liquor store. I wandered over to the red wine section and helped myself to a lovely bottle of shiraz which I proceeded to drink from the bottle as I searched for something appropriate to share with my friends. Over the course of about half an hour I wandered through the shop completely alone, the attendant was ducked behind the counter using the phone and there were no other customers. I finally chose a bottle of scotch and decided not to bother with another wine for my friends. I placed the wine - which I had been drinking - and the scotch on the counter, as the attendant went to bag them we realised that I had already drunk all of the wine so I only needed to take the scotch with me. It occurred to me that I had consumed an entire bottle of wine in no longer than 30 minutes, I was filled with the undoubtable knowledge that I would never again feel the effects of alcohol, there would be no drowning of sorrows for I had become immune to the effects of alcohol. My attention was drawn back to the task at hand, I had to pay for the items before I could indulge in self pity. I worried that I may not have enough cash but my fears were allayed when I saw the eftpos machine. The total for the wine and scotch came in at exactly the amount of cash I had in my purse, but I thought it would be good to keep the cash so I paid with my card instead. My card was swiped through the machine, but it didn’t work. The attendant called to one of the other staff members, she came over but didn’t know what the problem was. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement to the left of the counter, an intoxicated, unkempt man stood up and walked to the back of the shop to use the lavatory, he was apparently another staff member. Considering how quiet the shop, and indeed the town is, there really is no need for three people to be rostered on at the same time. It would seem the man read my mind, for when he emerged from the lavatory he announced he was going home and walked out the front door. After a few more attempts at paying with my card it was clear that the eftpos machine was not going to work and I paid in cash, feeling very lucky to have the correct amount. Disappointed I left the shop with a light purse and a bottle of scotch. As I approached the van I saw that something was wrong, just in the half hour I’d been in the shop the van had been painted with childish looking flowers and trees, dismayed I walked around the van surveying the damage. I reached the back and found the culprits sitting inside the boot, they were three girls dressed in worn out loosely fitting clothes, their ages I could not guess. There was no anger in me, despite the damage they had caused to the van. I got in the van through the side door and sat with them to chat. They were local girls who lived at the end of the road which ran beside the liquor store, that road is very steep, so steep that a person can’t walk up or down it unaided, but somehow it is fine to drive on... The girls are from a very large family, there ere in excess of 15 children, I don’t know the exact number because the girls didn’t tell me, they just pointed to the big red van a few meters away and said the people in it were all their siblings, they were mostly young children, but there were a few teenagers too, they were all dressed alike, in worn out loosely fitted, light coloured clothes. The girls explained that the drunken man in the liquor store is their father and they had been sitting in the big red van waiting for him to finish work. They normally don’t leave their home, their parents prefer to keep them isolated, but this day they all went to work with dad. Despite leaving the shop, their father hadn’t yet returned to the van to take them home. I assumed that the girls would be very naive about the world, they had been home schooled and hardly left their home up on the steep, un-climbable hill. My assumption was wrong, despite their isolation they were very informed and held good conversation. The older of the girls, whose age I still don’t know had just returned from studying in the UK, it seems the enforced isolation has its limits, she was expecting some friends from uni to arrive in Australia later that day and was excited about them coming to stay with her family up the big steep hill. As we were getting into the conversation and starting to enjoy one another’s company their father returned and they had to go. I was saddened by the prospect of never seeing them again – I was not game to drive up that hill – but the older girl told me I’d see her the next day because our brothers are on the same football team, I just had to go and watch his game. I didn’t even know that my brother played football but I agreed to meet her there. The big red van full of children departed just as my friends got back from their shopping. My friends loved the floral additions to our old blue van. One of my friends went into the liquor store to use the lavatory while we waited for her in the van.

One of my milder dreams.

Mystery Man

As I walked from my car to the hospital today a young man approached me from the direction I was headed. I could tell as he approached that he was going to talk to me - I just hoped that he wouldn’t - sure enough as we got closer he opened his mouth and the following spewed forth:
Young Man: I’m going to Burwood
K: Oh
YM: It was a fake
K: looks confused
YM: Iron, my sisters iron but the plug... It was not a real plug, it was a fake, a fake plug.
K: Oh,  that sucks, ummm see ya
YM: Bye

Given the proximity to the hospital I assumed he was an inpatient going for a walk to the shops, just like I did nearly every day when I was there. The most troubling this about this scenario, though, is that I turned around only a couple of seconds after we’d finished talking and he was gone, he either ducked behind a fence really quickly or I imagined the whole thing. What sucks is that I doubt myself, I should be sure of what is real and what is not. Whilst I am quite sure the young man and the conversation were real, I am also aware that my dreams do tend to invade reality, I wonder if this was a micro sleep or something. I’m so sure it was real, it had to be.