17:37 – 12 days of no ramblings!

Hello!

I don’t know where I’ve been for the past 12 days that I haven’t thought of writing about my ramblings. What I can say is that I have now lost a total of 20 lbs (1 stone 6lbs) so I’m most happy with that. Some people who I haven’t seen in a few weeks have said they can see it in my face, but, I’m at that awkward stage when you have quite a lot of weight to lose and I’m like in between dress sizes. Haven’t quite dropped a full size yet so hovering somewhere in the middle. This Atkins lifestyle is hard going, there have been so many times where I’ve wanted to just give up on it but each time I stand on the scales and see quite large weight losses week by week (that’s me around 4 weeks in now and lost 20 lbs in that time) so yeah, that spurs me on to keep going with it. I still have about 3 stone 6 lbs to lose (just short of 50 lbs) so a long way to go yet! But hopefully by Christmas I’ll have that first dress size off and people will start to notice a little 🙂

What else has been happening? I’ve started the gym now and go on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2-3pm. An hour’s work out is actually quite tough going especially when you have one of the gym instructors in your ear pushing you just to do 5 more minutes when you’re already dripping with sweat! But it’s all worth it I guess – a nicer body would make a happier me…

I’ve also seen Mr Psychiatrist this week. I’m concerned I’m hearing a voice again but I told him this voice is very much getting caught up in my own racing thoughts making it hard to distinguish at times which is which. In light of that we decided to increase my Quetiapine (Seroquel) from 500mg to 600mg and I can increase again to 700mg in a fortnight if my head is still being crazy. I also spoke to him about how bad my sleep still is and that sleeping tablets just don’t help. It’s not the getting to sleep part I have the problem with, it’s the staying asleep part. I sleep for 1-2 hours then feel like someone has just shaken me and I wake up startled and alert and wondering what’s going on, then I have to get up just to check everything is ok around me, check the door is double locked, get back onto my sofa which is STILL my bed and lie there for perhaps 45 mins maybe an hour then I go back to sleep again for another couple of hours and then the exact same thing happens again. It leaves me feeling really drained and zombified. I hoped the increase in Quetiapine might make me slightly sleepier but apparently not. All the drugs I’m on all say they cause drowsiness but none of them seem to cause it for me!

Oh… I got my first uni assignment back last Friday. We had all received emails saying that the majority had passed with grades C and D, some had F and not to sit and hope for an A or B. This wasn’t to “dishearten or demoralise” us, this was to encourage us to take on board the long page of feedback we all received and them deliberately marking in a very picky way so we could identify every little error we had made. So Friday drags by and my tutor group were the last to get their essays back. I watched the discussion forum fill up with people saying they just scraped a C or a D and a few say they had failed. So even though I had tried hard I was thinking in my head that if I got a C I would be happy. So when I got a B I was pretty over the moon!

So I think that’s everything that’s going on with me at the moment. Uni stuff, gym, sticking to the Atkins eating, went out again last weekend and got a bit drunk but it was a good laugh. I’m having a quiet night in this weekend as it’s my birthday weekend next weekend so I’m saving some pennies for that! After my last post about meeting with my ex we have continued to text one another and he was supposed to be coming down on Wednesday for lunch but I was feeling really ill so I cancelled. I’ve had bronchitis for a couple of weeks and it’s still here – really need to calm the smoking down which has increased like mad since starting dieting…. not so good….

I meet with CPN and new permanent CPN on Monday so I’m hoping to get on well with her and as she is permanent actually have a stable routine of once a week appointments again. A social worker I have been temporarily working with over the past couple of weeks has got a copy of my housing transfer request form and is looking over it for me to see if she can add any further evidence to my application. At the moment I think I am realistically going to be sleeping on my sofa (8 months now) and living in this one room terrified of the rest of my flat, of the flashbacks I get in that bedroom and I think I’m still going to be sitting here in a year’s time no further forward. Then the voice mixes in telling me nothing will ever change, it was just luck I did well on that uni assessment I will fail in the future, why am I trying to lose weight, I’ll never be slim and pretty again, why am I almost 31 and single… I will never fall in love again… and so on and so on… until I’m at the self harming point or the suicidal thoughts point. Well I guess if I acted on the latter then I wouldn’t need to worry about being re-housed nor them re-housing me would I…

So I think that’s me caught up with my 12 days of absence from my little rambling blog – oh there was one more thing I did this week that was pretty stupid, met some guy online and slept with him just to try and get the images of the assault out of my head, told myself that I wanted to, that I wanted to view sex ‘normally’ again but instead, within minutes of it being over I said I had to go… then I just felt dirty, disgusting and stupid ever since it happened. But this weekend is going to be a quiet one…. I’m not sure what to do with myself as yet… we shall see what happens…

 

Hospital Diary 8 of 10 (From Friday 16th September)

It’s around 4pm and I’m bored out of my mind. I really can’t handle this at all. I saw Mr Psychiatrist today and decided that honesty was the best policy. Apparently that was wrong of me because my 24/7 obs are going to continue all weekend until my review on Monday. I want out of here so badly but there is no point in trying to do a runner when you have someone shadowing you every minute of the day. I feel as though I’m in a goldfish bowl or the big brother house or something. 

I’ve had a very emotional day, crying pretty much non stop. A new woman was in the bed next to me when I woke up this morning, clearly in a psychotic episode and I totally broke down because she was moved as soon as she woke up into a private room (which I’ve been asking for all fucking week).

Mr Psychiatrist has now increased my Quetiapine/Seroquel to 750mg a day. That’s the max dose he is going to prescribe so I really hope it is going to make a change or I’m going to have to start from scratch on a new med. Although personally I would prefer to leave it at 750mg and try upping my Lamotrigine/Lamictal dose next. Tried asking psych for something to help me sleep at night but he says if I’m taking 300mg Quetiapine in the morning and 450mg at bed time I should sleep better and he wants me to try that first. I do also get a small amount of diazepam throughout the day but it really only helps with the anxiety of being so far from home – the agoraphobia stuff. 

I’m feeling pretty gutted at the moment ‘cos my Mum and my best friend were due to be coming up to visit me tomorrow and now I’ve been told that I’m going to be on obs all weekend so I won’t be allowed off the grounds. It’s too far to travel to come and see me and only be allowed metres from the building. 

Something is going to happen tonight. I can feel the anger rising and the aggressiveness kicking in, I fucking hate this place. As they say on “I’m a celebrity” – GET ME OUT OF HERE!!

Hospital Diary 3 of 10 (from Monday 12th September)

Today is review day. I’m fifth on the list to be seen so it’s gonna be a couple of hours yet. My stomach is really sore, I haven’t been able to go to the toilet for six days now no matter how many laxative type stuff they give me. Sorry, I know, TMI.

On the upside I got out for half an hour today with my social worker so I could buy a new jacket. It’s Scotland and September and I forget to bring a jacket. Duh. Anyway I got a nice one and it was at half price so I’m a happy bunny that I can now go outside and not get soaked. I also got a little cuddly toy to snuggle into at night. Things like that always help to relax me a little when I’m away from my little doggies.

I just got called for medication there so back to bowel talk. How interesting! I had my normal diazepam plus dulcolex, lactulose and movicol and now my guts are churning. I swear to God this better make me explode – literally. Am I talking about poo a bit too much here?!

OK, I’ll stop talking about poo as something far more important has now happened. I’ve just been in to my review. I was honest with Mr. Psychiatrist and I told him that I wasn’t feeling particularly safe right now and whilst there is a part of me that wants to go home and attempt to be ‘normal’ there is the other part of me that knows I’m probably not safe whilst on my own. Also in the review I got my medications sorted as they haven’t been prescribing them properly to me since I got in here. My quetiapine/seroquel has been increased to 650mg a day so hopefully that will help my crazy head calm down a bit. He said the maximum he is happy to prescribe of it is 750mg a day so I haven’t got a lot left to increase by, I just want one of these fucking medications to actually help!

I’m still having a lot of low thoughts, the only thing is that being here stuck in these four walls means I can’t do much to hurt myself. I stubbed a cigarette out on my hand last night just to feel some sort of pain and for some sort of a release. Thankfully it just looks like a little scab so no one noticed.

Anyway I’m going to go and phone my Mum and let her know how my review went 🙂