13:54 – Massive huge bridesmaid anxiety

I popped up to my Mums last night and she said she wanted to have a word with me. My cousin (my only female cousin, she’s the same age as me but I get jealous because she has the man, the great job, the baby, the house, the car, etc) -in other words we grew up together as ‘equals’ and now I feel pretty shit that at the age of 30 she has achieved so much and me, so little. Anyway, back to the point. Mum said to me that my cousin really wants me to be her bridesmaid. She is getting married in November and lives about 250 miles away from me. At the moment (when my agoraphobia is having a good day) I can travel about 60 miles of the coastal road. I cannot remember the last time I was on a motorway/highway. It must have been when I was in the back of the ambulance losing my little boy.

So I have google mapped every possible route from my house to my cousins house and I now I am panicking so bad. We always said as kids we would have each other as bridesmaid and when I was engaged she was my first choice as bridesmaid which of course she said yes to!

So here’s my problems:

• From an agoraphobic point of view I really don’t think I can do 250 miles in any form of transport.
• I have absolutely no body confidence and it will mean wearing a dress.
• My arms and legs have nasty scars – how do I hide them? My cousin is a doctor so I could maybe explain that bit to her.
• If I make a commitment now then it’s an actual commitment, not one that I can get myself into so much of a panic about that I can back out from at the last minute.
• She knows I was diagnosed with bipolar but she doesn’t know about all the voices etc that I have no control over and can randomly just fuck me up
• It’s 7 months away. I don’t know what or if I’ll have dinner tonight let alone what I’ll be doing in 7 months. I might not even be here in 7 months.
• Ah fuck, I just cannot do it, there is no point in pretending I can. It’s going to be yet another family gathering that I couldn’t attend, where my face is missing from the photo’s, a day that’s going to make me feel like shit that I couldn’t be there for her….
• Another day to remind me just how fucking useless I am in normality and yet how I can succeed so well at being fucking mental.

18:44 – It’s over (and I survived it!)

I went to the CPA meeting. At the meeting there was:

• Me
• My Mum
• CPN guy from last week
• Addictions nurse
• Social Worker
• A&E Senior Charge Nurse (bitchy one from Tuesday)
• Psychiatrist via video link

Whilst people were arriving I heard my social worker ask my Mum how she was doing. I mentioned a while back that my Mum was being made redundant from the company she has worked for, for about 16 years. Then the company decided she could work from home on a part time basis until April and it would be reviewed again. This morning she found out that her redundancy was definitely going ahead and that’s it all final now. She finishes up in a couple of weeks. I just sat there and stared at the floor, I had no idea and I suddenly felt incredibly guilty that she had just lost her job that morning and was still there, by my side, at this bloody meeting about me being mental. That I still needed my Mum there for me when she is going through her own shit but is still more concerned about me. In the car on the way home she told me she wasn’t going to tell me until after the meeting because ‘she should be worrying about me and I shouldn’t worry about her’. Fucking hell, I’m such a bloody burden. I don’t deserve her worrying about me! Argh!

So for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the meeting I barely said a word. I couldn’t really concentrate on what was being said because my head kept thinking about my poor Mum and how rubbish she must be feeling knowing she has to say good bye to all her colleagues of so many years. And my Mum was damn good at her job. I felt angry and sad for her. The voices were making everything sound a bit mumbled as well. My leg kept shaking and I felt sick with anxiety.

The CPN guy then started to go through the minutes from the last meeting then I pushed my bit of paper in front of him where I’d written that I felt totally unsupported at the moment. This is because I have not met my new CPN yet and had been told to use the duty system in a crisis as my social worker was no longer part of my care team. So I found my voice and said that I didn’t want my social worker out my care team because she is the only person (other than the psychiatrist) who has been there consistently. I told them I find all these staff changes stressful and uncomfortable, like I just start getting to know someone and then they leave for one reason or another. I also said I find the duty system hard because I find it hard having to explain why I feel the way I do over and over again to different people. So it was agreed that my social worker would remain part of my care team with appointments on a monthly basis (which is what I asked for) so I’m glad that for now I’m going to be able to keep the only therapeutic relationship I’ve got. Who knows, maybe once I get to know my new CPN and if I work well with her then maybe I will be OK just with CPN support.

We talked a little about how much I’ve been struggling lately, I apologised for not attending my appointments in the past month and explained it was mostly due to anxiety. So the CPN guy said he would speak to the support worker boss guy and ask if I could get a little bit of help with getting to appointments when they are at the CMHT. That brought up the subject of paying to see a support worker now, which the psychiatrist commented was “ridiculous” interestingly. So I will wait and see if they are going to let me get support from a support worker until my new CPN starts. My social worker also said she would come in for my first meeting with my new CPN so that should make it slightly less anxiety fuelled.

Hmm what else did they talk about?… The addictions nurse said that although she hadn’t seen me for a while she had no concerns of me using heroin again and was sure it really was just a two week mistake so that was good. The A&E nurse took a copy of my crisis plan and we mentioned the self harming over the past couple of weeks. I told my Mum about it in the car on the way there so she wasn’t shocked. The A&E nurse didn’t say much, just that she thought it would be helpful for them to have a copy of my crisis plan and she said thank you to me as she was leaving for ‘being so honest’ about the stuff in my head. She still remains the bitchy nurse though compared to the rest of the A&E staff!

I told them about the voices and about Satan controlling me. I asked for an increase in Quetiapine which the psychiatrist agreed to so I can put my dose up  by 50mg a fortnight and hopefully the voices will start to subside again in a while. I only hope I can last that time without doing something crazy if they start to command me!

So the meeting came to an end. We went through the keypoints which were something like:

• Medication to be increased
• Monthly appointments with social worker
• Start seeing new CPN
• Stick to crisis plan
• Resume sessions with addictions nurse to do relapse prevention work
• Appointment with addictions nurse on Tuesday 2pm
• Sometimes I might need help to get to appointments
• Possible support worker until new CPN starts
• See psychiatrist in May
• Another CPA meeting on July 5th at 4pm

I can’t believe I just remembered all of that. I must have been listening to more than I thought! Which is really strange because when I was in there it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, some parts seemed blurred, some parts I’d suddenly notice Mum’s hand on mine and her whispering to see if I was OK. With the anxiety there were a couple of times I did that thing where you are like holding your breath without realising it then suddenly you exhale and it seems really loud, the CPN guy picked up on that and checked I was OK.

I guess all in all I’m glad I went. It was horribly anxious and yet at the same time it was productive. I just hope all the things we talked about actually happen and don’t just end up as words on a couple of sheets of paper somewhere. Things are still pretty fucking rocky and I’d really like to be able to try this approach out before things hit the next crisis point, I’d like to avoid there being another crisis point, but Satan is the one in control and all I can do is walk quietly alongside and try to steer things in the right direction.

14:43 – So freaking scared

I have my CPA meeting in just over an hour. My Mum is picking me up in an hour. I am still not dressed and am so fucking scared about going. The anxiety is ridiculously bad at the moment, my stomach is churning, I feel sick, my palms are sweating, I’m roasting hot and my heart seems to be beating super fast. I have taken my morning Citalopram and Quetiapine, I have also taken 20mg Diazepam but so far nothing is bringing the panic down. I really really do not want to go to it.

As far as I know the only people going are myself, the social worker, the community addictions nurse, the psychiatrist and my Mum. I think someone from a&e has also been invited but have no idea if anyone will come. I hate speaking about the voices in front of so many people, my Mum still doesn’t even know about getting my legs stitched up or me writing stuff about Satan all over me with a knife. What the fuck is she/they going to think when she hears it all?

I’m completely bricking myself here, all the excuses as to why I can’t go are zooming around my head, I want to just let them all go do it without me but I know I need to be there. I know there’s no getting out of it, no matter how bad the anxiety feels I have to face this.

I spoke to the addictions nurse on the phone yesterday afternoon just to touch base with her before this meeting and to apologise for not attending any appointments in the past month. I told her my head has been crazy; she used to be a psych nurse before she starting working for the addictions team. She encouraged me to turn up today and suggested I wrote down the key things I wanted to get sorted out but my head is totally blank.

So far all the sheet of paper says is ‘I can’t handle appointments’

I really don’t know if I’m going to make it there today.

00:23 – And that’s my care team falling apart

I really don’t know where to start with this post. It’s been a long day.

I didn’t sleep very well last night, was up til almost 4am and then woke up in a state of panic at 8.10am thinking I had overslept. Then I was too scared to go back to sleep in case I did over sleep. The last thing I wanted was the CPN and my social worker turning up at my door.

Anyway, I had a shower and tried to make myself look presentable in some nice summery clothes. My friend arrived about noon and we went to the meeting. We were shown into a tiny room and the male nurse from yesterday came in shortly followed by the CMHT team leader person. I have met her once – the first time I got sectioned in 2010 during which time I was a mess. So it felt like being in the room with two strangers, not an easy environment to talk in. I kept hoping my social worker would come in, at least I would be able to tell her some of the stuff on my mind and vent things a bit. She came to the door once and then the door was closed again. I asked them if I could speak to her but by the time the team leader woman went looking my social worker had already left the building.

So the male nurse asked if I had been OK last night. I nodded. He asked if I’d slept well. I shook my head. I then stared at the floor. My head was going a million miles an hour but I couldn’t say a word in front of my friend of how crazy my head was feeling so I continued to sit and look at the floor. I heard my friend start talking a lot of nonsense about the chilled night we’d had last night and how I’d seemed a lot better this morning. The nurse asks me if I agree. I nod my head. By this point all I can think about is getting the fuck out of that building because the anxiety was going crazy. I noticed my leg shaking which always happens when I’m panicking. The nurse gave me a copy of some other crisis plan I had done with the last CPN and he asked me to sign it and bring it with me to my CPA meeting next Thursday. Then we left. Clearly by sitting saying nothing and staring at the floor this showed them there was no need for any concern.

My friend and I went to the beach and sat talking shit for a while. He kept commenting that I was quiet. I told him I was annoyed that my social worker hadn’t come into the meeting. I tried to explain to him that she is the only one I really trust in there but how I felt as though there was no longer any kind of relationship between us as I hadn’t seen her in so long. I later found out that I am about to lose my social worker as they have decided it is a CPN approach I need. Call me whatever, but I spent a lot of time and poured my heart out to my social worker many times in the past, I’ve shared such personal and painful thoughts and feelings with her, and knowing that the cord is about to be cut once and for all (and pretty unexpectedly) made me cry. I have a big long ranting post to write about why this has happened but it’s past midnight and I’m tired so it can wait for another day.

I don’t know when I’m going to meet my new CPN, I was told she has been off this week and is off next week so maybe it will be the week after. At the moment I currently have no support or contact person at the CMHT because I’m no longer on my social worker’s case load (as I said, I’ll post about that over the weekend) although she has asked them if I could see a support worker until I meet my new CPN. Given that they are so adamant it’s a CPN I need, I doubt I will get any support until she starts.

Right now I am pissed off, I feel alone, feel completely unsupported and my anger wants to be released in a very unhealthy way.

19:54 – Fucking nurses

I had to go up to the hospital A&E department today to have my stitches taken out. I had a friend with me at the hospital who knew I was getting stitches out because of self harm. So he sat in the waiting room while I went through. It was the same nurse that I saw on both Friday and Sunday. When she was taking the stitches out she saw I had cut some words on my skin, I did as Satan asked last night and wrote various phrases. It was only shallow, just scratches.

She asked me if the CMHT had been in touch with me and told me she definitely left an answer phone message on Sunday night. I told her that no they hadn’t phoned. She said she was going to get dressings for my leg and would be back in a minute. One minute turned to five, I started feeling anxiety sweep over me, my head started screaming “just put your jeans and shoes on and get the fuck out of here” but I felt physically frozen with fear. I got my phone out my bag and text my friend in the waiting room telling him I was scared as the nurse had been away for ages and I was beginning to panic as I didn’t know what was going on. Another five minutes passes and the nurse comes back. She tells me she has just phoned the CMHT, she hoped I didn’t mind but she was concerned about me, and a couple of people would be over shortly to see me. I felt myself completely tense up then asked her to get my friend and let him sit with me.

He came in and I quickly told him that someone was coming over to talk to me and that he had to tell them that he was going to stay with me tonight because I was terrified I wasn’t coming home but going up to the psych hospital again. Within minutes these two men appear and the nurse asks me if I want her to come in as well. I say yes please. I don’t think I have met these people before but one of the men tells me he has met me once before. The other tells me he is a nurse. A CPN I assume. They ask how I am feeling, I tell them fine. They ask my friend how he thinks I am. He says he thinks I am fine. My friend then tells them he is going to stay with me for the next few days to keep an eye on me. He isn’t, but these words seem to make them happy.

They bring out a copy of my crisis plan and ask me if I want a copy for tonight, I say no thank you. I know what is written on it. They tell me they are aware I haven’t attended any of my appointments for several weeks. I nod my head to confirm this is the case. They ask me if I will attend an appointment tomorrow with one of them and my social worker. And then they ask my friend if he will come as well. He agrees. I agree. The nurse asks if he has a commitment from me that I won’t put myself in any danger tonight. I nod my head. He says I can go. I leave the hospital and can breathe again.

My friend came back here for a little while and says he will come down at noon tomorrow so that gives us half an hour to get to the appointment. I apologised to him for dragging him into my mentalness but he said it was OK. He said several times that I had better open my door to him tomorrow and go to the appointment or I’m going to end myself back up in hospital. I told him I will never go back to that hospital.

Anyway, now my head is going a million miles an hour and I want to cut badly, I need to get all this pent up craziness out of me but I know I can’t cut deep because I can’t end up at the hospital again and arghhh it’s all just frying my brain.

I just want to be left alone, I feel intimidated and scared because I know if I put one foot wrong they will take control of things again and that cannot happen.

Completely off topic, I noticed this which was nice: http://www.healthline.com/health-slideshow/best-bipolar-blogs#3

The writer says:

Reading My Crazy Bipolar Life is like peeking into a private diary that holds the open-hearted tale of a rollercoaster life. Inside you discover the thoughts and feelings, successes and failures, and predicaments and positive experiences of a woman with bipolar disorder, winding her way through life with mental illness.

Readers with bipolar disorder no doubt find a kindred spirit here, along with the reassurance that comes with knowing they are not alone. For those without a diagnosis, reading this blog is an educational glimpse into the world of life with bipolar disorder.

22:55 – So the short version is…

(Self harm warning)

 

… The weekend has been shit. Friday I self harmed badly enough to require suturing. Saturday I was an anxious mess and used every excuse in the book to avoid having to go out and see anyone. Today I tried my hardest to be ‘normal’ around my best friend for a couple of hours because the kids were back from their Dads house and I wanted them to see “fun aunty”. The problem with being fun aunty was that I was also dealing with a head full of voices telling me that I was fucking useless and laughing at the size of me as I tried to kick the ball around on the grass. The voices got too much so I asked my best friend to kick the ball around with the three year old whilst I sat with the one year old on my knee just cuddling into him and trying to calm my crazy fucking head down.

It did not work.

I ended up cutting badly again. Whilst watching Dancing On Ice and crying because they were all good at something and me, well all I have is this head full of voices again reminding me that I am useless.

I had to go up to A&E tonight to see the nurse I saw on Friday night to have my stitches checked. She was happy it was all healing well and I have to go back on Thursday to have them removed.

Then somehow I ended up admitting to cutting again today and she asked to have a look. The short version is that it took the next hour to sew up the damage. The same doctor from Friday was on, she gave me 2mg Lorazepam to calm me down a bit. She gave me another two to take if I can’t sleep tonight or if I start to feel like hurting myself again. I don’t even feel as though I have taken anything because I already feel so numb with all the craziness.

And that’s been my night

 

17:56 – I just can’t do this

Best friend has been phoning me all afternoon. Then she starts with the “please talk to me” text messages. Then she phones again. Everytime my ringtone starts up my heart starts to palpitate, words come out quietly even though I’m trying to sound ‘normal’. Anyway, I finally answered the phone and listened to her tell me about her drunken antics from last night, I just seemed to sit there totally blank until I realised she had finished speaking and was waiting on me to say something. What was the question? Heart speeds up a bit. My mind searches for the last words she said… Then I hear her ask if I’m still there and I want to hit the ‘end call’ button so badly but I mumble ‘yeah I’m still here’.

“So are we going out then?” (ah, that was the question) Go out? Are you fucking crazy? “Um I don’t think I can” I reply. And then follows ten minutes of a lecture about how I am never going to get better by sitting in the house and never seeing anyone. How I need to get out and meet people and “enjoy life”. I reply to her stating that if she was sitting here with a stitched up leg and voices telling her she was being controlled by fucking Satan then she wouldn’t want to do much either. And then comes the “oh why didn’t you tell me?” speech – why didn’t I tell her things were so bad I’d resorted to cutting again?

By this point my head is already spinning. I now have to sit and listen to the “the voices aren’t real” speech to which I state they are indeed real which moves her on to the “if you sit there believing all your thoughts you are going to wake up and find out that ten years has passed and you have achieved nothing other than to have sent yourself completely crazy” speech.

(I think the above has already happened in the last ten years of my life…)

Anyway.

She carries on trying to convince me I need a night out, I need a few drinks, I need to socialise. I tell her that I really cannot handle the thought of being around so many people. I say I’m sorry. I suggest she could ask someone else to go out with her? She replies “I want to go out with you” – “I want to go out with my best friend” Does she mean this or are we now on the guilt trip speech?

I start the big crazy scramble of thoughts where my brain is reeling off one excuse after the other as to why I cannot go out tonight.

“I have no clothes, they are all still in boxes”

“I cannot be around people, I’m sorry”

“I don’t have enough money”

“I don’t think alcohol would be good for me right now”

“My leg hurts”

“Look, every fucking person out there will fuck up my head”

“I can’t shower properly, I can’t get my stitches wet”

“I know you just want a night out with me, I know I’ve not been around much”

“OK I will go and have a shower and see if I can find clothes”

“Speak to you in an hour, bye”

Now I am supposed to be going out? I am supposed to be in a shower right now and finding clothes and getting “motivated”. What the fuck is motivated? I cannot do motivation right now. Why did I back down? She now thinks she is going out with me and is going to phone back expecting me all showered and smelling lovely and I am still going to be sitting in this very spot panicking.

How do you say – “I just can’t do this” ?

23:59 – Back from the hospital

I should maybe put a trigger warning on this post.

I self harmed tonight. Pretty badly. After I did it I realised I had no dressings of any kind and really couldn’t face A&E… my head was spinning and I was somewhat in shock at the extent of the injury I’d inflicted upon myself. Thanks to some helpful folks on Twitter I used some sanitary towels stuck around my leg to try and calm things down. But it continued to get worse and reluctantly I phoned a taxi and went to A&E.

The second I walked through the automatic sliding doors the anxiety that came over me took my breath away. I could feel myself both shaking and sweating and struggled to say the words “I’ve got a cut on my leg”. Thankfully it is before pub closing time so the A&E was very quiet and I got seen straight away. I mumbled something about it being a while since I was last there for self harm reasons and how I thought it needed a little bit of glue. When she took the sanitary towels dressing off she took one look at it and told me I needed stitches. It seemed to look even worse under her big light.

The nurse was trying to be so nice I have to give her credit where credit is due, she did her best to try and talk to me about what’s been going on lately but all I could mutter was that the voices were taking over everything. She was encouraging me to seek help on Monday, clearly my shakiness and sweating and inability to look at her was causing some concern. She sent the doctor in to see me whilst the local anaesthetic was taking effect. I mumbled the same to the doctor that the voices had just got too much tonight. They both asked me several times if I was likely to do it again tonight and I shook my head. Inside my head the voices were laughing that I was under the possession and control of the devil and I would do what he wanted, not what I wanted.

The nurse asked me to go back in on Sunday night when she starts at 9pm so she could check the stitches and see how long they should be left in for. And also to see how I was doing. I did my best to smile, muttered thank you to her for stitching me up, declined her offer of phoning me a taxi home as I needed fresh air before I passed out I was sweating so badly with anxiety.

So now I am home, the lidocaine is wearing off and the stitches are starting to sting a little. My head is very noisy so I have just taken my medication with the hope things will calm down so maybe I can get some sleep. I’m going to take the dogs a quick walk now before the numb stuff wears off completely.

There is a command being repeated over and over in my head. It’s making me quite scared that I backed down to the commands and self harmed, I don’t want  to be commanded into doing anything else

15:09 – A little sleep, a little clarity

I managed to get about four hours sleep then woke up and took my medication. I’ve been awake about an hour now and it’s sunny with blue skies outside. This is nice but it’s also hugely anxiety provoking because of the amount of people that are outside. My best mate phoned me last night to ask if I wanted to go for lunch with her and the kids today, I said yes but then due to being up all night I woke up to a list of missed calls. Looks like I’ve let her down again. And, as usual, I just hide the phone away rather than phoning to explain.

Other than the stomach churning anxiety my head feels a tiny bit clearer than it did last night. The voices are there but quieter, maybe taking my medication properly and getting a few hours sleep has helped a little. I have a few challenges ahead of me today – going outside when there are so many people around being the biggest challenge. But the dogs need walking and I’m quite hungry and need to buy some food in. I’m scared that over the course of the next couple of hours everything is going to go really crazy again *touch wood*

04:53 – night watch

It’s almost 5am and in 3 hours I’ll have been up for 24 hours. My anxiety levels are sky high, nothing seems to help, even the diazepam have stopped working. I have been listening to my ipod for hours, the emeli sande album on repeat mostly. Right now ‘daddy’ is playing. The ipod helps drown out the voices slightly but i can still hear them underneath it all. The voice of satan saying i will be crucified. The voices of the angels urging me to stop being a sinner, an evil sinner, before its too late for god to save my soul and purify it. But satan keeps on creeping inside of me its disgusting that im so pathetic i can’t fight it. Argh my head is seriously fucked up.