The other day I was talking about what a difference the increase in medication had made to me being able to get a good night's sleep. Okay, so some days I had real problems waking up and it could take me hours to get going, but at least I was not suffering night after night of just one or two hours of sleep and consequently feeling worse as each day and night passed.
Having told Dr M that things were going well as far as sleep was concerned, it is just typical that since then I have had a couple of bad nights. Thursday night, as I said yesterday, seemed to consist of me waking every hour. Last night was much worse. I could not get to sleep at all. I eventually managed to drop off at about 4am but I was awake again just after 6, and it was wide awake so I could not just turn over and fall back to sleep again.
The problem is that even just a few years ago I would have been able to shrug off a couple of nights where I had not slept and still keep going. But these days, that is not the case. I don't consider myself to be old, but I think that my body is starting to tell me that I am not as young as I once was.
I can remember a visit to my GP in Cambridgeshire some time before my 50th birthday. He told me that once I got to 50 my body would start to fall apart. He wasn't so far off with that statement either. I had recently been diagnosed as having Prinzmetal's angina, then just days before my 51st birthday (and my trip to Corfu) I was taken from work by ambulance and had emergency surgery to remove my gall bladder. Then a few months later I had to give up work and I started to suffer from an arthritic hip.
So, although I should be doing lots of other things, this afternoon I am going to try to get a couple of hours sleep. It might happen or it might not. If it does then I will undoubtedly feel a lot better than I do now, if it doesn't then I will just have to hope that I manage some sleep tonight. It may seem a little thing to many, but anyone who suffers from depression will tell you that it can be a very fine line between enough sleep and not enough. I may not be full of the joys of Spring at the moment, but I am better than I was a couple of months ago and I don't want to slip back to how I was feeling then.
Therefore, I will take sleep whenever I can, and blow the wasted hours. My health, particularly my mental health, is important and I need to do whatever is necessary to maintain the improvement.
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 April 2010
Thursday, 18 March 2010
Seeing Dr M
Although I started writing this blog to record how I was feeling and to document the methods that I use to try to help me when I sink into depression, I have also tried to make sure that it doesn't descend into a series of daily posts saying that I feel awful. I am still feeling as low as I did when I came out of hospital and I seem to be unable to do anything to lift myself out of this terrible blackness.
I went to see my consultant psychiatrist, Dr M, this morning. This was the appointment to make up for the one that was cancelled when I was in hospital. I arrived about 10 minutes before the time of my appointment and amazingly was called in immediately.
We had a long talk about how my mood has been since I last saw Dr M. I admitted that I am finding things very difficult at the moment. I am literally living each day as it comes. I make no plans in case I am unable to do the things that I have planned. I am very depressed all the time. I am not sleeping properly, nor are my eating habits anything like they should be. And while we were talking about all this, I burst into tears. We also talked about my recent time in the hospital and what had caused me to seek help.
Dr M has decided that I need significant help from the CMHT and is going to set that in motion. He has also decided that the dose of both the antidepressants that I take should be raised to maximum levels in an effort to both try to improve my mood and help me to get a proper night's sleep on a regular basis. I have to see him again in three weeks so that we can see whether there has been any improvement and if there hasn't, Dr M has said that a change of medication may be necessary to see if a different combination of drugs will bring about an improvement.
Having read of the problems that so many people with mental health problems have with their psychiatrists, I feel that I am very lucky in having Dr M as my consultant. He is very kind and he listens. Something that I know many people say that their psychiatrists don't do. There is no doubt that having confidence in the people who are responsible for your mental wellbeing can make a significant impact on how things go.
I went to see my consultant psychiatrist, Dr M, this morning. This was the appointment to make up for the one that was cancelled when I was in hospital. I arrived about 10 minutes before the time of my appointment and amazingly was called in immediately.
We had a long talk about how my mood has been since I last saw Dr M. I admitted that I am finding things very difficult at the moment. I am literally living each day as it comes. I make no plans in case I am unable to do the things that I have planned. I am very depressed all the time. I am not sleeping properly, nor are my eating habits anything like they should be. And while we were talking about all this, I burst into tears. We also talked about my recent time in the hospital and what had caused me to seek help.
Dr M has decided that I need significant help from the CMHT and is going to set that in motion. He has also decided that the dose of both the antidepressants that I take should be raised to maximum levels in an effort to both try to improve my mood and help me to get a proper night's sleep on a regular basis. I have to see him again in three weeks so that we can see whether there has been any improvement and if there hasn't, Dr M has said that a change of medication may be necessary to see if a different combination of drugs will bring about an improvement.
Having read of the problems that so many people with mental health problems have with their psychiatrists, I feel that I am very lucky in having Dr M as my consultant. He is very kind and he listens. Something that I know many people say that their psychiatrists don't do. There is no doubt that having confidence in the people who are responsible for your mental wellbeing can make a significant impact on how things go.
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Tackling The Mental Health Minefield Part 1- The A&E Fiasco
Things had been going downhill for a few weeks; I was feeling lower than I think that I had ever done before, even in the first days after my husband's death. I wasn't sleeping; I wasn't eating; and I rally couldn't see any reason to carry on living. For the first time in many years I was having suicidal thoughts. Fortunately, I had enough of my brain functioning properly to know that I need help, so I made an appointment to see my GP.
His immediate response on seeing the state that I was in was one of shock. He had hoped on my previous visit that I was doing quite well after my miserable month of anniversaries and the cancer scare with the lesion on my nose. This was a Madsadgirl that he had never seen before; a Madsadgirl who looked as though she hadn't slept for a month, who walked with a shuffling gait, who has tremulous hands and who could hardly speak because she couldn't stop crying.
The obvious question followed: what could have happened for me to be in the state that I was in? The answer was simple: nothing! I had descended into the pits of hell with no helping hand, and I couldn't find my way out. Life held no future that I considered worthwhile and the result was that I felt that I just wanted to die. The thing that saved me was that I didn't have the courage to actually carry out the act.
My GP decided that I needed specialist help and a stay in hospital. He wrote the referral letter there and then, printed it off with a selection of other documents that he felt were relevant, and I was soon on my way to hospital. I reported to the A&E reception and sat in the waiting area for a few minutes before hearing my named called out to be seen by the Triage Sister, who was lovely and very sympathetic. She made a quick phone call to the on-duty psychiatric nurse and then took me through to a room specially dedicated to psychiatric emergencies in the 'majors' department of A&E. She asked me if I would like something to drink and fetched me a cup of tea. That was the last sustenance that I was to receive for more than nine hours.
After about half an hour the on-duty psychiatric nurse arrived and proceeded to take a history, which was not altogether necessary as my GP had provided most of the information necessary with the referral letter because he had felt that the fewer questions that I had to answer, the better. It should have been apparent to anyone with a modicum of knowledge to determine that I was seriously unwell and that immediate hospitalization was necessary. But the nurse's suggestion was that I went home and that the Home Treatment Team would be in touch with me in a few days. "You wouldn't like it in hospital" she said. I was somewhat perplexed because whether I would like it or not, hospital was exactly where my GP had determined I should be.
I should explain that our local Mental Health Trust has seven hospitals and which one you are admitted to is determined by where you live and/or your age and the reason that you are being admitted. There is some logic to this approach because it means that all the follow-on support can be arranged easily. The intelligence of the psychiatric nurse must therefore be called into question as she spent the next four hours trying to get me admitted to the wrong hospital!
During this period she left me in the room in the 'majors' department never bothering to see how I was or whether I needed anything. She eventually returned and told me that I could not be admitted to the 'M' hospital as I lived in the wrong part of London, something that was obvious had she bothered to read any of the paperwork that my GP had supplied, and that she should have finished work an hour earlier and that her colleague who had now come on duty was taking over my case. All of this was said in a tone of voice that implied that it was my fault that she had been trying to admit me to the wrong hospital and that I had personally was responsible for her being late in leaving for the day.
The newly arrived psychiatric nurse managed to secure me a bed in the correct hospital within half an hour, came down to see me to let me know and to tell me that he was now trying to arrange for an ambulance to transfer me. Three hours later, the ambulance arrived and I was on my way. Had I taken myself by bus I could have been in the hospital about half an hour after the bed had been secured.
I have to say that the two gentlemen who were manning the patient transport ambulance were very kind, helped me into the vehicle and out again when we arrived at our destination, and chatted to me during the whole journey. After having been left on my own so much of the day not knowing what was happening, it was extremely heartening to have such wonderful care from two people whose only task was to convey me from one hospital to another. On arrival at our destination, one of them accompanied me to the admitting ward and then wished me well as he left me at the ward entrance with the nurse who was to carry out the initial admittance procedure.
It had only taken 10 hours since leaving the GP's surgery to get me to this point.
To be continued...
His immediate response on seeing the state that I was in was one of shock. He had hoped on my previous visit that I was doing quite well after my miserable month of anniversaries and the cancer scare with the lesion on my nose. This was a Madsadgirl that he had never seen before; a Madsadgirl who looked as though she hadn't slept for a month, who walked with a shuffling gait, who has tremulous hands and who could hardly speak because she couldn't stop crying.
The obvious question followed: what could have happened for me to be in the state that I was in? The answer was simple: nothing! I had descended into the pits of hell with no helping hand, and I couldn't find my way out. Life held no future that I considered worthwhile and the result was that I felt that I just wanted to die. The thing that saved me was that I didn't have the courage to actually carry out the act.
My GP decided that I needed specialist help and a stay in hospital. He wrote the referral letter there and then, printed it off with a selection of other documents that he felt were relevant, and I was soon on my way to hospital. I reported to the A&E reception and sat in the waiting area for a few minutes before hearing my named called out to be seen by the Triage Sister, who was lovely and very sympathetic. She made a quick phone call to the on-duty psychiatric nurse and then took me through to a room specially dedicated to psychiatric emergencies in the 'majors' department of A&E. She asked me if I would like something to drink and fetched me a cup of tea. That was the last sustenance that I was to receive for more than nine hours.
After about half an hour the on-duty psychiatric nurse arrived and proceeded to take a history, which was not altogether necessary as my GP had provided most of the information necessary with the referral letter because he had felt that the fewer questions that I had to answer, the better. It should have been apparent to anyone with a modicum of knowledge to determine that I was seriously unwell and that immediate hospitalization was necessary. But the nurse's suggestion was that I went home and that the Home Treatment Team would be in touch with me in a few days. "You wouldn't like it in hospital" she said. I was somewhat perplexed because whether I would like it or not, hospital was exactly where my GP had determined I should be.
I should explain that our local Mental Health Trust has seven hospitals and which one you are admitted to is determined by where you live and/or your age and the reason that you are being admitted. There is some logic to this approach because it means that all the follow-on support can be arranged easily. The intelligence of the psychiatric nurse must therefore be called into question as she spent the next four hours trying to get me admitted to the wrong hospital!
During this period she left me in the room in the 'majors' department never bothering to see how I was or whether I needed anything. She eventually returned and told me that I could not be admitted to the 'M' hospital as I lived in the wrong part of London, something that was obvious had she bothered to read any of the paperwork that my GP had supplied, and that she should have finished work an hour earlier and that her colleague who had now come on duty was taking over my case. All of this was said in a tone of voice that implied that it was my fault that she had been trying to admit me to the wrong hospital and that I had personally was responsible for her being late in leaving for the day.
The newly arrived psychiatric nurse managed to secure me a bed in the correct hospital within half an hour, came down to see me to let me know and to tell me that he was now trying to arrange for an ambulance to transfer me. Three hours later, the ambulance arrived and I was on my way. Had I taken myself by bus I could have been in the hospital about half an hour after the bed had been secured.
I have to say that the two gentlemen who were manning the patient transport ambulance were very kind, helped me into the vehicle and out again when we arrived at our destination, and chatted to me during the whole journey. After having been left on my own so much of the day not knowing what was happening, it was extremely heartening to have such wonderful care from two people whose only task was to convey me from one hospital to another. On arrival at our destination, one of them accompanied me to the admitting ward and then wished me well as he left me at the ward entrance with the nurse who was to carry out the initial admittance procedure.
It had only taken 10 hours since leaving the GP's surgery to get me to this point.
To be continued...
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Home
After six weeks I am finally back home again. Tomorrow will see the start of my posts about my experience of the mental health services provided by the NHS.
Some of what I write will show the funny side of things, some will make you wonder how anybody manages to get well, and some will show that these services leave a lot to be desired.
I have encountered discrimination, stupid rules, and nurses over-ruling decisions by consultants. Fortunately, I seem to have come out the other end relatively unscathed.
Some of what I write will show the funny side of things, some will make you wonder how anybody manages to get well, and some will show that these services leave a lot to be desired.
I have encountered discrimination, stupid rules, and nurses over-ruling decisions by consultants. Fortunately, I seem to have come out the other end relatively unscathed.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
Why Aren't GP Mental Health Referrals Hitting The Spot?
Today has been another day of blurred vision and very sore eyes. Reading has been difficult, and knitting all but impossible. All of this means that I've been feeling low again.
I have, however, been able to keep up to date with the blogs that I read on a regular basis, mainly because I can enlarge them enough to make reading them easy. Two of these bloggers, Jobbing Doctor and Geepeemum have written about the difficulties of referring patients with psychiatric problems to see consultant psychiatrists or getting help from mental health crisis teams. These are problems that are often written about by bloggers with mental health problems too.
I have been relatively lucky when I have been referred for specialist help, but I am well aware that this has been the exception rather than the rule as far as mental health patients are concerned. In the early days of my problems I was living in Cambridgeshire. Whenever my GP referred me to see a psychiatrist I saw one, but that was in part because the psychiatrist was a personal friend of my GP, who was also the psychiatrist's GP, so my referral possibly did not have to face the hurdles that other referrals may have encountered. But even though I saw the consultant psychiatrist whenever my GP considered it necessary, it did not mean that I necessarily got the best help from other mental health professionals. This was particularly the case with the CPN who caused me so much angst that I came close to suicide after seeing her for a number of appointments.
Since moving back to London I have been referred by my GP for psychotherapy, and again I have been lucky. I happen to live in an area of London which is served by a well known psychiatric hospital which happens to have a fairly large psychotherapy department. Even so, I was warned when my GP made the initial referral that it could be a long time before I had an assessment, let alone received psychotherapy. Luck was again on my side because I had an appointment for assessment within a few weeks of the referral and once it was decided that I was a suitable case for treatment (such a brilliant film title, and one that I have always wanted to use when writing on this subject) I was again warned that it would be many months, perhaps even a year, before a psychotherapist was available. Fortunately I didn't have to wait too long for a psychotherapist to have a vacancy, and I have now been going for psychodynamic psychotherapy for six months now.
I know that I have been very lucky with the referrals and the treatment that I have received. The problem is that not everyone who needs this kind of help is quite as lucky as I have been. If certain cancer drug treatments are considered to be a post code lottery, then specialist treatment for those who suffer mental health problems is even more so. Treatment should not be a last resort; it should not be necessary for someone to have to admitted to hospital in order to get the treatment that they should be getting as a right.
If the money that has been wasted so far on the infamous Connecting for Health had been put into Mental Health, then perhaps there might not be quite so many bloggers bemoaning how they feel that they have been abandoned by the NHS because they have a mental illness rather than ordinary physical illnesses. And the problem is that we are only the tip of the iceberg as far as people who need this help are concerned.
The government keep telling us that it is wrong to discriminate against those with mental health problems, and yet they themselves are doing just that by not making sure that this country's mental health services are properly funded and available to all those in need of help.
Monday, 13 October 2008
Why I Didn't Write Something For World Mental Health Day
I've been a bit slack as far as posting to the blog has been concerned over the last couple of weeks. I'd like to think that it is because I haven't been able to think of anything to say, but really it's more a case of my knitting taking over. I'm trying to get my jumper ready as quickly as possible so that I have it to wear when the really cold weather comes.
I have, in fact, started to write posts several times during the last week or two, but I have ended up deleting them because I felt that they were too controversial. One of these was a post for World Mental Health Day, last Friday. I still want to write a post covering the subject that I had selected, but I will have to think about it a bit more before I actually publish it.
You may wonder what it is about the post that has made me so reluctant to publish, especially as I make no secret of the fact that I suffer from mental illness and abhor the stigma that is associated with it and the discrimination that people such as myself suffer. The problem was that I was querying the amount of money that is spent by the NHS on very expensive drugs that may help to prolong the life of someone with terminal cancer for only a few months, when that money could be used to more effect if channelled into the care and treatment of those with mental health problems.
I have determined that I will still write on the subject, but before I do I am going to do a bit more research. I know that I will still end up upsetting some people; however, this is something that I feel strongly about, and unless those of us who are able to, speak about the problems that mental illness causes, we will never receive the treatment that we deserve.
Monday, 21 July 2008
What A Coincidence
When I wrote this I had not read this or this.
It seems that by sheer coincidence I have said the same thing as a lot of other people.
It's a shame that in this day and age that those with mental health problems are having to face such awful discrimination. It means that as a group, mental health sufferers are more likely to suffer discrimination than any other minority. What a terrible state of affairs in the 21st century!
It seems that by sheer coincidence I have said the same thing as a lot of other people.
It's a shame that in this day and age that those with mental health problems are having to face such awful discrimination. It means that as a group, mental health sufferers are more likely to suffer discrimination than any other minority. What a terrible state of affairs in the 21st century!
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