Good day!

So I thought I'd write a post about having a really good day.

What a breath of fresh air today has been. I can't honestly remember the last day I had where I had no negative thoughts, no anxiety, no stress and no SH thoughts of any kind.

Yesterday I got the move at work I wanted, back to core gardening where I started 5 years ago. For the past 9 months ( since my 7 month sickness period) I've been on seasonal dept and that has involved selling high value garden furniture since February.
I am not cut out to be a sales person I am a sales assistant and am happy to talk to customers about our products but have been hating trying to talk them into buying.
I feel like a weight has been lifted. I'm doing my old job within a great team. I have a great supervisor who looks out for me now and a great line manager.

Today I've felt like I'm flying. I had a couple of cans of energy drink and was on it!
I was focused, not anxious and buzzing. Every customer query I had I could solve and things just flowed.
To get through a 6 hour shift without the diazepam, without shaking, without oozing anxiety and without desperately waiting for home time has just been amazing.

Long may it last.

Thanks for reading x

Superstition inconveniences

- The tv volume must be on an even number
- When I switch on tv in the morning I must have coffee in my hand
- My left shoe must go on before right shoe
- My trousers must go on before my top
- I must use plastic spoons at home
- I have a fear of putting fuel in the car
- I get anxious if someone opens a packet of crisps upside down
- The volume on the car stereo must be an even number preferably 18,20,22.
- I have just 1 coffee a day when I get up. It must be weak and I must stir it clockwise 4 times my lucky number.

And so the list goes on. I didn't think all these things affected my life but maybe they do!

Anger part 2

This anger has been building since Monday. Today is Friday. It is snowballing. I feel like a ticking bomb just waiting to explode. I actually feel I want to be physical with my anger and hurt either myself or someone else.

If I had the Amitryiptiline now I have ordered on Tuesday I would take it., Od on it, I know 30@50 mg is enough to cause series harm if not death. As it is at the moment it's what I want. I want this to end, the mood swings, the anger the failure... Everything.

Yesterday at working had to go in the yard, just lying there was a metre glass shelf shattered in bits. I was triggered instantly, my first thought being glass-cut-hurt-bleed-ease anger. This I know cannot be normal.

Sometimes I don't think L my care coordinator understands how bad things are and how serious my thoughts are. Maybe an overdose of any kind would prove that. I feel because I've not Od for ages everyone thinks things are ok. Do I have to prove my pain by doing something?

Maybe I should buy some rope, I've googled how to make a noose and use it in the garage. The garage has metal beams they've been used to lift an engine out a car so must be able to take my weight. I tried hanging myself once on a general ward after I'd had surgery on my stomach because I'd stabbed myself. I had gone to the bathroom and there was a dressing gown cord in there. I stood on a dressing stool under a coat hook on the wall. I tied rope around my neck and the hook, I kicked away the stool and hung there feeling the oxygen be cut off. Then the coat hook broke and I fell to the floor.
The beams in the garage wouldn't do that they are strong steel. I'll keep this idea and pick up some rope of I see any around.

Anger

I'm am full of anger as I write this but figured it might be a safe outlet. It's all stemmed from my psych appointment yesterday with my care co-ordinator. It was mainly a medication review but a bit of my care plan crept into it to.

Our last appointment had ended abruptly when I walked out as I wasn't being listened to.
He opened with apologising that it had ended the way it did and was sorry I felt the way I did.
After a long chat he asked how I felt about an increase in my quetiapine . I wasn't thrilled but listened to his reasons and how he felt it would help me.
I questioned the lithium again he had sent me for a blood test a few weeks earlier as he said it was an option but they had great concerns about my safety on it. He then brought up a graph on his computer screen and showed me and cc. The chart showed when I was on lithium in 2010. It showed my levels and showed that most of the time I wasn't at therapeutic level I was either under or well over. So this he said proved the lithium didn't help and he backed this up by flicking through my notes to that time to a piece written by my last psych saying I was suicidal and distressed. I thought I was stable during that time. Maybe I am only remembering the good times?

I agreed to give the quetiapine increase a go.
The whole appointment lasted 1hr 20 I was drained when I came out.
I then went to 3 different chemists to get my new prescription no one had the 50mg tablets. I ordered it through my village chemist and took the remainder of my old script to make 100mg last night.
Today I went to pick up the ordered script to be told they had probs getting it but had 150mg tabs I told the pharmacist that would be ok as would prefer to take all at night because of driving and work. He said he had to speak to psych to check. 1 hour later after several phone calls back and forth via psychs secretary etc it was decided i have to go back tomorrow when they should have sourced 50mg tablets.
So angry all this wasn't sorted. I felt like a criminal in chemist like I was trying to fiddle my scripts or something.
I came home fuming and ordered the Amitriptyline I have been tempted to buy the last few weeks. My impulsive side just came out and I just did it.
Spoke to my cc and told her I've ordered the Amitriptyline she said it was silly. Suppose it was really but that's just the way things are when you are impulsive.
And now I'm left with the anger still simmering away, that is leading to self harm thoughts and the way I feel at the moment I glad I ordered the Amitriptyline just a shame it's gonna take a while to get here.

Thanks for reading x

Struggling

So I feel like I need to blog, no i'll rephrase that, I feel like I should blog. Though I dont have anything specific to blog about.

It's been another tough week. I've managed to go to work and complete my shifts somehow, but at night time my thoughts have turned really negative. I've had suicidal thoughts again quite strong but I've taken my night meds and have then fallen to sleep stopping the thoughts being actioned.

Today feels different, I've woken up with same thoughts that I went to bed with ... Suicidal ones.

I have nothing to hand in the house to do anything. My meds are all weekly so
nowhere near enough. To get other paracetamol would mean going to several different places. And to be honest although I have the thoughts and urges I don't think I have the energy to go to 4 different places.

What I am on the verge of doing is ordering some Amitriptyline online. I want these as a "get out plan", I'm not saying I would take them, I just know I would feel better having them in the house as a "way out".

So that's where I am at. Feeling pretty crap and I have a shift at work to get through later.

I'm sorry my blog posts are so negative at the moment but I suppose blogging is about what's happening and that just happens to be bad stuff.

Thanks for reading x

Struggling to cope

So I'm not really sure what to write. All I can write is about the present and how I am struggling.
My OT has told me on the phone this morning to use distraction, do something practical, write something on my Angry Heart journal about what's happening now.

I have done something practical today but it is something that will be frowned upon. I have planned and typed out my funeral wishes. The pieces of music a speech to be read by vicar and have even inserted my favourite poem. It sounds really morbid and I suppose it is, but where my mind and mood are at the moment my funeral doesn't seem to far away. I am having to fight suicidal urges almost constantly. Thoughts are ruminating in my head leading to plans like timings, methods etc. This is a cycle I can't break at the moment. I have no idea what is stopping me but whatever it is can surely not last. As the thoughts get stronger I am getting tired and giving up seems more and more appealing.

I hate this illness, I hate how I feel worthless, selfish and generally a bad person. These thoughts, my emotions, my reactions to everything are breaking me down. I know I am not the illness but when it affects your life in so many ways it's hard not to think I am it and that's what makes me who I am.

I know all this can be treated and I can recover, I have been told so many times. But when you are dealing with this shit day after day it's hard to imagine recovery. It's hard to keep hanging in there while you work on healing.

And so the hours continue to pass by and the thoughts go round and round...oh how I wish it would end.

The day my world ended

On 30th October 2000 my mum took her last breath. It was a Monday evening at 7.13pm.
The week before I had been told it was just a matter of weeks she had left to live. The bone marrow transplant had failed leaving her with such a low immune system that a simple cold sore would be what eventually went on to kill her.
The cold sore on her lip had spread, it began to grow like some alien fungus, every little bit it spread meant there was less of mums pretty face left. Her platelets were so low (despite constant transfusions ) that the large scab covering her mouth, cheeks and nose wouldn't stop bleeding. The scabs began to block her nostrils and her mouth opening so that breathing became more difficult. I asked an E.N.T specialist if he could do anything and he said no as whatever he cut away would just bleed until she bled out. It wasn't an option.

The hospital and I arranged that my mum should come home to spend her last few days where she belonged, in her own home , amongst her own things and where our lovely dog Meg would be. A special bed was delivered and was put in the dining room. I knew this would be where she would die. An ambulance brought her home on Friday 27th. She was barely conscious. She couldn't speak due to what was now a mass on her face. It didn't look like my mum. She looked like a child. She was bald from the chemo, pale and so so thin. She must have weighed less than 5 stone. I had never seen anyone so sick before. She also had a smell a unique smell that is so hard to describe. It is the smell of cancer, the smell of it rotting away every part of her body.

She was in our care now. Mine, her boyfriend Ian's and her brothers & sisters. We spent time sitting around the bed. Talking, re-living old memories, crying all with no answers but I knew she was listening and that she understood. Aunts and uncles would come and go on what seemed like a rota system. It was on the Saturday night things really deteriorated.
Me and Ian helped her onto the camode. While on it supported by us she collapsed. Ian screamed out "she's gone" no she hasn't I said ..she still had a pulse..a faint one but she had one. We got her back on the bed. My mum was not gone in medical terms but my mum HAD gone. What was left was a shell of a woman I loved more than anything in the world. I could only recognise her by her eyes and hands. I rang the Macmillan nurse who said this was the final stage. She was unconscious and would not recover.So the family were called and over the next 36 hours we stayed around the bed. If she was going to take her last breath soon she would not do so alone. The nurses told us the last of the 5 senses to remain is hearing. We put music on constantly in the room. I worked my way through our cd collection turning louder her favourites.In the last few hours before she passed I noticed a noise coming from her throat. This is the death rattle. It is the most frightening thing I have ever heard. It sounds like a little bit of water boiling in a kettle. It is unforgettable. Her breathing became shallow and uneven, going for what felt like minutes between each breath.

I moved off my chair and slid half on the bed with her. I cradled her head and body in my arms like I was holding a baby. I stroked her neck softly and told her it was ok to let go, I told her she would be with grandad. Tears poured down my face as I told her how much I loved her and that she was the best mum in the world. The tears fell off my face onto hers. The family were crying but somehow my tears seemed much calmer, quieter. In the background Westlife were playing, Flying without wings one of her favourites.
She took one final breath and then her body just went limp, she was gone...I just knew. I told the family "she has gone" and I gently laid her back down on the bed.
It was at this exact moment our dog Meg who had been laid in the same room got up and went into the next room where she lay at the bottom of the stairs for the rest of the evening. Even the dog knew she had gone.

As I write this now I am crying, I am shaking & I am cold. I can feel all the emotions I felt that night as if they are now...this moment. As I cry and write my dog Marley is laid on me, comforting me as if he knows the pain I feel and somehow he's trying to ease it.

As I come to end this piece Bette Midlers-Wind beneath my wings has come on (I am listening to a music channel). A song that always reminds me of my mum, maybe it is her way of showing she's never far from me whether in my heart, my mind or in spirit.

Thank you for your time. X