How Do I Begin To Tell The Story?

I fully intended to start writing about my encounter with the NHS mental health services but I realized that it wasn't going to be an easy or a quite task to start the ball rolling. This means that instead of sitting here in the library writing an informative post about how I ended up in hospital, I have been busy procrastinating and reading other people's blogs.

One of the problems with having been out of circulation and with very little access to a computer and the Internet is that I have become hopelessly out of date with some of the blogs that I like to read. Some prolific bloggers write several posts a day (I've even been amongst that number sometimes) but fortunately some write once or twice a week or even with less frequency. So today I have spent some time catching up with what I have missed over the last five and a half weeks and not been writing what I have promised.

The difficulty is that the whole experience has indicated to me how ill I had become without really being aware of it, and although I am definitely on the mend (can you say that about mental illness?) I still find thinking about how close I came to doing something stupid rather a scary prospect. This means that sitting here in the library writing these posts is perhaps not a particularly good idea if I don't want to cause a bit of a stir by sitting here crying onto the keyboard.

As a result of these thoughts I have decided that perhaps the best thing to do is to draft out the posts off-line, in the privacy of my room, and then publish them in the library when I come into town. The first instalment will cover the day that I went to see my GP, the decision to refer me to the hospital and the appalling way in which I was treated by the psychiatric staff in the A&E department.

Further posts will look at hospital food, nurses, recreation, stupid practices and the funny side of it all. Having to tell people that you have spent a month in hospital is bad enough, but telling them it was a mental hospital is even worse. But for all that, I have made at least one good friend (who I absolutely hated when I first met her) and have encountered one doctor who I would never hesitate to see in the future because of his compassion, consideration and humility. He wasn't bad looking either!

No Longer (A) Patient

It's official! I am free to live in the community again. My consultant was really pleased with my progress and has discharged me from the hospital. Yes, I know that I haven't been in it for a week but I was still officially a patient, and today I'm not.

I had to visit the ward today to collect two weeks of medication, but from now on I am back to getting all my various pills from my GP. While I was there I was also given my copy of my discharge summary.

Tomorrow will see the start of the posts about my experience as a 'mental' patient. I intend to cover everything that happened to me so if I repeat some of what I have already written I hope that you will excuse me. I want to see if my experience was the same as others or whether there is a definite difference in the standard of care that you can expect to receive depending where in the country that you are located.

So, all you readers out there who have mental health problems, or friends that have them, please read and comment on the posts as they appear so that I can build up a picture of what the service is like around the country.

It's Been A While

This is hopefully me starting to blog a little more frequently again. I have my laptop with me and I have logged into the free wi-fi set-up in the local library (well local to my assisted-living accommodation) so I don't have to book onto one of their computers which can be like 'rocking-horse manure' to get on to at times.

I have now been out of hospital for a week and things are improving as far as my mood is concerned, which is undoubtedly due to an increase in my medication, but I am still having problems with sleep. I either get to sleep quickly and then wake in the early hours of the morning and find myself unable to get back to sleep again, or I have problems getting to sleep so that it is almost dawn before I eventually drop off.

I have to go back to the hospital this afternoon for 'ward round' with my consultant and then I should be out on 'leave' for another week before I have to go back again. Next Monday I am due to start living at home again full time, rather than just visiting for a few hours several times a week.

I have actually been looking forward to getting back to the blogosphere and I really do appreciate all the lovely comments and emails that regular readers have been sending me. It is so heart-warming for someone who lives on their own to have so many friends out there sending messages of encouragement when you are not at your best. I really cannot express how much it has meant to me and how it has helped me during this very difficult period.

Things Didn't Go According To Plan

I'm afraid that I didn't manage a night at home last week because I was just too ill to be allowed off the ward. However, the increase in my medication has at last started to take effect and as a result I have left the ward on leave and I will be spending the next couple of weeks in assisted-living accommodation. This means that I am free to come and go as I please (no more electronically-locked doors), so I can spend some time at home, but also that I don't have to worry about cooking an evening meal and I have a room that I can retire to if I need to be alone and to sleep in.

I promise that I will pick up my laptop the next time that I visit home and will then try to write regular posts for the blog. I have so many things that I want to write about concerning my experiences over the last month that I can't wait to get back to regular blogging again.

A Big Thank You

I would like to say a very big thank you to all the kind people out there in the blogosphere who have sent me comments and emails over the last few weeks.

This has been a very difficult time for me and the mere fact that there are so many of you out there who I will never meet who have taken the time to write to me has been very heartwarming.

I'm having a few hours at home this evening and will shortly be preparing to return to the hospital. Tomorrow will see me attempting another night at home, which it is hoped will be more successful than last week. I think that I am a little better prepared and hopefully it won't be quite such a traumatic experience.

So, once again, THANK YOU, and I hope I will be back to regular blogging soon.

Still In Hospital

My consultant was a bit dismayed to hear that the ward staff had disregarded her instructions and tried to send me home for two nights instead of the few hours on the first day and then if I coped with that to allow me to spend a night at home. She knew what she had said, and I knew what she had said, but it seems that if a member of the ward staff hears incorrectly then I am not allowed to correct them; they are always right.

As a result I have spent the weekend back in the hospital again, but spending a few hours at home each day. At this afternoon's ward round I am going to ask to spend most of the day at home tomorrow, then the afternoon and evening at home on Wednesday before trying for another full night at home on Thursday.

The consultant was also very upset to find that they had sent me home from the ward without ensuring that any of the necessary support network had been set up; so that was another black mark for the ward staff.

I have a number of posts in my mind that I will be writing over the coming days and weeks, each of which will detail one aspect of the care and treatment (or lack of it) that I have received.

A Difficult Night

So I have spent a night at home. It was horrendous. Just about an hour of sleep and most of the night was spent crying, shaking and trying hard not to do anything too stupid.

I will shortly be going to the hospital again for Ward Round and I'm not sure how I am going to cope with it. I know that this was just a trial run at living on my own again, but I'm just not sure that I am ready yet. Those thoughts of suicide keep creeping into my mind and they are very difficult to shift. The fact that I can't concentrate on anything for more than a couple of minutes at a time means that I am still unable to stop the horrible thoughts invading and taking over my brain.

The problem is that today the policy is that mental illness should be treated in the community, but if you have no family and no developed support system, this can be very difficult to achieve. The change to my medication was only made on Monday and it really hasn't had a chance to kick in yet so I am left in the ridiculous situation of needing to spend more time in the hospital so that I can become more stable, but the probability that there won't be a bed for me when I say that I can't cope.

It is no wonder that so many people suffer from mental health problems for so long. Instead of being able to get well enough to be stable and able to cope with everyday life again in the atmosphere of a safe place, they end up being sent back home while still not well enough to look after themselves and thus more likely to need repeated admissions to hospital because they are never really well enough to have been turned out in the first place.

The Reason For My Silence

I've been a fairly regular blogger since I started this blog in June 2008. I don't write a post every day, but there is rarely a break of more than a couple of days, but regular visitors to this blog will have noticed a long period where I haven't added anything, even about my knitting.

The reason is that I continued to go downhill and I got to the stage where I became suicidal. I couldn't find a reason to carry on with life and even though I didn't actually do anything to harm myself, it became the foremost thing in my mind. Fortunately, I was still capable of doing the sensible thing so I went to see my GP who was so concerned that he referred me to the psychiatric staff at one of the local hospitals and I ended up becoming what is laughingly called an 'informal' patient at one of our psychiatric hospitals which means that I went in voluntarily rather than being 'sectioned' under the Mental Health Act. The local Mental Health Foundation Trust has seven psychiatric hospitals and which one you end up in depends on where you live within the area that the Trust covers.

So, I have been without access to a computer at a time when I probably had more material for the blog than I could possibly use, although whether anything that I wrote during the early days of my incarceration would make any sense is somewhat debatable. Anyway, I have been granted my first bit of home leave and tonight is going to be the first night at home for a few weeks. I have to go back to the hospital for Ward Round tomorrow, when my Consultant will obviously want to know how I have coped and whether I can be allowed to spend a few more days at home without resorting to doing myself any harm.

This has been a somewhat interesting experience for me because although I have suffered from severe depression for 11 years, and I have felt suicidal at one period in the past, I have never had such intimate dealings with the mental health services offered by the NHS. During this encounter I have met some really interesting people, some nice (including a paranoid schizophrenic who was a real pleasure to be on a ward with) and some who really frightened me and who I really wouldn't want to meet on the street. One thing that I have learned is that one of the worst places for encountering discrimination towards people with mental health problems can be a psychiatric hospital, and this discrimination comes from the staff. I have encountered a few really good mental nurses and a lot who were possibly more 'mental' than the patients that they were supposed to be looking after, and I was looked after for a few hours when I was initially admitted by a doctor who was incredibly kind and compassionate at a time when I was extremely vulnerable and completely overwhelmed by everything after having been left in limbo for about nine hours while the psychiatric staff at the hospital to which I was referred by my GP seemed incapable of doing the simplest things (such as ensuring that I was fed and watered; I had nothing to eat or drink in all that time). He made me a cup of tea and got me some toast and did all he could to put me at my ease while he took a detailed history and carried out a full medical examination. If he continues to exhibit this compassion as he progresses with his training as a psychiatrist then he will make a consultant whose patients will consider themselves very fortunate to be in his care.

I need some time to get my thoughts into focus again, but once that has happened I will write a series of posts about my experience and what was good and bad about it all. One thing that I have already decided is that I want to make sure that my voice is heard and that I want to do something to help ensure that those of us with mental health problems don't get 'treated by numbers' instead of being treated as an individual with rights and feelings that need to be taken into consideration in our treatment.

Just Reporting In

This is just a quick post so that you know I am still in the land of the living. Longer post with all the details of what has been happening to me to follow.

Feeling Desperate

I'm feeling pretty desperate at the moment. Nothing seems to be able to lift my spirits and I seem to be spending all my time crying.

Even knitting has taken a back seat.