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been out of circulation and with very little access to a computer and the Internet is that I have become hopelessly out of date with some of the blogs that I like to read.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!
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
A Day Of Milestones
Today could well be a day of two milestones for my blog. I can't believe that I have managed to keep it going and not run out of things to write about. I don't live a very exciting life, certainly nowhere near as exciting as my working life was, but I have managed to find things to write about on a regular basis since I started to blog, only missing a few days along the way.
By chance as I was looking at various blogs this morning I found someone whose blog I had never read before, and as she has only been blogging for a few weeks I decided to read all her posts. She suffers from mental illness, and it appears that she blogs for much the same reason as I do. To keep her mind active because she cannot work, and to find ways of helping non-sufferers know what it is like to live with mental illness, and the stigma and discrimination that we suffer. Whenever I find somebody new I always look at their blogroll to see whether there might be other blogs that I will find interesting. I was surprised to find that mine was there. I had not been aware of this blogger's existence, and yet it seems she knew about me.
So what about the milestones? Well, this post is the
th of the blog; and some said it would never last! And it is entirely likely that the visitor count is going to reach 
today. Yes, I think that we can call these milestones.
By chance as I was looking at various blogs this morning I found someone whose blog I had never read before, and as she has only been blogging for a few weeks I decided to read all her posts. She suffers from mental illness, and it appears that she blogs for much the same reason as I do. To keep her mind active because she cannot work, and to find ways of helping non-sufferers know what it is like to live with mental illness, and the stigma and discrimination that we suffer. Whenever I find somebody new I always look at their blogroll to see whether there might be other blogs that I will find interesting. I was surprised to find that mine was there. I had not been aware of this blogger's existence, and yet it seems she knew about me.
So what about the milestones? Well, this post is the
th of the blog; and some said it would never last! And it is entirely likely that the visitor count is going to reach today. Yes, I think that we can call these milestones.
Tuesday, 2 September 2008
How Do We Decide What To Write About?
We all write our blogs for different reasons, although for many it is a way of relieving some of the stress and frustration that we suffer from our day to day existence. For some it is a diary of what they do, places they visit, and people they meet. One of the largest blogging communities is the medical profession; whether it is medical students talking about the trials and tribulations of their years of studying, junior doctors telling us about their lives now that they have qualified and are having to put all that learning into practice, or as they move into specialties and how they see things from a different perspective and the post-graduate exams they have to take to gain specialist qualifications. Then there are the older doctors; the GPs who tell us about life as a GP and the things that are going on that are affecting the way in which they provide care for their patients, and the Consultants who write about their experiences and how the NHS is no longer the organisation that it was.
The nursing community also has a number of regular bloggers. There are student nurses and those that are qualified, those who work in general medicine and those who work in mental health. There are the paramedics who tell us about what happens to those who man the ambulances that ferry the sick and injured to hospital.
Then there is another group of bloggers who are neither doctors, nor nurses, nor those in the ambulance service. They all tend to have medical blogs on their blogrolls, and are often seen to post comments on medical blogs. They have just as strong views about the NHS as those that work in it, and are constantly frustrated by the things that this government is doing to the NHS. This group of bloggers are patients.
Many of these blogging patients suffer some form of mental illness (though this does not apply to all), and they blog for the same reasons as anybody else. They, too, require something to help them get through the stresses and frustrations of everyday living, but for many of those who suffer from mental illness, it is also a real attempt at a therapeutic process. I, as regular readers will know, am one of those bloggers.
Depression has ruined my life. I have been told a number of times to keep a diary recording how I feel, what I am thinking, and every other aspect of my life. Several times I have started to do this but I have always fallen by the wayside after only a few days. Then earlier in the summer, when I should have been studying but couldn't summon up the enthusiasm for it, I started to read a few blogs. Nothing specific to start with, just general interest to see what people were writing about and the sort of things that caused them to start writing a blog in the first place. After a while I decided to limit the blogs that I read to those written by people living in the British Isles. Perhaps this was a bit insular, but it was mainly because the things that they were writing about were easier for me to relate to.
Then I decided to have a go myself. I wondered how to go about it; I did the obvious thing and Googled it. After a few minutes I realised that if I used Google Blogger I could be working at my own blog in a matter of minutes, so I chose my template, added a couple of widgets, and wrote my first post. I didn't tell anyone about it, it was one of those things that I started and wanted to see if I would continue with before I said anything to anyone. Anyway I was writing it anonymously and to tell people about it would mean that I had lost the anonymity that I had created for myself. This was going to be a means of me writing about whatever came into my mind, and if I didn't like it I could delete it, and no-one need know that I had written anything at all. There was one question that I pondered over though. If I wrote things and posted them on my blog they were no longer my private thoughts, they were there for other people to see. How did I feel about that? No problem, if I kept it anonymous, didn't use any names, then perhaps I could write things and if the unbelievable happened and somebody other than myself read them, they would undoubtedly have a very hard time trying to find out who I was. It wouldn't be impossible, but it wouldn't be easy.
The day I wrote my second post I found out that somebody had found my blog and read it. How did I know? Because they sent me a comment to the second post welcoming me to the blogosphere; that was the Witch Doctor and the mere fact that someone had read what I had written made me feel good. As I read more blogs I started to gain a little in confidence and started to leave comment on them when there were things that struck a chord with me. Then I started to write more posts myself. Usually one a day, very often because of something that was in the news, or something about the way that I was feeling and how it was affecting me. After a few more posts I had another comment. This time it was the Jobbing Doctor who thanked me for writing the post that he had commented on and that he was going to make a link to it in a post of his own. Two comments, and both from the medical profession. It just goes to show what really nice people they are. Then I found out that Dr Grumble had added the post to his shared items. Another nice doctor. Why was this government so intent in trying to turn the public against doctors?
More posts followed, the subject matter varied as things struck me as being worthy of being written about. How I felt missing my god-daughter's wedding, how difficult it was when you live on your own and you have something that makes it difficult for you to do things, my anger at the government's decision to stop students who were studying for an equal or lower degree to one they already held, and the catastrophic effect that this could have on those of us who study with the Open University. The comments started to come in more frequently and I found that there were people who seemed to be reading my blog on a regular basis.
Then I wrote a post that came from the heart. it was entitled 'How To Deal With Meeting A Person With Depression.' I put a lot of thought into this post, it was something that I feel passionately about. The fact that those with depression and other mental illnesses are treated with so much fear and discrimination is terrible, especially once you know how many people will suffer from depression during their lifetime. This post attracted comments from Nice Lady Doctor, and from as far afield as Australia (a medical student) and New Zealand (a patient with bipolar depression), and the Jobbing Doctor put it as one of his shared items.
I've continued to write posts to my blog. This has proved to be far more long-lasting than the attempts that I had made at keeping a diary, and it was certainly proving therapeutic. At the beginning of May I had started psychotherapy; this has been the subject of a couple of posts and for anyone who has read them they try to give an idea of how difficult it can be. The combination of psychotherapy and this blog have made a difference to me; I'm still depressed, but I have found out a lot about myself and found a way of expressing myself that helps to raise my mood.
The number of blogs that I read regularly has continued to grow, there are a couple of bloggers who now know who I am and we correspond outside of our blogs and this enables us to encourage each other without the need for anonymity. We'll probably never meet, but that doesn't matter, for we have forged a friendship that can easily be carried on at a distance and is not considered unusual because of differences in our ages, or the fact that we are disabled in some way.
Us bloggers are all different, we have different interests and different things that we care about, but we all find the time to let other people know that we do care about those things and that we do not want them to be changed or destroyed without us putting up a fight. We also let others know what life throws at us and how we deal with it in the hope that someone else might benefit from our experiences.
So that is how we decide what to write about. We write about life in all its various guises and we try to write about the wrongs that are committed by others. Simple, isn't it?
The nursing community also has a number of regular bloggers. There are student nurses and those that are qualified, those who work in general medicine and those who work in mental health. There are the paramedics who tell us about what happens to those who man the ambulances that ferry the sick and injured to hospital.
Then there is another group of bloggers who are neither doctors, nor nurses, nor those in the ambulance service. They all tend to have medical blogs on their blogrolls, and are often seen to post comments on medical blogs. They have just as strong views about the NHS as those that work in it, and are constantly frustrated by the things that this government is doing to the NHS. This group of bloggers are patients.
Many of these blogging patients suffer some form of mental illness (though this does not apply to all), and they blog for the same reasons as anybody else. They, too, require something to help them get through the stresses and frustrations of everyday living, but for many of those who suffer from mental illness, it is also a real attempt at a therapeutic process. I, as regular readers will know, am one of those bloggers.
Depression has ruined my life. I have been told a number of times to keep a diary recording how I feel, what I am thinking, and every other aspect of my life. Several times I have started to do this but I have always fallen by the wayside after only a few days. Then earlier in the summer, when I should have been studying but couldn't summon up the enthusiasm for it, I started to read a few blogs. Nothing specific to start with, just general interest to see what people were writing about and the sort of things that caused them to start writing a blog in the first place. After a while I decided to limit the blogs that I read to those written by people living in the British Isles. Perhaps this was a bit insular, but it was mainly because the things that they were writing about were easier for me to relate to.
Then I decided to have a go myself. I wondered how to go about it; I did the obvious thing and Googled it. After a few minutes I realised that if I used Google Blogger I could be working at my own blog in a matter of minutes, so I chose my template, added a couple of widgets, and wrote my first post. I didn't tell anyone about it, it was one of those things that I started and wanted to see if I would continue with before I said anything to anyone. Anyway I was writing it anonymously and to tell people about it would mean that I had lost the anonymity that I had created for myself. This was going to be a means of me writing about whatever came into my mind, and if I didn't like it I could delete it, and no-one need know that I had written anything at all. There was one question that I pondered over though. If I wrote things and posted them on my blog they were no longer my private thoughts, they were there for other people to see. How did I feel about that? No problem, if I kept it anonymous, didn't use any names, then perhaps I could write things and if the unbelievable happened and somebody other than myself read them, they would undoubtedly have a very hard time trying to find out who I was. It wouldn't be impossible, but it wouldn't be easy.
The day I wrote my second post I found out that somebody had found my blog and read it. How did I know? Because they sent me a comment to the second post welcoming me to the blogosphere; that was the Witch Doctor and the mere fact that someone had read what I had written made me feel good. As I read more blogs I started to gain a little in confidence and started to leave comment on them when there were things that struck a chord with me. Then I started to write more posts myself. Usually one a day, very often because of something that was in the news, or something about the way that I was feeling and how it was affecting me. After a few more posts I had another comment. This time it was the Jobbing Doctor who thanked me for writing the post that he had commented on and that he was going to make a link to it in a post of his own. Two comments, and both from the medical profession. It just goes to show what really nice people they are. Then I found out that Dr Grumble had added the post to his shared items. Another nice doctor. Why was this government so intent in trying to turn the public against doctors?
More posts followed, the subject matter varied as things struck me as being worthy of being written about. How I felt missing my god-daughter's wedding, how difficult it was when you live on your own and you have something that makes it difficult for you to do things, my anger at the government's decision to stop students who were studying for an equal or lower degree to one they already held, and the catastrophic effect that this could have on those of us who study with the Open University. The comments started to come in more frequently and I found that there were people who seemed to be reading my blog on a regular basis.
Then I wrote a post that came from the heart. it was entitled 'How To Deal With Meeting A Person With Depression.' I put a lot of thought into this post, it was something that I feel passionately about. The fact that those with depression and other mental illnesses are treated with so much fear and discrimination is terrible, especially once you know how many people will suffer from depression during their lifetime. This post attracted comments from Nice Lady Doctor, and from as far afield as Australia (a medical student) and New Zealand (a patient with bipolar depression), and the Jobbing Doctor put it as one of his shared items.
I've continued to write posts to my blog. This has proved to be far more long-lasting than the attempts that I had made at keeping a diary, and it was certainly proving therapeutic. At the beginning of May I had started psychotherapy; this has been the subject of a couple of posts and for anyone who has read them they try to give an idea of how difficult it can be. The combination of psychotherapy and this blog have made a difference to me; I'm still depressed, but I have found out a lot about myself and found a way of expressing myself that helps to raise my mood.
The number of blogs that I read regularly has continued to grow, there are a couple of bloggers who now know who I am and we correspond outside of our blogs and this enables us to encourage each other without the need for anonymity. We'll probably never meet, but that doesn't matter, for we have forged a friendship that can easily be carried on at a distance and is not considered unusual because of differences in our ages, or the fact that we are disabled in some way.
Us bloggers are all different, we have different interests and different things that we care about, but we all find the time to let other people know that we do care about those things and that we do not want them to be changed or destroyed without us putting up a fight. We also let others know what life throws at us and how we deal with it in the hope that someone else might benefit from our experiences.
So that is how we decide what to write about. We write about life in all its various guises and we try to write about the wrongs that are committed by others. Simple, isn't it?
Thursday, 17 July 2008
Happiness Is ......
Happiness is, as the saying goes, different things to different people. I feel that it is a very long time since I could honestly say that I felt happy, but I am sure that as I come out of this period of depression that happiness is something that I will feel again. I suppose that is what keeps me going.
Since I have been writing this blog, a number of other bloggers have left me comments. Some have said that they liked a particular post, some of them have read all my posts and have added me to their blog list, and all of them have given me encouragement. One of them is Lemon whose blog can be found here. Lemon has left comments for me on several posts and has told me that she has added me to the list of those that she reads regularly, and that warms my heart a little. Actually, it warms my heart a lot, because after she had left what was, I think, her third comment, I sat down and read the whole of her blog. When I read her comments I knew very little about her, but having read her blog I realized that Lemon is a young lady for whom the compilation of her blog is a way of releasing some real frustrations that she feels because she is unwell, and nobody is absolutely sure what is wrong with her.
I'm sure that Lemon is happy sometimes, she does her best, but her illness makes her feel tired and she has lost much time at school and yesterday she made a post saying that she was sad and that her life seemed to be moving on without her. Having read her blog I felt that I had to leave her a comment; so I did. Lemon has been blogging for a little longer than me, and she is a very articulate young lady for her age, but no-one had ever commented on her blog before. When she read what I had written, I think it made her happy that someone had bothered to read her blog and taken the time to comment on it.
Some write their blogs as a form of diary of what they have been doing; some as a means of venting their frustration. Some hide behind a curtain of anonymity (for very good reasons). while others are quite open about who they are. But we all write our blogs in the hope that someone will read what we have written and find that they have something in common with us.
We are a strange group of people. We sit at our computers writing about all sorts of things, very often saying things that we would never dream of speaking out loud because we are too shy, or frightened to let others know what we are thinking. But the fact that we can remain relatively anonymous behind our blog names means that we can stand up and be counted over things that matter to us. The list of blogs that I read regularly grows daily as I find new ones that I may find interesting, and I am starting to make more comments on them as the days go by.
In this post I said how nice it is to be read. It is nice, but it can also start to bring happiness to one who is usually so down through no fault of their own.
Since I have been writing this blog, a number of other bloggers have left me comments. Some have said that they liked a particular post, some of them have read all my posts and have added me to their blog list, and all of them have given me encouragement. One of them is Lemon whose blog can be found here. Lemon has left comments for me on several posts and has told me that she has added me to the list of those that she reads regularly, and that warms my heart a little. Actually, it warms my heart a lot, because after she had left what was, I think, her third comment, I sat down and read the whole of her blog. When I read her comments I knew very little about her, but having read her blog I realized that Lemon is a young lady for whom the compilation of her blog is a way of releasing some real frustrations that she feels because she is unwell, and nobody is absolutely sure what is wrong with her.
I'm sure that Lemon is happy sometimes, she does her best, but her illness makes her feel tired and she has lost much time at school and yesterday she made a post saying that she was sad and that her life seemed to be moving on without her. Having read her blog I felt that I had to leave her a comment; so I did. Lemon has been blogging for a little longer than me, and she is a very articulate young lady for her age, but no-one had ever commented on her blog before. When she read what I had written, I think it made her happy that someone had bothered to read her blog and taken the time to comment on it.
Some write their blogs as a form of diary of what they have been doing; some as a means of venting their frustration. Some hide behind a curtain of anonymity (for very good reasons). while others are quite open about who they are. But we all write our blogs in the hope that someone will read what we have written and find that they have something in common with us.
We are a strange group of people. We sit at our computers writing about all sorts of things, very often saying things that we would never dream of speaking out loud because we are too shy, or frightened to let others know what we are thinking. But the fact that we can remain relatively anonymous behind our blog names means that we can stand up and be counted over things that matter to us. The list of blogs that I read regularly grows daily as I find new ones that I may find interesting, and I am starting to make more comments on them as the days go by.
In this post I said how nice it is to be read. It is nice, but it can also start to bring happiness to one who is usually so down through no fault of their own.
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