Not a Hope in Hell

I saw the mental health nurse on Wednesday. I went in a total wreck. The breakdown had started at 7:30am, and continued through until the appointment at 3:30.

I was wearing pyjamas - a nightie with a cardigan and trackies thrown on. My hair was soaked and my clothes stuck to me, drenched with sweat and tears. I looked like I'd been beaten up. I was just a mess. So embarrassed. I was freaking out sitting in the waiting room, even though it wasn't overly busy, but thankfully the girls at the desk always find an empty office for me to hide in.

One of the first things she said to me was that there's "not a hope in hell" of her staying. But hey, at least she's honest.

All she can really do is try to transition people to new therapists, unless they're ready to be discharged, but it's hard when I won't see a psych.
"I can't. That was the whole point of seeing you instead in the first place."

"What did your GP suggest?"
"Nothing, really; except writing a letter."
She laughed "Yeah, it's a bit cute, a bit naïve."

I'm still going to try writing the letter though. I don't want her to leave, and I have to be able to say I tried, and my GP's still putting it together anyway. But at the end of the day it's a business decision. She said her colleague already tried talking to The Powers That Be, and nothing.

***
By the way, have I told you guys how amazing you are recently? Thank you, thank you, thank you all for your advice on my last post! I think I understand what sorta things I should write now. I need to set aside some time to write it, but thinking about it just makes my heart sink. I'll post what I'm writing, after my head can put it all together. I'd be so lost, in every way, without you wonderful people. This community never ceases to amaze me. So much love.
***

I slipped off my shoes and curled my knees up in front of me when she asked if there was anything I wanted to talk about.
"I just don't have anything to say any more."

She told me a lot of the back-story on why she was getting transferred to a different team. Admittedly I zoned out for a lot of it, but when she was talking about the system at large, she in passing mentioned the name of a different mental health nurse I used to see, and the conversation side-tracked.
"She was my case manager when I was like 15 or 16, after my first psych inpatient admission... She left..."
It was my first experience with the public system, and she left. My MHN is the only person on my team in the public system, and look where that got me...

Anyway, it turns out she went back to university, is now a Nurse Practitioner, and works privately at this other clinic one day a week. She can even write scripts, so maybe that'd take some of the pressure off seeing an actual psych. My GP wanted to refer me to the Psychiatrist on the Side (who my team gets advice from, knows my case well, and has ruling say on my meds) this month so I could start seeing her mid-year. But that was before we knew my MHN was leaving, so now I really don't expect it to happen that soon.

Why was it so hard to find another Mental Health nurse in the first place?! They just kept suggesting psychiatrists and psychologists. She said she could've sworn she'd mentioned this other MHN's name to me before.

Unfortunately the other MHN is at a different clinic. I mean, it's not impossible for me to get there, but the thought of having to do it on a regular basis?!

The other downside is that now I feel there's a lot of pressure to succeed. That I'm expected to get along with her and be able to talk with her, even though this was 6+ years ago that I last saw her. I don't remember if I opened up to her or if she helped me or not. My memory is very fuzzy, but I don't really remember ever talking to anyone before my current team.

And it doesn't help how I'm feeling now. I still don't want my MHN to go, I still feel like I'm being dropped off a cliff face, I still can't stop breaking down and crying. I don't feel any better at all.

Honestly? I think I've cried more over this therapist-breakup than I did when I broke up with my ex (the breakup that made me start blogging). At least then I didn't feel so void of hope.

My GP said no one was going to leave...

How can I believe that any more?

The past week or so has been a mess. Tears, self-harm, losing days to 12-hour breakdowns. Trying to keep myself distracted the rest of the time, when I really don't want to do anything at all. It took me three days to even write about the appointment in my journal. I played through Terranigma in a week, straight after finishing it the previous time, because I know it inside-out and it's a nostalgic favourite. Simple, braindead, couch potato things to suck the hours away. I just don't know what to do with myself.


And I mean it, you guys are amazing and I'd be utterly lost without you all. You get me through.


xxBella

18 Days

The Mental Health Nurse is leaving.

She told me that she's being moved to another team, and she's finishing at the end of February. But she already has holidays booked for February, so really it's the end of January.

Queue tears. But I can't say I wasn't expecting it.

I don't think I've cried during a therapist breakup before.

Yes, I'm frustrated that everything seems so aimless and I take so little away from each appointment, but it seems like I'd only just reached a point where I could say "this isn't helping, this is what I need you to help me with" when she first told me she'd be leaving. And I actually get along with her and can talk to her on some level. Not about problems or things that are bothering me, but I can hold a conversation with her about light subjects. As stupid as that sounds, I've never had that before.

"It's jut a shame that we've only had such a short time together. If I'd met you three years ago, then we would've had three years together and things might be different."

She said that normally at this point, they'd either look at discharge or referring me on to someone else, but they can't really do either with me because I'm so terrified of psychs... and getting past those issues was the whole point of working with a MH nurse first, but yeah, well... I just can't do it, the fear is so great. And it can't be out of the clinic, because it's one of my few safe spaces. There's no one else who fits the criteria of a) not being a psych (-ologist or -iatrist), and b) can work from my clinic.

There's no help and nothing I can do.

I didn't know if I should bother making another appointment, especially if it was just the one more. It would just be dragging out a painful process. I didn't even want to go to this appointment because I didn't want to face it to be honest. But then I remembered that my dietician is now away for the next few weeks, and I would be totally without support, so she made me three more weekly Wednesday appointments. The last day I see her is the 28th, the day after the dietician gets back.

I saw my GP the next day, and she's upset about it too. She's asking everyone to write a letter, myself included, that she'll send to The Powers That Be. It doesn't have to be long, even just a paragraph about what I hoped the MH nurse would help me with and why I need her. 

I'm a bit clueless as to where to even start. I feel like whatever I even start to write down is wrong.

I think it's got something do with agoraphobia, because she's the only mental health professional at my clinic. There's the issue of trust and consistency, that she's the first MH help I've had in years, the fact I can't just go see a psych. I don't know. Is any of it even relevant? What the hell am I supposed to write?

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated because the whole thing's just too much to process right now. The only option left is if The Powers That Be decide to listen to this letter my GP is putting together, and even then I don't have much hope.

Everything's changing and I don't like it. I'm just so lost. So stuck. I don't know what to do.

I'm sorry I've been so bad with updating this week. This year went to shit really fast and the last few days I haven't been functioning at all. I'm either breaking down in a blur of tears and self-harm or I'm sitting staring at the wall because I don't know what to do with myself..

To top things off, my phone screen broke this week, so reading and typing has been frustratingly slow so I haven't been able to get around to commenting as much as usual, but I just wanted to say thank you to you all for your support and kind messages. You guys are my lifeline. I honestly don't know what I'd do, or if I'd still even be here, if I didn't have this little blogosphere.

Oh, and I'm on my first round of antibiotics for my chest in 2015 already. Fan-fucking-tastic.

My new keychain, supporting The Butterfly Foundation.
It's about the only 'hope' I've got right now.

Even my strawberries have died.

xxBella

Reflection and Resolutions

The New Year is here. I was asleep at midnight after one Black Russian, and spent the night writing up my new intake and smoking notebooks for the year and finishing up the old ones.

I don't normally have New Years resolutions. In fact, I'm pretty sure last year was the first year I set a resolution. Last year I decided to set myself the challenge of getting out of the house once a month, excluding appointments. Overall I had nine outings, and missed four months.

In January I went out to pick up a new electric blanket do a little shopping.
In February I did a short walk at the You Yangs.

March, I finally got my second nipple piercing after being asymmetrical for the last three years.
Nothing in April, although I turned 21.
In May we went to the cheese factory in Warrnambool, and bought 8kg of cheese.

I didn't go out for a few months after that. In June I was admitted to hospital for a COPD exacerbation. It was my second admission for COPD, and I was there for eleven days.

There were quite a few experiences during this admission.
I had my first anesthesia. The Lung Doctor Man decided a bronchoscopy was necessary to take biospsies, after the first few days of the tests and treatments weren't doing anything.
I had two nurses and a doctor try to unscrew the balls on my nipple piercings for an x-ray because I hadn't taken them out before (leaving one in had been fine in the past).
And an arterial blood gas test to get a super accurate reading of my oxygen levels (this involved being stabbed in the wrist with a needle and blood spurting all over the bed and the doctor).

I had to remove all of my piercings for the tests

I've been on antibiotics more often than not this year. It's hard for me to define when infections begin and end, which isn't helped by their frequency. I'm never 100% sure if I'm actually sick until I see a doctor, or if it's just in my head.

I didn't go out again until the last day of August when we did another walk at the You Yangs.

I didn't go out in September.
Then in October I went out for dinner at an Indian restaurant with my mum, brother, and his fiance.
November we went back to Warrnambool to do some shopping, and of course stop at the cheese factory (add another 5kg of cheese).
And in December I tried-and-failed to go Christmas shopping, and also went out to dinner again at the same Indian restaurant.

This year my resolutions are to continue with my once-a-month agoraphobia challenge. I'm also going to try to save some money from each pay, which I've always been shocking at. I bought myself a lock-box a few weeks ago, and hopefully saving paper money will be more successful than banking it.

Last year my GP finally got me to see a mental health nurse, who I met in May. This was a huge step because I've been actively running from anyone from the mental health field for years, but my GP didn't give me much choice. Unfortunately, her job is now most likely disappearing early this year. I don't even know what to say here. It just all sucks.

I did a little bit of sewing last year. I made a couple of pin cushions, a couple of skirts, and the Tatters and Rags skirt, as well as starting a reproduction 1880s outfit, plus a few little secret projects I can't tell y'all about just yet. I'm trying to get back into it, but everything's just so hard.

As for my weight, I can't say for sure. In January I weighed in at 43.7kg, which was the last time I weighed myself at home. I know I've gone up and down a few kilos, but the dietician seems to think I'm still maintaining in the big picture.
I actually had a nightmare last week that I gained 15kg and she didn't tell me. But I trust her, and she's always said she'll tell me when patterns start forming.

I think that's about it. It's been a pretty hard year. Worse than some, but not as hard as others. Like every year, I'm glad to see this one go but dreading the next one.

I wasn't too sure how to go about writing this post, as writing concisely about how I've been doing through the year and my mental health seems impossible, and I find myself getting confused about what belongs in this post and what doesn't.

I hope you all survived the holidays intact. I'm finding it hard to be optimistic, but at least the hardest part of the season is over.

Please note: I probably got very confused between this/next/last year, and I couldn't seem to write it chronologically, which kills me, but hopefully it was still comprehensible.


xxBella

Christmas 2014

So, Christmas is finally over.

I was up as early as usual on Christmas Day. We were cooking a whole leg of lamb as well as the chicken, and someone had to get it in the slow cooker at 5am so it'd be falling apart by 1pm. The lamb was kept simple, while the the chicken was done up with homemade stuffing and seasoned with fresh thyme and garlic. I also made duck fat potatoes and from-scratch gravies, both chicken and lamb.

The day itself was stressful. A lot of cooking and feeling exhausted. My brother's fiance came over, which was the first time we've had people in the house for a long time. There are a lot of contributing factors, but I just feel too vulnerable when there's so little safe space left in my world.

We had these new Christmas crackers this year, and as it turns out they're quite tough to break. Mum and I were holding hers, and I was like 'okay, just hold it still, pulling it will only lead to disaster'. But of course it led to disaster anyway.
When it did snap, my wrist flew back, whacked down on the wine glass on the table, sending the glass flying to the fate of smashing and spilling all over the carpet.
...and I never even got to open my cracker.

For the last week I've been falling asleep sitting up, unable to stay away for the duration of the day. I've only been getting on average 5 hours sleep the past few weeks, so I guess it's catching up.

The last few days have been pretty flat. I'm just too exhausted to do much at all. Time has come to mean nothing for the week surrounding Christmas. No meal times, no bed times, too many missed meds, cleaning at 5am, wrapping presents at midnight... no routine at all. 

I didn't end up doing as much baking as I'd planned. I skipped the sponge and cookies, and just made the two chocolate cakes, a triple batch of chocolate truffles, and a quadruple batch of caramel slice. We've also had so much chocolate around these past few weeks, it's unbelievable. We still have a lot left, but there's been 2kg of choc-coated peanuts, 2kg of Maltesers, 1kg of peppermint creams, a box of Favourites and a box of Roses, not to mention the chocolate for baking (the cakes alone had 1kg of chocolate between them)... so baking more wasn't a huge necessity.

I spent the day jingling as I walked, which is apparently nothing unusual on Christmas Day, as it was several hours before anyone noticed. I had a belt hidden under my cardigan, which I used to wear as a kid. At some point I put all these Christmas bells on it, and so it became my Christmas belt. My jingle belt.

Yesterday I looked through our old photo albums to find a photo of me wearing it as a kid. After much searching, I was starting to think that maybe there just wasn't a photo of me wearing it. Then I started looking earlier, and lo and behold, the very first photo in the album marked "1996-1997" shows me and my brother standing in the backyard of our old house, me wearing my red belt and him wearing a matching yellow belt, aged 3 and 5.

I gave my brother a Game of Thrones letter opener, but it makes the perfect sword for Sir Mini Milo

xxBella

The Final Countdown

Tomorrow's the day. It's Christmas Eve, and today has been a mad dash to make sure everything is organized. I don't really want to talk about it much right now. I just hate this time of year. I feel so... empty, so filled with regret.

It's been a busy week. On Sunday night I went out again. When I went out to dinner with my mum, brother, and his fiance a few months ago, it was decided we should do it again, next time with the addition of her parents.

I was stressing about it all week, but in the end I would've felt too guilty if I bailed out again. I won't go into detail, but they've been together for a few years now, and Sunday was the... third time I've seen her in that time. Yes, I'm a horrible person, I know, but such is anxiety. I hadn't seen her parents in even longer, maybe six or seven years.

I panicked when we got there. My brother was going to take us in first, before his fiance's family got there, but they were already seated when we arrived. It was okay, just not the Optimal Situation for Anxiety Minimization that I always like to plan for.
The idea of being in a group of more than 3-4 people is still just terrifying. How long's it been since I've sat in a group of six people?! Ugh. Five years, at least.

I felt pretty awkward for the first part of the night, but alcohol always helps, and boy did I have a lot of 'help'. I had a lot of trouble following conversations, too distracted estimating, sizing up, counting, and stressing about the food that comes without nutritional information.

Overall, I ate a pappadam, 1/4 naan bread, 3 spoonfuls of rice and 5 pieces of diced lamb from the rogan josh. I had maybe 600 calories plus the wine. I never eat that much in a sitting. I tasted a bite of the biryani and a different type of naan, but I wasn't feeling too adventurous at all, avoiding the 'new' dishes. We ordered a Nutella naan to share for dessert, and it was around then that everything went black.

I woke up at 4am the next morning, still dressed, wrapped in three blankets, covered in sweat. I went to have a shower, and the first thing I noticed was that I wasn't bloated. I was empty. That was the first sign I was sick the night before. Physically, I felt fine. My mum and brother kindly filled in the gaps over the course of the morning.

I told them I remembered having a glass more than half a bottle of wine (his fiance shared), then one extra glass...
"One glass?! More like three!"
What? No! Yes. I ordered an extra glass while the fiance finished her last glass, then we both had one each, and then I ordered a third one...
"So when did the Nutella naan come in?"
"After the second, during the third glass"
Whoops.

Thank you all for your feedback on my last post. I really do appreciate your support and care, more than I could ever express. I know a few of you mentioned supplements. My GP said to talk to the dietician about it, which I did yesterday. She hadn't received the news yet, and her face dropped when I told her my T-Scores.
"What does the GP want you to do with supplements?"
"...she said to talk to you."

After thinking about it for a while, she said she wants Jo to advise on calcium and vitamin D dosages because they'll be quite high. I still haven't been able to take the pills, and I'm not certain I'll be able to take the powders in my coffee with my Fibersure either, but we'll see what happens. She's going to call one of the ED psychs for advice, without mentioning my name, since he'd see it more often than my GP. She said some of her other patients with EDs and osteoporosis are on hormonal therapy, which was one of the 'recommended treatments' on the printout, but again my GP didn't really talk to me about it much at all.

I stacked her cheeses in a gift bag with a souveniour tea towel and fridge magnet draped over. She gave me the biggest hug.
"See, when I first met you, there's no way you'd have let me do that. I'm gonna enjoy it while I can." as she gave me another

And I actually went back a few hours later to deliver a chocolate cake a Christmas gift for the clinic. Over two days, I made two triple layer chocolate cakes, sandwiched with homemade buttercream and coated with semisweet ganache. It's a long story, but basically last year I took in a slice to give to my dietician, and in the process accidently crashed their Christmas party, so I decided I'd make them a whole one this year.

The whole week has been pretty busy and stressful. I'm losing entire days to panic attacks and breakdowns. I'm so overwhelmed, I don't have time to breakdown. I'm just exhausted. I want to crash so badly. After tomorrow I think I need to have at least one day of doing absolutely nothing and just hibernating.

I got all frocked up for dinner, and even wore my hair down since it wouldn't be getting blown around or messed up.

xxBella

Osteoporosis and Failed Outings

I saw my GP this morning. Among other things, she had the results of my bone density scan.

I have severe osteoporosis in my left femur, moderate in my right, and mild osteoporosis in my spine.*

We didn't talk much about it. The dietician is the better person to talk to about supplements and nutrition and exercise, obviously, but she wanted to give me the news first.

It's been a long time between scans for me. It didn't help that I had this referral sitting on the fridge for a year before I made the appointment. The last scan I has was in early 2011 in ED inpatient, just after I was diagnosed with Anorexia, at which point I hadn't been sick for even a full year. No one ever told me the results, and I don't think my GP even has a copy either, so I assume it was fine back then. 

It wasn't long until I was cracking jokes about hip replacements and fall risks. I said to mum, that at least now I have an excuse for my shamefully dwindling posture. Let's just hope I don't start losing my height.

*(According to the printout, a 'T-Score' below -1.0 is Osteopenia, and below -2.5 is Osteoporosis. My T-Scores were -3.7, -2.9 and -2.5)


Then there was the whole shopping trip fiasco on Sunday.

To be honest, I don't remember much of the day. I didn't realize until a couple of days later how little I remembered. It was shitty and full of stress, and the only crutch I had for dealing with breakdowns was my lorazepam. I didn't even think about how much it was adding up until I got home and realized I'd had six or seven. Normally I'd only have two, three on a particularly bad day, so I'm pretty sure that's why. It was just those stupid little triggers that seemed to send me spiralling.

The drive itself was nice. It's some two and a half hours each way, but thankfully mum likes driving and I like car trips. The scenery is beautiful. We drive inland (you can go via The Great Ocean Road, but it's a killer for my anxiety), so it's just lots of hills and paddocks and empty space.

I was looking for a gift for my brother, and we drove around for a while looking for different shops to try, but for each shop there was a reason not to go into it.
I did get my cheeses for the dietician though, eight different types of cheddar (photos below). Mum got another 5kg, unsurprisingly, so hopefully we'll be stocked for a while.


And on Tuesday I saw the mental health nurse. She was finding out later this week, but she seemed pretty definite that she'll be leaving in January or February. She thinks the senior doctors at the clinic will throw and uproar about the services being taken away, so they might be able to find a way to keep seeing a select number of patients, but it's all a case of 'wait and see'.

Going somewhere else just isn't an option from me.

It just sucks. For a bit of history, I started seeing the dietician in June 2012. At that point, it'd been nearly two years since I'd seen a doctor. It took me 8 months of her pushing to get me to start seeing a GP. After that, it was another 16 months before I could see the mental health nurse, who I only met this June. Apart from hospital and sections, I hadn't seen anyone from the mental health field for so many years... maybe five? And now it's all going to shit.

Everything just feels hopeless. There is no plan, no path, no one to help.

The whole week's been pretty hard. My mood's been plummeting and I haven't slept much at all the past three nights. Sorry for the disjointed post. Finding words is like pulling teeth. I warned mum last week that I'm liable to cry because of anything and everything right now, and I am.

Boo the Bunny stowing away in my bag

There's three types of plain cheddar - Tasty, Extra Tasty and Vintage. Then there's the flavoured cheddars...

To show you what they look like; left to right, top then bottom, these are Tomato & Chive, Garlic & Pepper, Chilli, Cracked Pepper, and Herbs & Spice cheeses.

This is probably the last I'll post before Christmas, so if I don't have the opportunity otherwise, I'd like to wish you all a safe and happy Christmas, even though I know that's a longshot for a lot of us.

All my love,

xxBella

'Tis the Season

It's that time of year again. I've been kind of avoiding even talking about it until now. Part of me wishes I could just go to sleep, skip it all and wake up in January.

I finally put up the mini Christmas tree yesterday. Better late than never. I kept Misty with me and teased her with tinsel and baubles to lighten the mood a little.

It just makes me sad, and I don't know why it makes me so sad. It always has. I've sat here for ages trying to write some sort of coherent reasons as to why, but the words aren't coming. I don't know how to explain how I feel.

Seeing all the decorations around when I go out in the car, trees, hearing carols on the radio and the hype on TV for the last month or so,.. it starts to feels like something that happens to the rest of the world but not me. I can only see it through glass. Even with the few half-hearted decorations I put up, it feels empty.
I try to be a part of it, try to find the happiness and joy that's supposed to come alongside the holiday, but each year I just feel sadder and sadder.

On top of it all, I feel so unorganized, so overwhelmed. I'm struggling to write my Christmas cards because I don't want to accept that it's only two weeks away, that the New Year's nearly here.

I don't even know where this post is going.

I'm trying to plan my last outing for the year, sometime in the next week, which is more of a chore than anything else. I've quickly run out of time to reliably order presents online, so mum and I are going on a drive to pick up some things. We were planning to go today but I just didn't feel up to it.

Going out locally is still too terrifying to face, so we're going to go on a bit of a day trip. We're also going to go by the cheese factory so I can get a selection to make a little gift basket for the dietician. She's been so good to me for the past two and a half years, it feels important to give her something, and she loved the wax-coated vintage cheddar I bought her after one of our trips.
And besides, we kinda need more cheese soon anyway.

When I saw the dietician this week she told me she's going to be away for two weeks in January, meaning three weeks between appointments. Part of me is horribly anxious, but part of me is excited, and both for the same reason, because it means three weeks with no one to hold me accountable.
It's been a long time since she's missed an appointment, but I think it's only the second time in the 2.5 years I've been seeing her that she'll have been away for two weeks in a row.

xxBella