A Bit Of Success (Hopefully)

Having had a disaster with my first attempt at designing a sock, I started again and I think that my second attempt may turn out better. I have gone for a yarn that is much lighter in colour, comprising blues, lilacs and green, and a stitch pattern which is based on moss stitch diamonds. I have completed one full pattern repeat and so far so good, but I know that the real test will come when I start work on the second half of the sock, that is after I have turned the heel.

I have also made a start on a shawl using the very fine yarn that I bought a few weeks ago. I had decided on a pattern, then changed my mind but having started this second pattern I have decided that the yarn is just too fine for the pattern that I had chosen and there was a serious risk of me breaking the yarn when working the little bobbles that were an intrinsic part of the pattern.

So this afternoon I have started work on the shawl using the first pattern that I had selected. It begins with eight rows of garter stitch before moving on to the lace border that surrounds the sampler design that forms the centre of the shawl. The garter stitch rows were easy to complete and didn't take me very long, then I started on the first lace chart. I had almost finished the first row when I realised that I had gone wrong somewhere because I didn't have the right number of stitches at the end. Now I have to carefully look at the row to find out where I went wrong and unpick to that point to get it back on track. This is a job which requires a degree of concentration that I am not sure that I have at the moment.

My concentration has not been good for a while now. I am finding it impossible to read a book and it has also been quite difficult to concentrate on my knitting which is why I have been spending much of my time knitting socks recently. Over recent weeks I have been able to blame my lack of concentration on the lack of sleep that I was also experiencing. However, with the addition of another form of medication to my already long list I am no longer having problems sleeping. Now I am having a problem staying awake.

I had hoped that getting some sleep would help me to start to come out of this period of depression, but it doesn't seem to have happened. I am still feeling very depressed and, at times, finding it difficult to carry out even the basic functions of everyday life. But, I shall persevere as I have for almost 12 years now and hope that it won't be too long before I am able to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Best Foot Forward

Well, I'm afraid that I didn't do as I said I would. Last night I did not go to bed early and I didn't get much sleep. And it wasn't just my knitting that was to blame.

I managed to finish the leg part of the sock and I did a few rows of the heel flap and then put my knitting down. I then got myself ready for bed and actually climbed into bed, but sleep was unfortunately on the agenda. I tried reading but that didn't work, so I turned to Sudoku puzzles in the hope that they would do the trick. Unfortunately not. Sleep just would not come no matter how hard I tried, and the harder I tried the more awake I seemed to become. I did eventually manage to drop off only to be woken by the alarm after what seemed like only a couple of hours sleep. It was probably more than I thought, but it wasn't really enough to allow me to feel refreshed.

But having got up with the alarm, I ensured that my bed didn't call to me by taking a cold(ish) shower, then washed my hair and towel dried it. This meant that I had lost that lovely warm bed feeling that makes it so difficult to get up when you don't want to and I was soon ready to leave for my psychotherapy appointment.

Psychotherapy was really hard today. It was both physically and emotionally overwhelming at times, but for all that it was a session where a great deal was achieved. The session finished with my therapist asking me about last week's assessment appointment. He asked what had been talked about, whether I had been given any indication as to whether I would be accepted for group psychotherapy (I was and I have been), and whether I had learnt anything from the appointment (yes, I had). We then talked for a few minutes about how hard I was likely to find group therapy. Then the ordeal was over and with a goodbye, see you next week, it was time for me to go.

I then went to do a bit of shopping (lots of vegetables for some more vegetarian dishes that I want to try), lunch and then the bus home. Since arriving back home I have been trying to relax and recover from the effects of psychotherapy. I've read a few blogs, read a few emails and written one, made a telephone call and received one in reply to my call, but most of all I have been knitting. The heel flap has been completed, the heel has been turned, and now I am working my way towards the toe. I won't finish the sock tonight, but I will do as much as I can before tiredness overcomes me, and I am sure that it will overcome me tonight.

Tomorrow, I am going to go shopping for a new mobile phone and then I am going to join a knitting group for a few hours in the evening. Not the same group that I was with last week; this time it is going to be a group that meets a couple of evenings a week in the shop where I have been buying wool for the last couple of months. And the shop has a drinks licence too.

I Knew That I Shouldn't Have Said It

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.

Tiny Hands

After having had an appointment with Dr M yesterday and telling him that I was at long last managing to get a decent night's sleep, last night I didn't. I had a terrible night waking up almost every hour and although I managed to get back to sleep fairly easily each time, today I am not feeling at my best.

Anything too energetic is out of the question. Not only am I too tired, but my hip is playing up at the moment so bending over doing things in the garden is off the agenda today. This means that I can spend the time doing more enjoyable things and I have decided that means that I shall spend today working on Daisy Livingstone Fairy.

All the components are knitted and many of the pieces are sewn together so it is not much more than a case of dressing her. But there are a couple of vital components that needed work on them and I have just spent an hour working on them.

The vital components were Daisy Livingstone's hands. They may be tiny but they each have four fingers and a thumb and sewing them up is both time consuming and extremely fiddly. However, I have persevered and they are now completed and ready to be attached to her arms. Once that is done I will be able to join them to the arms and then join the arms to Daisy Livingstone's body. Once that is done, I'll need to create her features, attach her hair, and then dress her in her finery.

They may be tiny hands but they are going to help with Daisy Livingstone's character and I am sure that she will be a really beautiful fairy who will undoubtedly try to grant a few wishes.

Getting Some Sleep

I have finally managed to start getting some sleep. There is only one problem. I'm sleeping during the day rather than at night.

When I was younger, and certainly all the time that I was working, I was a morning person. I could face the day, and whatever it had to throw at me, without too much of a problem. I generally needed about eight hours sleep a night, so I used to follow the old adage of early to bed, early to rise. It served me well for many years.

Then I started to suffer from depression and sleep became something that was more difficult to come by. There were times when I would survive on a couple of hours sleep a night for several weeks and then, usually on a Friday evening, my mind would just switch off because my body told it that it could take no more. I would sleep for anything up to 24 hours.

Over the last couple of years I have found myself becoming more of a night owl than an early bird. I can still get myself up early if the occasion requires it, but I am also more likely to be awake at 2am than I am at 9am.

I will probably be able to get myself back to a more normal sleeping pattern, but it may take me a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I shall continue knitting until I can't keep my eyes open any longer and have to fall asleep. I'm hoping that tonight I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour because tomorrow is psychotherapy day and I need to get up to go to the hospital to see my psychologist and it's best that I don't spend too much of the session yawning.

And talking of knitting, Daisy Livingstone Fairy is coming along nicely. As well as having completed Daisy herself, I have made her dress and I am halfway to completing her jacket. She is going to be a very stylish fairy.

Another Bad Night

It's nearly 2am and I haven't managed to get to sleep yet. I'm half-sitting, half-lying in bed watching a film and wide awake. I've been awake for nearly 24 hours now and I would love to take some sleep medication but I can't because I have to get up early again in the morning for another trip to the hospital for my psychotherapy session.

I will also be picking up my prescription for the additional antidepressant from my GP's surgery so that will mean another tablet or two to take at night. I have to take so many tablets that I would probably rattle if you picked me up and shook me.

So, I will lie here for a few more hours, I'll try reading to see if that helps me to get to sleep, I'll wrap myself up well under the duvet so that the cold can't get at me. and if I manage a few hours of shut-eye it will be a bonus.

Going Without Sleep

Sleep is becoming a problem again. I take all my medication at the proper time, and I make sure that I take the little blue pills that should help me to sleep.

I had been lying in bed reading when I remembered that I hadn't taken my tablets, so it was just a case of sorting out the required ones and taking them with some milk which is in a glass by the side of my bed. I had been on the verge of dropping off when I remembered that I needed to take my tablets. Having taken them, I was suddenly wide awake again.

It's now two hours since I settled down to go to sleep but sleep has not happened. I've been doing some puzzles (crosswords and suduko) in the hope that might help me to drop off, and as that hasn't worked I decided to write a quick post for the blog.

I've had to resort to the blue pills practically every night for the last couple of weeks. they do eventually help me to get to sleep but I keep waking up a few hours later. Sometimes I can get back to sleep fairly quickly, but more often I am awake for several hours before succumbing again. Then I end up sleeping for hours; most days during this last week I have ended up sleeping most of the morning.

What I really need to do is get back into a proper routine and hopefully I can manage that next week. I haven't been out of the house much over the last week or so, but on Monday I start having appointments with various people (HTT and psychologist as an example) and I will be getting to work on my OU course again. Hopefully that will help me to develop a routine that means that I can get to sleep reasonably easily and stay asleep for the rest of the night. I also need to get back to writing some more posts in the Tackling the Mental Health Minefield series as I have so much more to say on that subject.

But for now I will publish this post, wrap myself up under the duvet and hopefully drop off to sleep without too much of problem. I have a book handy so that I can read for a while, and if that doesn't work I'll just have to think of something else that might do the trick.

Wide Awake

It's 1.15 in the morning and I ought to be fast asleep but it is obviously going to be another one of those nights where sleep just won't come.

This is one of the aspects of depression that I have most problems with. I try to switch off but thoughts continue to whirl about in my mind and nothing that I do seems to help me to achieve a level of calm where I can lie down, close my eyes and just drift off.

If you were to ask me what the thoughts are I couldn't tell you. There doesn't seem to be any one particular thing that I am thinking about, in fact I am trying not to think about anything, and yet my mind seems to be far too active for this time in the morning.

Sometimes I feel as though I am afraid to go to sleep because of the things that I might dream about. There have been several nights recently where I have woken from a frightening dream with the sweat pouring off me. Yet I am unable to remember what it was that I was dreaming about.

I've tried reading but I can't concentrate. I've tried listening to some music but I can't find anything that I really want to listen to at the moment. I've even tried listening to one of my relaxation recordings and that didn't help either.

I shall probably lie in bed trying to sleep for hours yet and finally drop off just as it is time for me to get up.

Anxiety, Depression, And Writing An Essay (Or Not)

I should be writing an essay at the moment but I cannot raise any enthusiasm for it. I have a few ideas of things that I want to include in it but it's being able to find the words to express what I want to say that is causing the problem. I'm not sure whether it is the material that I have to work with and the subject of the essay itself that are causing the problems or whether it is because of the way that I am feeling.

I have not been sleeping well; I drop off to sleep all right but wake in the early hours of the morning and I am just not able to get back to sleep again. This doesn't help much with my mood, and at this moment in time I can feeling it getting lower. I've had a little crying session this morning and I have absolutely no idea why it happened.

I'm also starting to get anxious about a meeting that I am going to have tomorrow with the Senior Lecturer for the course that I will doing a lecture for in a few weeks time. No matter how much I tell myself that I have nothing to worry about, I can't help but get anxious. I want to give this lecture, I think that I can do quite a good job with it, and in a strange way I am quite looking forward to it, but it doesn't stop me getting very anxious about meeting someone new and having to talk about myself.

Manic Monday

Sometimes you have one of those days where everything happens. Today has been one of them for me, hence Manic Monday. I knew that I had a few things to do, but I was not expecting to be running around like an idiot.

The day started normally enough with me waking at some unreasonable hour because of my bad sleeping pattern.  I didn't mind because apart from having to do a few things this morning I was expecting the rest of the day to be quiet and I really thought that I would have a restful afternoon.  I couldn't have been more wrong.

I went to see my GP for my normal monthly visit.  I did need to talk to him about the allergic conjunctivitis which is becoming a real nuisance, but I thought it would be a quick in and out appointment.  No, GP decided that he would check how I was, what I was doing for Christmas, whether I was having enough communication with others, and so it went on.  My 10 minute appointment extended to 25 minutes because my GP was keen to make sure that I wouldn't have a crisis over the next few days.  I was embarrassed about walking out through the waiting room when I did eventually leave because of those who were going to be late for their appointments, but it really wasn't my fault.  And there are some who seem to think that our GPs don't seem to understand or care about their patients.  I can tell them that they are wrong.

After leaving the surgery I had to go into town to the Post Office; I needed to send a package by special delivery.  There was a huge queue in there, but they did have lots of positions open so I didn't have to wait too long.  Then it was a walk back towards home via the chemist to get the anti-histamine tablets and the eyes drops that my GP had given me a prescription for.  I only had to wait a couple of minutes for them and it was time to go home.

So by 11am I was ready for an easy day, maybe doing a little bit of one of my TMAs and a bit of knitting if I felt like it.  But that was when the doorbell started ringing, and it seemed to ring every 10 minutes.  It was one delivery service after another with various things that I had ordered over the last week or so.  And my next-door neighbour came with a card and a present.  Every time that I attempted to go to the loo, the bell rang again.

Fortunately things seem to have calmed down now.  I have given up any idea of working on the TMA today, so I am watching television and contemplating picking up my knitting to do a few rows.  I shall heat something in the microwave a bit later to have for my dinner, and I shall head to bed fairly early, take some medication to help with sleeping tonight, and hopefully sleep the whole night through.  Tomorrow I have to go to the local sorting office to pick up a parcel that the postman tried to deliver while I was out this morning, then I shall get the few bits of fresh fruit and vegetables that I need for the rest of the week, and I shall head home with no intention of leaving the house again until Christmas is over.  I shall lay out my study materials in three piles on my desk, one for each of the three TMAs that I need to do over the next couple of weeks, and I shall spend a couple of hours each day on them, drafting my essays and then typing everything up.

Lets hope that Manic Monday doesn't lead on to Traumatic Tuesday.

Sleep; If Only I Could Manage It At The Right Time

It's been a strange weekend where I seem to have spent much of the daytime asleep and much of the night-time awake.  The problem with not sleeping properly at night is that I have a tendency to drop off to sleep exceedingly easily whenever I sit down somewhere comfortable during the day.  And it's not just a catnap either; I am regularly sleeping for three or four hours at a time.  I still manage to get to sleep when I go to bed at night, but I wake up after just a few hours and can't get back to sleep again.

I'm hoping that having a couple of weeks with no appointments will allow me to get back into a proper sleep routine.  A routine where I sleep at night and not during the day.

With just a few days to go until the dreaded Christmas Day, I am feeling surprisingly calm.  I am not too anxious about the coming days, I'm not too upset about the fact that I will be on my own, and neither am I too upset about the thought of having to spend some of my time writing essays.

And best of all, I don't have a terrible cold and chest infection like I did at this time last year which meant that I didn't have the strength to get out of my bed on Christmas Day.  

It's A Roller Coaster Ride

Yesterday seemed like a pretty good day.  I managed so much work on my TMA that completion today seemed like a formality.  Then yesterday evening I managed to finish knitting my jumper. All that was left to do was to sew it together; not a job that I enjoy but I thought that it would be something for this evening.  However, things haven't quite turned out that way.

I had another bad night for sleeping.  Although I hadn't slept well Thursday night, I had managed to achieve a lot yesterday, and when I went to bed I felt sure that it would not take me long to get to sleep.  But sleep was still evading me at 3am when I again put on my glasses and picked up my book to read a little more.  I know that I managed to read a couple more pages and then I must have just drifted off to sleep because I woke at about 6.30am with my glasses still on and the book in my hand. I went to the bathroom, got myself some breakfast, took my tablets and then, because it was still not particularly light, I went back to bed to read a bit more before getting up to work on my TMA.

That didn't happen.  Again, I fell asleep with my glasses on and the book in my hand.  It was gone one o'clock when I eventually woke up.  But the euphoria of yesterday had dissolved and today I had no enthusiasm for the essay at all. How could things change so fast? Why had my mood plummeted like that? I'm not sure, but I suppose that is just the way that things go.

Anyway, this afternoon I have made an effort towards finishing my jumper. The shoulder seams have been stitched together, one sleeve has been sewn into place and the second about halfway so.  One side seam has been completed, so just one more to do.  Fortunately, because the wool came in 400g balls, there are no ends to be sewn in.  Another hour's work will see the jumper completed and it will be ready for the colder weather that is sure to come.

I'm hoping that sleep will come a little easier tonight.  In a few minutes I will take my evening medication, and in addition to the usual ones I will take a couple of little blue tablets which will hopefully help me tonight so that I can sleep right through, and then tomorrow I will have another go at the TMA.

And Steph, when I have charged the battery in my camera, I will take a photograph of the finished jumper so that you can see what it is like.

Depression - A Life Of Vicious Circles

Just when I think things are settling down nicely, everything goes pear-shaped again.  I had some trouble sleeping last weekend so I took one of the pills that help me to get off to sleep (not a sleeping tablet I hasten to say).  As a result of taking that I slept almost continuously for 48 hours.  Then I had a couple of quite good nights, not brilliant but good enough, so when I went for my psychotherapy session of Friday I was feeling ... okay.  

The psychotherapy session went quite well I think, at least I managed to get through it without having used a box of tissues, and I spent Friday afternoon doing some studying.  I felt pretty good, the sun was shining, and I thought that things might be on the up.  Then I went to see my GP for a check on how I was doing.  Having started medication for my blood pressure, he is keeping a close eye on me at the moment with fortnightly checks of that and my mood.

While I was with my GP, I raised the subject of my sleeping pattern.  As I am concerned about going for days without sleep, then when I take medication ending up sleeping for days, I asked if I could have a lower strength of the tablets.  GP said he was just going to suggest that, so the problem was going to be solved.  By having tablets of a lower strength, I would be able to take one when sleeplessness was becoming a problem, and hopefully get to sleep, and stay asleep, for a normal period of time, and not end up wanting to sleep all the time as is the case at the present.

At this point we moved on to checking my blood pressure and discussions of any side-effects from the medication that I have for that.  One of the problems when you have to take medication for a number of different problems is the way that the different drugs can interact and cause some pretty spectacular side-effects.  I have been reasonably lucky and not had too much of a problem with things like that over the years, except as far as antidepressants are concerned, and there I have had some really nasty reactions.

Anyway the consultation progressed, I got a repeat prescription for all my regular medication, and left with a rejoinder to come again in two weeks time.  Everything was fine.  Well it was until I went to the chemist (it's just round the corner from the surgery) got my prescriptions filled, walked home and opened the bag of pills.  I had all the regular medication okay, but the requested lower-dose medication wasn't there.  Because we had moved on in the consultation, GP had forgotten to put it on the prescription.  Never mind, thought I, you're feeling pretty good at the moment, it's not going to be a problem.  Oh boy, was I wrong.  

I couldn't get to sleep Friday night; I finally dropped off about 5am yesterday morning (if you check out my last post about being an OU student you will see what ridiculous time in the morning I was writing that).  Okay, so it was Saturday, and I don't work so it wasn't really a problem.  Yes, it was; I was awake again by 7.30am.  And I couldn't get back to sleep.  And I was soon feeling like death warmed up, without any strength to do anything except just sit there.  So I made the best of it, pottered around doing little tasks, and planned to have an early night.  Wrong again.  I was still awake at 3am this morning, but I must have dozed off shortly after that.  Then I woke up at 4.50am.  So less than two hours sleep this time.

I have tried wrapping myself in the duvet and snuggling down to get a couple more hours, but it hasn't worked.  I am hoping that writing this will mean that when I try again in about half an hour, I might succeed, but I am not overly confident of the result.  I could take one of the tablets (higher strength) that I have at home, tonight, and then see if I can get a prescription for the lower strength ones tomorrow, but I am worried that if I do that I won't be able to drag myself out of bed in the morning.  Or I could manage without taking anything tonight, hope that I can get some sleep and see how things look tomorrow.

Having depression can really lead you into a series of vicious circles.  They are something like this.  You start to feel very low; you stop being able to sleep at night; you are given medication;you can't stop sleeping all day and all night; you stop taking medication; you stop being able to sleep at night; it starts to make you feel very low again.  That's one circle, the other can be even more difficult to cope with.  You start to feel low; you stop eating properly; you are given medication which helps to raise your mood; you start to eat again; unfortunately the medication that is making you feel better is also causing you to put on weight; you cut down on what you are eating, but the weight keeps piling on; you get even more depressed; you stop eating; you still put on weight; you get to the stage where life just doesn't seem worth living; you get put on a different medication; you start to feel a bit better again, you start eating, but you have put on a lot of weight and you can't seem to shift it; you start feeling low again; you stop eating ... and so it goes on. 

I seem to have been suffering from both of these vicious circles either one at a time, or more often, both together for most of the last 10 years.  Every now and again I get a period when both seem to fade away, and I can live an almost normal life, but then some little thing starts it all off again, and I start the slip into blackness again.  I've been suffering from both circles over the last couple of months, and I had hoped that I was coming out of it, but I think I may have been just a little bit premature.  However, just recognizing what is going on can make it easier to cope with, and by setting myself small goals to achieve each day, I seem to manage to survive.

As long as I can get through each 24-hour period, I shall manage to survive.