People often ask me what depression feels like. How I know.
The question usually comes when I've been boasting about how I now have this chronic illness under control. About how I watch out for early warning signs, and as soon as I feel them, I nip them in the bud with a bout of ECT. I make it all sound terribly straightforward.
Sometimes I wonder if people are asking because they've had feelings themselves that they've never discussed openly before, and want to know if I'm about to describe something similar. Sometimes I think they're waiting for me to describe just an amplified version of ordinary sadness, or feelings of stress, so they can write me off as someone who can't cope with stuff like they can.
Most of the time though, they probably just want to know out of genuine interest. Especially as I'm talking about such a personal thing, with such certainty. It's a human interest story that would catch most people's attention.
Anyway, I tell them that I feel it very physically, and unmistakably, in my body. I give them the line about 'my blood runs cold', and say that I'm sure that one day there'll be a test that doctors can do to show this change, like diabetes and blood sugar.
But it's hard to explain it properly, to do justice to the description, until you're in it. And then, you don't want to talk about it. Partly because the nature of the thing means you don't feel like talking, or typing, or even opening the front door unless absolutely necessary. And partly because (and this is a bit counter-intuitive, so bear with me) as soon as you start to feel it, you go into denial.
I wax on about how sure I am when it's starting, and how it's different from ordinary worry, or tiredness, or illness. But then when it does, that's exactly what I try to put it down to. After sixteen years, I still kid myself that it's because I've got a cold, or it's to do with a particular source of concern that is due to resolve itself.
There was one time, about ten years ago, when I told myself and my employer that I had the flu. For two weeks, I stayed in my tiny flat, shaking, obsessively reading detective novels because if I even looked up from the page I would go into a spiral of panic about what was happening. I had no symptoms of flu - no temperature, for example - but I did feel very wrong, and it seemed much more palatable all round to pretend it was that. I got in quite a lot of trouble when I did go back to work for not providing a doctor's note, and my boss was furious with me for letting her down by just disappearing one day, and thus never really forgave me. But that's another story.
What I want to describe now is how it really does feel. Because I can be honest here, and it is so bizarre, and so unpleasant (hah! what an understatement) that I kind of feel you ought to know.
You'll be doing something mundane, like walking through a carpark, when you realise your blood is rushing through your veins in the opposite direction to usual. Alarm bells go off - this is very very wrong, says your brain. Help. Inside you is upsetting loud music, a surge of adrenaline almost, as if you're poised to take action. As if you'd just walked round a corner straight into a gun pointed at your head. You look down at your hands, to see if they're shaking because of all this cacophany going on inside you, and they don't seem to be. Not much anyway.
Then someone walks past you and says "Morning" and herein lies the most awful moment. "Morning" you say in reply, and force a smile. And they have no idea. It seems preposterous that they can't detect what's going on inside you, hear the noise, smell the fear, but they don't. And that is when the greatest loneliness starts, because not only are you contending with bodily trauma, but no one else can see it. Partly because you are complicit in the lie. The deception has started, and it seems impossible to reconcile what's going on inside you with the absolute normality of everyday life outside.
Then it eases off a little, and you think maybe it's gone away, it was nothing. So now you're lying to yourself as well. Anxiety comes to visit, and every day you wake up in the early hours with a gnawing in your stomach. Sadness must be there too - after all, why else would you have a big bubble in your throat, that threatens to burst into sob every time you open your mouth? But the over-riding feeling is of numbness. Stuff is happening to you, but you're so scared you don't do anything. Can't.
Every bit of you is frozen, so it seems hard to even move sometimes. A painful stiffness. Reluctance hardens into fear. Some days, every fibre of your being longs to be in bed, under the duvet, where no one can see you.
Gosh it sounds bad written down. I remember the other reason why I don't normally describe it much detail. It makes people worry, and I don't want them to do that. Because just as surely as I know when it's happening, I now know that there's a way to zap it. ECT. Even though depression by definition means you find it hard to make decisions or drag yourself to the psychiatric place, with all those alarming people in the waiting room, you do it. And then hang in there.
Logie, who is now two and three-quarters, is interested in feelings at the moment. He likes to say he is sad, or happy, or scary (by which he means scared) because he is trying on these words for size, and because saying them to a grown up gets a reaction. The other day he said "I sad". When I asked him why, he thought for a bit and said "Because the gruffalo he shouted at me". I must have said something suitably soothing and fiction-busting, because shortly afterwards he said "I happy now". Again, I asked him why. He scratched around for an answer - he concentrated so hard he was actually frowning - and then declared "Because of tickles". That's the kind of detail I like.
Monday 28 October 2013
Monday 14 October 2013
Diet plateau
I had the most amazing mayonnaise the other day.
We were staying the weekend with friends, and they'd pushed the boat out on Saturday night, so alongside the cod with a chorizo crust was this fabulous mayonnaise. I couldn't work out if it had truffle oil in it. I'd saved up all my weightwatchers points, so could enjoy everything on offer. It was so good, I almost wept while chomping.
Friends, it was ordinary, full-fat Hellman's.
The thing about being on a diet for a very long time is you forget how delicious ordinary things are, because you're busy eating bread like cardboard, or drowning out everything with loads of vegetables to fill you up.
Yes yes, I know, there are preachy people out there who say they can't abide low-fat food, and you should just have 'a little' of everything. Trouble is, I need to put a lot of things in my gob throughout the course of a day. If you work in an office, it's genuinely possible to get side-tracked from eating because of back-to-back meetings or some crisis, or to get shamed into eating lentils in tupperware because everyone else is so thin.
If you work from home, or just run around after small children wiping various substances off surfaces, not only are you physically knackered, but you're presented with temptation every half an hour. Because the kitchen is your nerve centre, and the willpower that it takes not to eat the rejected skin off your toddler's baked potato is beyond most adult humans.
True, weightwatchers allows you to have the odd splurge, so you don't forget what burgers taste like, or send yourself over the edge by craving something that's verboten. (It's the psychological torture that's the hardest - the minute I considered trying a different diet I felt hungry and panicked all the time, and unsatisfied by the usual staples that see me through the points system.)
But once you've found a few little tricks - Philadelphia Light, mini Tangle Twisters, Cathedral cheddar - you get quite boastful about how you feel like you're eating almost normally, but you've reduced your calorie intake. Once you've made a thai curry with reduced fat coconut milk, and had those zero noodles instead of rice with it, you've had most of the flavour, it's taken quite a long time to chew, and you've become smug diet woman.
But then you taste the old original Hellman's, and you realise you've been kidding yourself. Life for fat people is totally, viciously, unfair.
Not least, in my case, because I've recently had a plateau. I've been doing weightwatchers again since May. I did it before my wedding (though I started it before Jon proposed, so it wasn't a bridezilla thing, more a fed up with being fat thing) and again after my first baby, and it worked both times. It took a long time, but it came off slowly. About a pound a week, sometimes two. In theory, losing it steadily means it should stay off, though I wouldn't know that because of my tendency to get pregnant within weeks of hitting my goal weight.
But for most of last month, I lost nothing. Occasionally I even put a bit on. And I was hardly cheating at all. Over a period of five weeks, my net result was a loss of 0.8lb. That is very disheartening when you're on a diet, especially the sort that makes you feel like you're on a diet all the time too.
But it's the only method that I can face. Not eating two days a week seems impossible, and I live in fear of giving up certain food groups, because once I start eating them again surely it'll just come back on?
Anyway, in the scheme of things, this is not an important thing to worry about. I only find the time and emotional headspace to really mind about being overweight when everything else is okay. So really, I should be grateful that what the scales say on a Wednesday morning is such a big deal at the moment.
We all worry. Especially about our children. And some of us have more to concern us than others. There is a first-time mum in Felix's swimming class at the moment, and her daughter is about a month younger than him (seven months). I know you're allowed to be neurotic when it's your first one, but each week she says something ridiculous. Like - "If the water goes in her ears, will it come out again?"
I mean, what answer was she expecting?! I was sorely tempted to say "No, she'll gradually fill up, then sink down to the bottom. For the rest of her life she'll have pool water squelching out of every orifice, but isn't it a small price to pay for learning to swim."
Which is very mean of me to blog about. But I have friends who've had serious health scares with their babies, and are now destined to watch them like hawks for years to come, scrutinising every move to see if they're developing normally. What they'd give to be able to take their little ones swimming, or at least know that they'll be able to at some point in the future.
So although weightwatchers is a pain, I'm grateful I can focus on watching my weight, rather than watching a child of mine suffer.
We were staying the weekend with friends, and they'd pushed the boat out on Saturday night, so alongside the cod with a chorizo crust was this fabulous mayonnaise. I couldn't work out if it had truffle oil in it. I'd saved up all my weightwatchers points, so could enjoy everything on offer. It was so good, I almost wept while chomping.
Friends, it was ordinary, full-fat Hellman's.
The thing about being on a diet for a very long time is you forget how delicious ordinary things are, because you're busy eating bread like cardboard, or drowning out everything with loads of vegetables to fill you up.
Yes yes, I know, there are preachy people out there who say they can't abide low-fat food, and you should just have 'a little' of everything. Trouble is, I need to put a lot of things in my gob throughout the course of a day. If you work in an office, it's genuinely possible to get side-tracked from eating because of back-to-back meetings or some crisis, or to get shamed into eating lentils in tupperware because everyone else is so thin.
If you work from home, or just run around after small children wiping various substances off surfaces, not only are you physically knackered, but you're presented with temptation every half an hour. Because the kitchen is your nerve centre, and the willpower that it takes not to eat the rejected skin off your toddler's baked potato is beyond most adult humans.
True, weightwatchers allows you to have the odd splurge, so you don't forget what burgers taste like, or send yourself over the edge by craving something that's verboten. (It's the psychological torture that's the hardest - the minute I considered trying a different diet I felt hungry and panicked all the time, and unsatisfied by the usual staples that see me through the points system.)
But once you've found a few little tricks - Philadelphia Light, mini Tangle Twisters, Cathedral cheddar - you get quite boastful about how you feel like you're eating almost normally, but you've reduced your calorie intake. Once you've made a thai curry with reduced fat coconut milk, and had those zero noodles instead of rice with it, you've had most of the flavour, it's taken quite a long time to chew, and you've become smug diet woman.
But then you taste the old original Hellman's, and you realise you've been kidding yourself. Life for fat people is totally, viciously, unfair.
Not least, in my case, because I've recently had a plateau. I've been doing weightwatchers again since May. I did it before my wedding (though I started it before Jon proposed, so it wasn't a bridezilla thing, more a fed up with being fat thing) and again after my first baby, and it worked both times. It took a long time, but it came off slowly. About a pound a week, sometimes two. In theory, losing it steadily means it should stay off, though I wouldn't know that because of my tendency to get pregnant within weeks of hitting my goal weight.
But for most of last month, I lost nothing. Occasionally I even put a bit on. And I was hardly cheating at all. Over a period of five weeks, my net result was a loss of 0.8lb. That is very disheartening when you're on a diet, especially the sort that makes you feel like you're on a diet all the time too.
But it's the only method that I can face. Not eating two days a week seems impossible, and I live in fear of giving up certain food groups, because once I start eating them again surely it'll just come back on?
Anyway, in the scheme of things, this is not an important thing to worry about. I only find the time and emotional headspace to really mind about being overweight when everything else is okay. So really, I should be grateful that what the scales say on a Wednesday morning is such a big deal at the moment.
We all worry. Especially about our children. And some of us have more to concern us than others. There is a first-time mum in Felix's swimming class at the moment, and her daughter is about a month younger than him (seven months). I know you're allowed to be neurotic when it's your first one, but each week she says something ridiculous. Like - "If the water goes in her ears, will it come out again?"
I mean, what answer was she expecting?! I was sorely tempted to say "No, she'll gradually fill up, then sink down to the bottom. For the rest of her life she'll have pool water squelching out of every orifice, but isn't it a small price to pay for learning to swim."
Which is very mean of me to blog about. But I have friends who've had serious health scares with their babies, and are now destined to watch them like hawks for years to come, scrutinising every move to see if they're developing normally. What they'd give to be able to take their little ones swimming, or at least know that they'll be able to at some point in the future.
So although weightwatchers is a pain, I'm grateful I can focus on watching my weight, rather than watching a child of mine suffer.
Wednesday 18 September 2013
Part-time work and toddler urine infections
I think I'm in the wrong job.
When I was growing up, I arrogantly dismissed some careers because "I wasn't motivated by money". I didn't bother doing the milk round after university, because I grandly proclaimed the City wasn't for me - I wanted to do an interesting job.
(Well, that and the fact that I didn't finish my last year or take my finals because of another bout of depression. I thought for a while that I'd have to spend the rest of my life explaining why I didn't have a degree, then realised quite quickly that nobody asks what you got, just where you went.)
It's not that I thought I'd never have to worry about money. I wasn't one of those girls who was fishing for a rich husband, or planning to devote her life to partying. No, I was going to do something different, and I was going to be really good at it. The success would equal money.
That's the privilege of private education I suppose. You're taught that if you work hard enough, pursue your interests and make the most of all the opportunities that come your way, the only way is up.
I believed - so far as I ever actually thought about it in depth, or looked ahead ten years - that my cleverness combined with my spoddy diligence would see me through whatever arty or alternative job I deigned to choose.
Now I'm trying to return to the job market, and I wish I'd trained as something useful, like a dentist, or a teacher, or a computer programmer.
Because there aren't any decent, part-time jobs out there for people who've done various stints of charity work, a bit of journalism, a dabble in television and an early pocket of politics.
What a fool I was! Was I? Should I have seen this coming, or had some more practical career advice knocked into me at some stage? Is it all my own fault I'm in this situation now?
Partly. Because it's only now, that I have two children, and the costs of childcare and groceries are upmost in my mind, that I've properly thought about whether a job should be entirely about what you feel like doing, or whether you just have to get on with something in order to pay the bills. That is my middle-classness showing, and I'm not proud of it.
Even when I had to start my career all over again, having come back from a high-earning job in Africa after a cataclysmic bout of depression, I swallowed my pride and signed up to a temping agency. But I went to one that placed people at the BBC, rather than in banks. I went for subject matter and working hours over money.
Okay, I've had some bad luck, which has caused me to move jobs and industries a bit more often than most people. Depression mostly, and losing a general election. But everyone hits some bumps in the road.
What isn't my fault, I think, is the lack of part-time jobs. You hear this debate on Woman's Hour all the time, politicians occasionally dip into it, and intelligent journalists like Gaby Hinsliff write about it more and more. But it didn't really come home to me until I found myself in the same situation. It's ridiculous that there is an entire class of women - an army - festering at home, using their brilliant brains to do outstanding Ocado shops and performance manage the cleaner.
Because part-time jobs and jobshares don't really exist in most organisations. Now, I've worked in big outfits, I've managed a team of people, I know what a bore it is when someone isn't able to attend the weekly team meeting. How it's just not practical to give someone a task that needs sorting by next week when they've only got two more days in the office this week.
I know that the idea of restructuring jobs and departments in the particular office that you work in, right now, seems as unworkable and pie in the sky as the argument for legalising drugs. But there must be a halfway house. Because think of the most brilliant woman you've ever worked with (I have a few in mind) and think how much she could add to the particular project you're currently working on, certainly compared to that FUCKWIT who's buggering it up right now - wouldn't you rather have her on board? Even if you could only get her for 21 rather than 35 hours a week?
Doesn't it seem crazy that she's at home, pretending to herself that everything's going to be all right because she's going to finally write that novel she's always thought about, and in ten years time it might make, ooh, eight grand?
While the ignoramus doing a studiedly average job at the task you assigned to him yesterday is checking his Facebook, concentrating on his hangover and working out how much of the presentation he can get away with cutting and pasting from the one with all the spelling mistakes from last time.
If you're in your twenties, and you're enjoying your job, have a think about this. I know you work really hard, and it's stressful, but in between spending a couple of hundred quid on clothes every month and having lie-ins at the weekend and going to bars and restaurants without being fined £35 before you walk in the door because of the babysitter, THINK - is this job going anywhere? If I have kids, will they let me come back part-time? If my employer folds, how easy will it be for me to get another job? Do I have transferrable skills?
I watched an excellent film recently called Before Midnight (essential viewing for any couple with small children - the dialogue is exactly as if the scriptwriters have been bugging your car, secretly recording YOUR rows, added a bit of wit and insight, and turned them into a screenplay) and one character said 'Those years, after you leave your parents' house and before you have kids. Those are your own. You never get time like that again'.
Then again, you'll never have a true understanding of the power that one human's bladder can have over another human unless you go through the stage of life that I'm at.
Out of the blue, Logie wee'd his pants a lot last week. On our bed, in his bed, down the back of the sofa, on my friend's kitchen floor. It was so sudden that I thought there might be something wrong. I took him to the doc with a urine sample, because I remembered a friend's toddler who often got urine infections. She said the signs were sudden loss of control and needing to go often.
The urine sample was clear. So I had to face up to the obvious - it was to do with moving up at nursery to the montessori 'big school'. He is pretty furious about it, despite the fact that he's fine when I'm not there. I'd had a feeling he might be wee'ing on purpose, simply because it got a reaction. Sometimes he thinks it's funny, and he often waits til I've just left the room to do it. He shouts at me lot. Thankfully so far they've only been wet protests, not dirty ones.
Maybe I should have trained as a child psychologist. I still mightn't have a job, but I could manage the hell out of my 2-year-old.
When I was growing up, I arrogantly dismissed some careers because "I wasn't motivated by money". I didn't bother doing the milk round after university, because I grandly proclaimed the City wasn't for me - I wanted to do an interesting job.
(Well, that and the fact that I didn't finish my last year or take my finals because of another bout of depression. I thought for a while that I'd have to spend the rest of my life explaining why I didn't have a degree, then realised quite quickly that nobody asks what you got, just where you went.)
It's not that I thought I'd never have to worry about money. I wasn't one of those girls who was fishing for a rich husband, or planning to devote her life to partying. No, I was going to do something different, and I was going to be really good at it. The success would equal money.
That's the privilege of private education I suppose. You're taught that if you work hard enough, pursue your interests and make the most of all the opportunities that come your way, the only way is up.
I believed - so far as I ever actually thought about it in depth, or looked ahead ten years - that my cleverness combined with my spoddy diligence would see me through whatever arty or alternative job I deigned to choose.
Now I'm trying to return to the job market, and I wish I'd trained as something useful, like a dentist, or a teacher, or a computer programmer.
Because there aren't any decent, part-time jobs out there for people who've done various stints of charity work, a bit of journalism, a dabble in television and an early pocket of politics.
What a fool I was! Was I? Should I have seen this coming, or had some more practical career advice knocked into me at some stage? Is it all my own fault I'm in this situation now?
Partly. Because it's only now, that I have two children, and the costs of childcare and groceries are upmost in my mind, that I've properly thought about whether a job should be entirely about what you feel like doing, or whether you just have to get on with something in order to pay the bills. That is my middle-classness showing, and I'm not proud of it.
Even when I had to start my career all over again, having come back from a high-earning job in Africa after a cataclysmic bout of depression, I swallowed my pride and signed up to a temping agency. But I went to one that placed people at the BBC, rather than in banks. I went for subject matter and working hours over money.
Okay, I've had some bad luck, which has caused me to move jobs and industries a bit more often than most people. Depression mostly, and losing a general election. But everyone hits some bumps in the road.
What isn't my fault, I think, is the lack of part-time jobs. You hear this debate on Woman's Hour all the time, politicians occasionally dip into it, and intelligent journalists like Gaby Hinsliff write about it more and more. But it didn't really come home to me until I found myself in the same situation. It's ridiculous that there is an entire class of women - an army - festering at home, using their brilliant brains to do outstanding Ocado shops and performance manage the cleaner.
Because part-time jobs and jobshares don't really exist in most organisations. Now, I've worked in big outfits, I've managed a team of people, I know what a bore it is when someone isn't able to attend the weekly team meeting. How it's just not practical to give someone a task that needs sorting by next week when they've only got two more days in the office this week.
I know that the idea of restructuring jobs and departments in the particular office that you work in, right now, seems as unworkable and pie in the sky as the argument for legalising drugs. But there must be a halfway house. Because think of the most brilliant woman you've ever worked with (I have a few in mind) and think how much she could add to the particular project you're currently working on, certainly compared to that FUCKWIT who's buggering it up right now - wouldn't you rather have her on board? Even if you could only get her for 21 rather than 35 hours a week?
Doesn't it seem crazy that she's at home, pretending to herself that everything's going to be all right because she's going to finally write that novel she's always thought about, and in ten years time it might make, ooh, eight grand?
While the ignoramus doing a studiedly average job at the task you assigned to him yesterday is checking his Facebook, concentrating on his hangover and working out how much of the presentation he can get away with cutting and pasting from the one with all the spelling mistakes from last time.
If you're in your twenties, and you're enjoying your job, have a think about this. I know you work really hard, and it's stressful, but in between spending a couple of hundred quid on clothes every month and having lie-ins at the weekend and going to bars and restaurants without being fined £35 before you walk in the door because of the babysitter, THINK - is this job going anywhere? If I have kids, will they let me come back part-time? If my employer folds, how easy will it be for me to get another job? Do I have transferrable skills?
I watched an excellent film recently called Before Midnight (essential viewing for any couple with small children - the dialogue is exactly as if the scriptwriters have been bugging your car, secretly recording YOUR rows, added a bit of wit and insight, and turned them into a screenplay) and one character said 'Those years, after you leave your parents' house and before you have kids. Those are your own. You never get time like that again'.
Then again, you'll never have a true understanding of the power that one human's bladder can have over another human unless you go through the stage of life that I'm at.
Out of the blue, Logie wee'd his pants a lot last week. On our bed, in his bed, down the back of the sofa, on my friend's kitchen floor. It was so sudden that I thought there might be something wrong. I took him to the doc with a urine sample, because I remembered a friend's toddler who often got urine infections. She said the signs were sudden loss of control and needing to go often.
The urine sample was clear. So I had to face up to the obvious - it was to do with moving up at nursery to the montessori 'big school'. He is pretty furious about it, despite the fact that he's fine when I'm not there. I'd had a feeling he might be wee'ing on purpose, simply because it got a reaction. Sometimes he thinks it's funny, and he often waits til I've just left the room to do it. He shouts at me lot. Thankfully so far they've only been wet protests, not dirty ones.
Maybe I should have trained as a child psychologist. I still mightn't have a job, but I could manage the hell out of my 2-year-old.
Saturday 7 September 2013
Hospitals
Some people that we love are seriously ill at the moment. So I've visited a couple of big hospitals in the last week.
Do you like hospitals?
I am some sort of weirdo, because I do. I find something about them comforting. Which isn't to say I don't worry about the loved ones I am visiting, or have faith that the doctors and nurses are getting everything right.
I've got bad experiences of hospital, like most people. Watching my grandfather suffer traumatic indignities after his stroke, unable to communicate properly, left such an impression on me I'm unable to recall the memory without tears. I've seen a few pretty nasty incidents in psychiatric hospitals, for example one involving a woman and a used sanitary towel.
Is it some blind trustingness I have about greater medical authority, do I associate it with the imminent prospect of a lie-down (my last few trips to hospital on my own behalf have been for back or hip procedures, and quite frankly have been a nice break from childcare, combined with thrilling pain relief) or is it to do with my lifelong obsession with ER?
Whatever it is, I'm lucky that it's not me in there, getting a terminal diagnosis, or watching over my beautiful, ill baby.
They're like different worlds, hospitals. In different time zones, with different rules. Microcosms - well, giant ones - that feel like they even have their own climates. (Although one of them did have a Marks & Spencer in reception, which was a bit like getting to the International Space Station and finding a vacuum-packed branch of John Lewis behind one of the doors.)
But boy, do you see a slice of life in hospitals. Like alcohol, they are the great leveller. Pain, nausea, worry, frustration, sympathy, love, gratitude; all the things that make us human, that make us the same, come to the forefront.
Waiting for a lift in a busy hospital is an interesting experiment in observing all these traits. What is it with big hospitals and those multiple lifts that still take forever? It's like waiting for a tube in rush hour: inching towards where you think the doors are going to open, furiously judging people who don't seem to be obeying the rules.
Except this time you're also assessing them for signs of visible injury, listening to their conversations to see how urgent their visit is, trying to decode whether that angry look on their face is because they're worried about a relative or because they're just an unpleasant person.
We all get ill, but serious situations are very different. When it's someone that we care about, we try to imagine their world. We do little things to make hospital more homely, and attempt to work out what they want to hear. But how can you really put yourself in their shoes? You're not walking those long corridors in the night.
I wish there was a universal guidebook about how to support people best. How to be there usefully, unobtrusively, whenever they need us. My motto is: be positive, listen rather than talk, and above all, do not complain about your own trivial problems. Because hospitals are a big deal. This is not ER.
Do you like hospitals?
I am some sort of weirdo, because I do. I find something about them comforting. Which isn't to say I don't worry about the loved ones I am visiting, or have faith that the doctors and nurses are getting everything right.
I've got bad experiences of hospital, like most people. Watching my grandfather suffer traumatic indignities after his stroke, unable to communicate properly, left such an impression on me I'm unable to recall the memory without tears. I've seen a few pretty nasty incidents in psychiatric hospitals, for example one involving a woman and a used sanitary towel.
Is it some blind trustingness I have about greater medical authority, do I associate it with the imminent prospect of a lie-down (my last few trips to hospital on my own behalf have been for back or hip procedures, and quite frankly have been a nice break from childcare, combined with thrilling pain relief) or is it to do with my lifelong obsession with ER?
Whatever it is, I'm lucky that it's not me in there, getting a terminal diagnosis, or watching over my beautiful, ill baby.
They're like different worlds, hospitals. In different time zones, with different rules. Microcosms - well, giant ones - that feel like they even have their own climates. (Although one of them did have a Marks & Spencer in reception, which was a bit like getting to the International Space Station and finding a vacuum-packed branch of John Lewis behind one of the doors.)
But boy, do you see a slice of life in hospitals. Like alcohol, they are the great leveller. Pain, nausea, worry, frustration, sympathy, love, gratitude; all the things that make us human, that make us the same, come to the forefront.
Waiting for a lift in a busy hospital is an interesting experiment in observing all these traits. What is it with big hospitals and those multiple lifts that still take forever? It's like waiting for a tube in rush hour: inching towards where you think the doors are going to open, furiously judging people who don't seem to be obeying the rules.
Except this time you're also assessing them for signs of visible injury, listening to their conversations to see how urgent their visit is, trying to decode whether that angry look on their face is because they're worried about a relative or because they're just an unpleasant person.
We all get ill, but serious situations are very different. When it's someone that we care about, we try to imagine their world. We do little things to make hospital more homely, and attempt to work out what they want to hear. But how can you really put yourself in their shoes? You're not walking those long corridors in the night.
I wish there was a universal guidebook about how to support people best. How to be there usefully, unobtrusively, whenever they need us. My motto is: be positive, listen rather than talk, and above all, do not complain about your own trivial problems. Because hospitals are a big deal. This is not ER.
Thursday 22 August 2013
Back pain and nursery guilt
I shall always remember Gordano Services, off the M5, as the place where I crippled my back yet again, and for my first (and last) taste of KFC.
Yes, the bad back is back. It's so boring to read about, to write about. But for once, it was quite unexpected, as I'd had a really good scan in May. Which showed that most of the prolapsed bit of the disc had dissipated, making it less likely to slip again because there wasn't much of it left - according to surgeon A. Turns out he was wrong.
We were on our way back from Cornwall - lovely as usual, but all you bastards who went in July used up all the good weather - and heading to Mum's place in Oxfordshire. In order to go to the Wilderness festival.
Logie was zooming around the double Burger King/KFC queue of shame like a mad thing, needing to run off car-cooped-up-ness and various be-quiet snacks, and he ran full pelt at me without even entering my peripherary vision. I had to reverse the top bit of my body, whilst not knocking him over, without falling over myself. (God, even the description of how it happened is boring. If only it could have been a surfing accident.)
Once we'd gingerly levered me back in the car, it was past 4pm, on a Friday, so I spent the next hour frantically ringing my spinal surgeon (on hols), BUPA and every other surgeon in London or Oxford that might be able to inject me ASAP to ease the pain. This exhaustive survey reveals that 90% of medical secretaries knock off early and put their phones on voicemail on Fridays in August.
We made it back with only one more stop, I think - can't remember, was too busy phoning and scrabbling in the secret, deep, innard pockets of my handbag for my emergency full-whack painkillers. But at some point on the journey I recall thinking that there are no five words more likely to strike fear into a toddler's parent on the motorway, when they are uttered just ten minutes after departing the last service station: "Daddy, I need another wee."
We'd just spent the previous weeks being overly enthusiastic about the sharing of such knowledge, or even the identifying of the feeling - "Well done for telling me! Okay, good boy, we'll go straight to the potty. Well done, you're so clever!"
This pronouncement from the back, before we'd barely managed to break the speed limit again, was met with a long pause, bright voices emanting from stony faces, and both of us saying "Really? Are you sure? Do you need a WEE WEE? You just did a wee wee. Are you sure?" Pause from the back. Then, without faltering, "I need a wee wee".
NB we shouldn't complain, because the poo panics are over, he is fully potty trained, and hasn't had an accident at all for three weeks. Okay, it took three weeks to master the poo thing, and by god they were longest weeks of my life, but I am very proud of him for getting it so quickly.
Anyway, I spent all of the Wilderness festival lying on my back in bed, in frigging agony. Hardly able to hobble to the loo even. Piercing pain, surprised gasps, pitiful whimpers.
Logie had a ball, dancing with pirates during the day, but Jon didn't get to see any of the bands in the evenings, including Noah and the Whale. Not fair.
I had it scanned, and injected with steroid again, a few days later. By a neurosurgeon, who works with surgeon A, an orthopaedic spinal surgeon. So we'll call the neuro guy surgeon B. Surgeon B was pretty appalled that I've been going through this pain for two years, and haven't had an operation to fix it yet.
He advocates the more drastic of the two options that have been previously discussed - fusing the two joints of my spine that are dodgy (the disc at L4/L5 is the main culprit, but the one beneath is also fairly ropey) rather than a microdiscectomy, which means just removing the bit of disc that protrudes out. Discs are like round bath sponges in between the vertebrae of your spine.
The former is a bigger deal, removing the discs and welding the joints together, but he believes that it won't put undue pressure on the discs above and below, and cause them to start disintegrating too - which is the common criticism of this op. He says that's a much-repeated myth. I wonder what surgeon A would say about that.
Surgon B also says that my recovery time would be much less than a microdiscectomy, it would be a complete solution to the problem, it wouldn't affect my long-term mobility and they could do either op through my back. Surgeon A had always maintained that a microdiscectomy would have to be done through my stomach, which was particularly off-putting to me til I was done having babies.
It's hard, isn't it, when doctors disagree? Though B was keen to stress he is friends with A, and they work together a lot of the time, he was clearly of a very different mindset. But both are convincing, when making their pitches.
So I go back to B for my follow-up on Tuesday - where I'll be reporting that it has eased the pain significantly, but not as much as I'd hoped. But I'll suggest, or rather, reluctantly agree, to go and see a hip surgeon as well. Because my hip has been playing up again for the last couple of months, giving me left leg pain and a numb big toe, and I'm sure we'll all agree we want a complete picture of what's going on with my crappy body before I have major surgery.
Then I'll probably have to go back to surgeon A, to let him put out his stall again. Then everyone says I should get a third opinion.
(I wonder if David Cameron is going through the same dilemma - his recently reported back problems sound similar. We have so much in common.)
So it's just as well that Felix is starting nursery next month, as I'm going to need to spend a bit of time having yet more hospital appointments. I feel so guilty about Felix starting nursery, two days a week, aged six months, it's ridiculous.
But we wanted him to go to the same place as Logie (cheaper than getting a nanny, unless we took Logie out of nursery entirely), and they only do intakes in September and January now. And back in the dark days when he wasn't sleeping through, and I was ratty and wits' end all the time, I went for September.
Now it feels like a hideously undeserved luxury, when I don't actually have a job to go back to, no new income to pay for it - and when he is so cute and fun that I could start doing more interesting things with him. Plus I wish they'd stop pointing out that he's the youngest by far at nursery.
This week I really indulged myself in that guilt. Felix has had a couple of short settling-in sessions, lots of our friends are still on holiday, so it has been quite a boring, lonely existence, being at home with (or rather, partly without) the boys.
I have spent all their lunchtime sleeps writing 8 zillion thank-you cards for Felix's christening presents. Disgracefully, over a month late. And even though I was sure I'd resolved to write them in the order that their names appeared on my list, I'm pretty sure that I've written a few twice. It's been such a drawn-out process, but as I was writing Uncle David's, and proclaiming yet again 'what good taste' they have in boys' clothes, I had an awful feeling of deja vu. Whoops. Sorry.
So I came over all mea culpa, I miss my boys, I should be enjoying Felix's baby days and taking him to music classes and making pottery casts of his footprints and batches of sweet potato puree. Oh woe is me, was I, on Monday and Tuesday. I'm such a bad mother, I don't know what to do with myself without them, there are no decent part-time jobs out there, I'll get precious few lucrative freelance commissions, it's so lonely being at home without adult company.
On Wednesday, I had both the boys all day, and halfway through it Jon texted to ask if he was allowed to go for a beer with a friend that evening. To which I snidely replied that he should have phrased it, do you mind doing bathtime and bedtime on your own. Felix was particularly pukey (his reflux seems to be worse, or rather, he only really seems to have it, in hot weather these days). He did one quite good one down my front, which went inside my bra, and travelled round the underwiring with impressive ingenuity.
Logie did one of his special tantrums when we got home from our morning playdate. They always happen when there's nowhere within 100 yards of our house to park. I manage to get him out of the car, put the rucksack on my back, my handbag on my shoulder, extract Felix from his carseat (no wonder I have a bad back), then Logie flips and refuses to walk, lies down on the pavement, usually near something particularly revolting, there's no shade, Felix isn't wearing a hat or any suncream, we're on the wrong side of the road so I can't just walk to the house, and I long long long for one of my neighbours to coincidentally arrive home and help.
So by the end of Wednesday, I'd had to have a gin and tonic at 6pm, and was extremely batey. Woe is me, it's such hard work, I haven't sat down all day, I smell of puke, I've got to put another wash on, read 78 stories to Logie, then cook supper for my husband who is late, and has been having a nice time drinking with his friends. Gosh, life's unfair.
All this while being aware that I complain about both situations, complete opposites, and manage to feel guilty and hard done by about both. And I was entirely convincing on both occasions. Sounds like I need a third opinion on that as well.
Yes, the bad back is back. It's so boring to read about, to write about. But for once, it was quite unexpected, as I'd had a really good scan in May. Which showed that most of the prolapsed bit of the disc had dissipated, making it less likely to slip again because there wasn't much of it left - according to surgeon A. Turns out he was wrong.
We were on our way back from Cornwall - lovely as usual, but all you bastards who went in July used up all the good weather - and heading to Mum's place in Oxfordshire. In order to go to the Wilderness festival.
Logie was zooming around the double Burger King/KFC queue of shame like a mad thing, needing to run off car-cooped-up-ness and various be-quiet snacks, and he ran full pelt at me without even entering my peripherary vision. I had to reverse the top bit of my body, whilst not knocking him over, without falling over myself. (God, even the description of how it happened is boring. If only it could have been a surfing accident.)
Once we'd gingerly levered me back in the car, it was past 4pm, on a Friday, so I spent the next hour frantically ringing my spinal surgeon (on hols), BUPA and every other surgeon in London or Oxford that might be able to inject me ASAP to ease the pain. This exhaustive survey reveals that 90% of medical secretaries knock off early and put their phones on voicemail on Fridays in August.
We made it back with only one more stop, I think - can't remember, was too busy phoning and scrabbling in the secret, deep, innard pockets of my handbag for my emergency full-whack painkillers. But at some point on the journey I recall thinking that there are no five words more likely to strike fear into a toddler's parent on the motorway, when they are uttered just ten minutes after departing the last service station: "Daddy, I need another wee."
We'd just spent the previous weeks being overly enthusiastic about the sharing of such knowledge, or even the identifying of the feeling - "Well done for telling me! Okay, good boy, we'll go straight to the potty. Well done, you're so clever!"
This pronouncement from the back, before we'd barely managed to break the speed limit again, was met with a long pause, bright voices emanting from stony faces, and both of us saying "Really? Are you sure? Do you need a WEE WEE? You just did a wee wee. Are you sure?" Pause from the back. Then, without faltering, "I need a wee wee".
NB we shouldn't complain, because the poo panics are over, he is fully potty trained, and hasn't had an accident at all for three weeks. Okay, it took three weeks to master the poo thing, and by god they were longest weeks of my life, but I am very proud of him for getting it so quickly.
Anyway, I spent all of the Wilderness festival lying on my back in bed, in frigging agony. Hardly able to hobble to the loo even. Piercing pain, surprised gasps, pitiful whimpers.
Logie had a ball, dancing with pirates during the day, but Jon didn't get to see any of the bands in the evenings, including Noah and the Whale. Not fair.
I had it scanned, and injected with steroid again, a few days later. By a neurosurgeon, who works with surgeon A, an orthopaedic spinal surgeon. So we'll call the neuro guy surgeon B. Surgeon B was pretty appalled that I've been going through this pain for two years, and haven't had an operation to fix it yet.
He advocates the more drastic of the two options that have been previously discussed - fusing the two joints of my spine that are dodgy (the disc at L4/L5 is the main culprit, but the one beneath is also fairly ropey) rather than a microdiscectomy, which means just removing the bit of disc that protrudes out. Discs are like round bath sponges in between the vertebrae of your spine.
The former is a bigger deal, removing the discs and welding the joints together, but he believes that it won't put undue pressure on the discs above and below, and cause them to start disintegrating too - which is the common criticism of this op. He says that's a much-repeated myth. I wonder what surgeon A would say about that.
Surgon B also says that my recovery time would be much less than a microdiscectomy, it would be a complete solution to the problem, it wouldn't affect my long-term mobility and they could do either op through my back. Surgeon A had always maintained that a microdiscectomy would have to be done through my stomach, which was particularly off-putting to me til I was done having babies.
It's hard, isn't it, when doctors disagree? Though B was keen to stress he is friends with A, and they work together a lot of the time, he was clearly of a very different mindset. But both are convincing, when making their pitches.
So I go back to B for my follow-up on Tuesday - where I'll be reporting that it has eased the pain significantly, but not as much as I'd hoped. But I'll suggest, or rather, reluctantly agree, to go and see a hip surgeon as well. Because my hip has been playing up again for the last couple of months, giving me left leg pain and a numb big toe, and I'm sure we'll all agree we want a complete picture of what's going on with my crappy body before I have major surgery.
Then I'll probably have to go back to surgeon A, to let him put out his stall again. Then everyone says I should get a third opinion.
(I wonder if David Cameron is going through the same dilemma - his recently reported back problems sound similar. We have so much in common.)
So it's just as well that Felix is starting nursery next month, as I'm going to need to spend a bit of time having yet more hospital appointments. I feel so guilty about Felix starting nursery, two days a week, aged six months, it's ridiculous.
But we wanted him to go to the same place as Logie (cheaper than getting a nanny, unless we took Logie out of nursery entirely), and they only do intakes in September and January now. And back in the dark days when he wasn't sleeping through, and I was ratty and wits' end all the time, I went for September.
Now it feels like a hideously undeserved luxury, when I don't actually have a job to go back to, no new income to pay for it - and when he is so cute and fun that I could start doing more interesting things with him. Plus I wish they'd stop pointing out that he's the youngest by far at nursery.
This week I really indulged myself in that guilt. Felix has had a couple of short settling-in sessions, lots of our friends are still on holiday, so it has been quite a boring, lonely existence, being at home with (or rather, partly without) the boys.
I have spent all their lunchtime sleeps writing 8 zillion thank-you cards for Felix's christening presents. Disgracefully, over a month late. And even though I was sure I'd resolved to write them in the order that their names appeared on my list, I'm pretty sure that I've written a few twice. It's been such a drawn-out process, but as I was writing Uncle David's, and proclaiming yet again 'what good taste' they have in boys' clothes, I had an awful feeling of deja vu. Whoops. Sorry.
So I came over all mea culpa, I miss my boys, I should be enjoying Felix's baby days and taking him to music classes and making pottery casts of his footprints and batches of sweet potato puree. Oh woe is me, was I, on Monday and Tuesday. I'm such a bad mother, I don't know what to do with myself without them, there are no decent part-time jobs out there, I'll get precious few lucrative freelance commissions, it's so lonely being at home without adult company.
On Wednesday, I had both the boys all day, and halfway through it Jon texted to ask if he was allowed to go for a beer with a friend that evening. To which I snidely replied that he should have phrased it, do you mind doing bathtime and bedtime on your own. Felix was particularly pukey (his reflux seems to be worse, or rather, he only really seems to have it, in hot weather these days). He did one quite good one down my front, which went inside my bra, and travelled round the underwiring with impressive ingenuity.
Logie did one of his special tantrums when we got home from our morning playdate. They always happen when there's nowhere within 100 yards of our house to park. I manage to get him out of the car, put the rucksack on my back, my handbag on my shoulder, extract Felix from his carseat (no wonder I have a bad back), then Logie flips and refuses to walk, lies down on the pavement, usually near something particularly revolting, there's no shade, Felix isn't wearing a hat or any suncream, we're on the wrong side of the road so I can't just walk to the house, and I long long long for one of my neighbours to coincidentally arrive home and help.
So by the end of Wednesday, I'd had to have a gin and tonic at 6pm, and was extremely batey. Woe is me, it's such hard work, I haven't sat down all day, I smell of puke, I've got to put another wash on, read 78 stories to Logie, then cook supper for my husband who is late, and has been having a nice time drinking with his friends. Gosh, life's unfair.
All this while being aware that I complain about both situations, complete opposites, and manage to feel guilty and hard done by about both. And I was entirely convincing on both occasions. Sounds like I need a third opinion on that as well.
Sunday 28 July 2013
ECT, Newsnight and anal retention
I went on Newsnight this week, to talk about ECT.
ECT stands for electro-convulsive therapy. It is a treatment for depression. A very successful and straightforward treatment, in my case.
I have it about once a year, when my depression comes back. When the illness pours iced water through my veins, so it's hard to move my limbs; whispers insidiously in my ear that I'm useless and that the joke's on me for speaking so openly about it when I'm well, until I'm reduced to tears; and sits cross-legged on my chest, like a baddie from Luther, stifling me with its weight and water-boarding me with fear.
You can watch it here, although this link will combust in a couple of days.
I also went on Radio 5 live the next day, to talk about it with some of the people interviewed for the Newsnight report. Two of these were doctors - Dr Ian Reid, a psychiatrist who uses ECT and has made some interesting discoveries about how it actually works, and Dr John Read, a psychologist who thinks that ECT is a placebo with harmful side-effects.
I'm not a scientist, or a doctor, so I didn't want to get into the research debate. I'm just someone who's had a lot of ECT, and looked into it as much as a journalist can, when I wrote my piece for the Guardian last year.
(NB this seems like a good time to reveal that I wrote about it for the Telegraph too, a few years before, under my middle name. I'm not ashamed of having it at all, but at the time I was worried that it would be the only thing that ever came up when you googled me, and didn't want to be defined by it. I don't worry about that any more.)
But when it comes to the science, here's where I stand. I would rather be guided by someone who actually works with ECT patients, administers it regularly and carefully monitors the side-effects by testing short-term memory and brain function for months afterwards. This is what Dr Reid does.
By scanning the brains of severely depressed people before and after treatment, you can see the difference that ECT has made on them. I've always known that a depressed brain looks different, but I've never seen the pictures. They showed them on Newsnight and I found that fascinating.
Dr Reid's 'hyperconnectivity' theory is that ECT 'turns down' (picture a volume knob here) the connections between the bits of the brain that govern mood and thinking. Maybe it's a bit like having one bit of your brain behave like a toddler having a tantrum, which happens to us all, right? Some people's brains can cope with that, mentally shut the door or take a deep breath and plough on. A depressed person's brain is far too sensitive to that trigger, their nerves become completely frayed very quickly, and the bit controlling their mood ends up sobbing on the kitchen floor.
Dr Read does not actually work with ECT patients. His paper is a literature review - he has carefully selected studies done by other people, and drawn his own conclusions from them. Let me say that again: Dr Read does not work with people who have ECT.
His argument that the treatment becomes 'addictive' also doesn't stand up, in my case. The pattern of my illness hasn't changed. I have rapid-cycling, unipolar, severe depression. For ten years, I would have an episode approximately once a year. It would take several months to burn itself out, despite whatever pills or therapy I was trying at that time.
Then I tried ECT. They put me to sleep, I woke up, and I was better.
However, I haven't had to have it increasingly regularly in the six years since then. It's not a quick fix that brings me back begging for more after a few weeks. The frequency of the episodes is unchanged. It still comes back about once a year. It just means I get back to normal much more quickly.
I'd like a lot more to be done to reduce the stigma surrounding ECT, which is often based on myths. I thought I'd come across them all before, but Newsnight brought me face to face with an amusing reaction that I'd never encountered. In the green room beforehand, I was introduced to the guests for another item, on the economy. I stood up and shook their hands. As I was doing so, the producer explained to one person that I was someone who had electric shock therapy. She looked appalled, and snatched her hand back quickly.
I know it's unfair to judge on a kneejerk reaction, but what was going through her mind at that moment? Did she think I was hooked up to the mains, or still carrying around a voltage?!
Would a scan of her brain at that precise instant tell us whether she reacted like that because she quickly accessed a memory, or misheard, or because an emotion she was feeling manifested itself as a physical response?
Anyway, a scan of my brain at the moment would show that I am perfectly fine, mental health-wise, at the moment. I have no hyperconnectivity to the tantrumming brain toddler, but I do have one in real life who has a new reason for some challenging behaviour.
Logie is potty training at the moment. Yep, just when you thought this was a serious blog post about an important issue, I go and spoil it with this. I still have ringing in my ears someone I heard on Woman's Hour ages ago, talking about how and why she went back to work after having a baby, and I simply can't get this fragment of what she said out of my head: "blah blah blah...work-life balance...how to have it all...men never get asked if they miss their kids...but in the end, I just thought that either I went back to work or I became one of those mummys who stayed at home and wrote a blog about poo".
This makes me think 'f*** you' and 'oh god, I agree, that's what I've become' in equal measures. But I'm going to plough on. (And for what it's worth, I adore Woman's Hour, it's my lifeline, and it's my great ambition to go on it to talk about ECT.)
He's been great on the wee front. I'm very proud of him. But poo has been more challenging. He has become anally retentive, in the truest sense of the word.
We've been through the mill in the last few weeks: constipation, diarrhoea, panic, tears, disapproval from nursery (thanks for that), dramatic false alarms, dramatic genuine alarms, sore botties and tummies. We go through a rather trying dance of the seven veils whenever a code brown is imminent, which can take a whole afternoon to reach its denouement.
Things are improving gradually, but it's a good reminder that you can't get too comfortable when raising small children - whenever you think you've cracked it, it's time to do something new. A few weeks ago it felt like we were starting to come out of the tunnel, thanks to Felix finally sleeping through and a new sun and stars sleep-training clock for Logie. But now I'm weaning one and potty training the other, and life seems busier than ever.
Though it's not without its sweet moments too. Logie is very keen on coming to the loo with me these days. He praises me, with a big smile and a slightly insulting look of surprise on his face - "Well done mumma!" - when I've finished, and passes me the tiniest wisp of loo paper. "Thanks!" I reply, enthusiastically. "You're welcome," he intones graciously. And my body, and my brain, become suffused with happiness.
ECT stands for electro-convulsive therapy. It is a treatment for depression. A very successful and straightforward treatment, in my case.
I have it about once a year, when my depression comes back. When the illness pours iced water through my veins, so it's hard to move my limbs; whispers insidiously in my ear that I'm useless and that the joke's on me for speaking so openly about it when I'm well, until I'm reduced to tears; and sits cross-legged on my chest, like a baddie from Luther, stifling me with its weight and water-boarding me with fear.
You can watch it here, although this link will combust in a couple of days.
I also went on Radio 5 live the next day, to talk about it with some of the people interviewed for the Newsnight report. Two of these were doctors - Dr Ian Reid, a psychiatrist who uses ECT and has made some interesting discoveries about how it actually works, and Dr John Read, a psychologist who thinks that ECT is a placebo with harmful side-effects.
I'm not a scientist, or a doctor, so I didn't want to get into the research debate. I'm just someone who's had a lot of ECT, and looked into it as much as a journalist can, when I wrote my piece for the Guardian last year.
(NB this seems like a good time to reveal that I wrote about it for the Telegraph too, a few years before, under my middle name. I'm not ashamed of having it at all, but at the time I was worried that it would be the only thing that ever came up when you googled me, and didn't want to be defined by it. I don't worry about that any more.)
But when it comes to the science, here's where I stand. I would rather be guided by someone who actually works with ECT patients, administers it regularly and carefully monitors the side-effects by testing short-term memory and brain function for months afterwards. This is what Dr Reid does.
By scanning the brains of severely depressed people before and after treatment, you can see the difference that ECT has made on them. I've always known that a depressed brain looks different, but I've never seen the pictures. They showed them on Newsnight and I found that fascinating.
Dr Reid's 'hyperconnectivity' theory is that ECT 'turns down' (picture a volume knob here) the connections between the bits of the brain that govern mood and thinking. Maybe it's a bit like having one bit of your brain behave like a toddler having a tantrum, which happens to us all, right? Some people's brains can cope with that, mentally shut the door or take a deep breath and plough on. A depressed person's brain is far too sensitive to that trigger, their nerves become completely frayed very quickly, and the bit controlling their mood ends up sobbing on the kitchen floor.
Dr Read does not actually work with ECT patients. His paper is a literature review - he has carefully selected studies done by other people, and drawn his own conclusions from them. Let me say that again: Dr Read does not work with people who have ECT.
His argument that the treatment becomes 'addictive' also doesn't stand up, in my case. The pattern of my illness hasn't changed. I have rapid-cycling, unipolar, severe depression. For ten years, I would have an episode approximately once a year. It would take several months to burn itself out, despite whatever pills or therapy I was trying at that time.
Then I tried ECT. They put me to sleep, I woke up, and I was better.
However, I haven't had to have it increasingly regularly in the six years since then. It's not a quick fix that brings me back begging for more after a few weeks. The frequency of the episodes is unchanged. It still comes back about once a year. It just means I get back to normal much more quickly.
I'd like a lot more to be done to reduce the stigma surrounding ECT, which is often based on myths. I thought I'd come across them all before, but Newsnight brought me face to face with an amusing reaction that I'd never encountered. In the green room beforehand, I was introduced to the guests for another item, on the economy. I stood up and shook their hands. As I was doing so, the producer explained to one person that I was someone who had electric shock therapy. She looked appalled, and snatched her hand back quickly.
I know it's unfair to judge on a kneejerk reaction, but what was going through her mind at that moment? Did she think I was hooked up to the mains, or still carrying around a voltage?!
Would a scan of her brain at that precise instant tell us whether she reacted like that because she quickly accessed a memory, or misheard, or because an emotion she was feeling manifested itself as a physical response?
Anyway, a scan of my brain at the moment would show that I am perfectly fine, mental health-wise, at the moment. I have no hyperconnectivity to the tantrumming brain toddler, but I do have one in real life who has a new reason for some challenging behaviour.
Logie is potty training at the moment. Yep, just when you thought this was a serious blog post about an important issue, I go and spoil it with this. I still have ringing in my ears someone I heard on Woman's Hour ages ago, talking about how and why she went back to work after having a baby, and I simply can't get this fragment of what she said out of my head: "blah blah blah...work-life balance...how to have it all...men never get asked if they miss their kids...but in the end, I just thought that either I went back to work or I became one of those mummys who stayed at home and wrote a blog about poo".
This makes me think 'f*** you' and 'oh god, I agree, that's what I've become' in equal measures. But I'm going to plough on. (And for what it's worth, I adore Woman's Hour, it's my lifeline, and it's my great ambition to go on it to talk about ECT.)
He's been great on the wee front. I'm very proud of him. But poo has been more challenging. He has become anally retentive, in the truest sense of the word.
We've been through the mill in the last few weeks: constipation, diarrhoea, panic, tears, disapproval from nursery (thanks for that), dramatic false alarms, dramatic genuine alarms, sore botties and tummies. We go through a rather trying dance of the seven veils whenever a code brown is imminent, which can take a whole afternoon to reach its denouement.
Things are improving gradually, but it's a good reminder that you can't get too comfortable when raising small children - whenever you think you've cracked it, it's time to do something new. A few weeks ago it felt like we were starting to come out of the tunnel, thanks to Felix finally sleeping through and a new sun and stars sleep-training clock for Logie. But now I'm weaning one and potty training the other, and life seems busier than ever.
Though it's not without its sweet moments too. Logie is very keen on coming to the loo with me these days. He praises me, with a big smile and a slightly insulting look of surprise on his face - "Well done mumma!" - when I've finished, and passes me the tiniest wisp of loo paper. "Thanks!" I reply, enthusiastically. "You're welcome," he intones graciously. And my body, and my brain, become suffused with happiness.
Tuesday 16 July 2013
Hair and hayfever
Sounds like the title of a West End show, doesn't it - 'Hair and Hayfever'? Sort of Noel Coward in the psychedelic 1970s gone wrong.
I'd have to wear a wig though. (Can you imagine how unpleasant that must be in this heat?) Because my hairline is receding so far it's not so much a widow's peak as a new mother's M-shape.
When my hair is back, if I tuck a loose middle bit behind my ear, you can actually see a small triangle of scalp behind that strand.
I worry because hair loss runs in my family, on the female side. But I think that a similar thing happened after I had Logie too, and some of it grew back, a bit. I have a vague memory of pointing out some baby-hair-type regrowth with relief.
Since then I've moved hairdressers, so I can't ask the current one what she remembers - and she's far too nice to say it was a problem anyway. She gave it a really good cut a few weeks ago, quite a good bit off, looked like there was a dead cat on the floor afterwards, and NO ONE has noticed.
That's probably because I always used to wear my hair up in a messy ponytail, regardless of whether it was newly cut, or clean. Because I hated the sensation of it on the back of my neck, when I was hot, or was rolling my sleeves up to tackle some laundry, or found myself stuck for small talk. Any excuse. But I've got the fear about something called traction alopecia, even though only people who have Croydon facelifts every day really have to worry about that.
But such is my concern that I've worn it down, determinedly, every day since then. Yes, even in this heat. Even at Felix's christening, when I was waltzing about at the side of the cricket pitch afterwards in 30 degrees, or hurtling down the bouncy castle obstacle course slide in an undignified manner.
It's been quite a challenge for me, as my compulsion to put my hair up is so automatic that I've had to break the habit by not ever having a hairtie on my wrist or in my bag. Which is jolly annoying. Especially when you're about to go swimming (the pool and the bath don't count).
Another addiction that I've been keeping secret for some time involves my nose. I am a nose spray junkie.
The thing is, I simply can't bear having a blocked up nose. It drives me mad. I feel like I can't do anything - eat, type, be nice to my children - if I can't breathe through my nose properly. Or sleep. Especially sleep. It's a bit like when I've taken my lenses out, or am wearing a pair of glasses that's the wrong prescription; if I can't see properly, I feel like I can't hear either.
There's always an excuse for it - a cold, pregnancy rhinitis, hayfever - but for a long time now I've been using those very strong nose sprays you can buy over the counter. Despite being fully aware that the more you use them, the more you bugger up your nose, and the more you need them. But like every good addict, I can't stop. I am dependent on it, even though I know it's part of the problem.
However, my hayfever has been dreadful this year. Lots of people are saying that, and some friends are experiencing it for the first time. My nose has been out of control with itching and congestion, I had to leave our summer party with our neighbours early because I couldn't stop sneezing, and sometimes even my eyes go too.
Added to which, I had a small sore patch inside one of my nostrils, obviously from my substance abuse. So I thought it was finally time to go to the GP and fess up.
You know when you have those sort of sad, dramatic fantasies about how something is going to turn out? They're usually confined to one's teenage years, but I have a penchant. Well, I had this idea that she was going to castigate me and send me to some specialist where the waiting room was full of cocaine enthusiasts, with collapsing noses.
Instead, she mildly pointed out that I shouldn't keep using it, said my nose was fine, and prescribed me over-the-counter hayfever pills (ceterizine, available to buy as Piriteze) and Beconase, an aqueous nasal spray for allergies. Actually she also wrote up a prescription for eyedrops as well, but when I questioned whether I could use them because I wear contact lenses she was quite taken aback, and said that no one had ever asked her about that in her whole career. Check with the pharmacist, she advised - who confirmed it was no go.
I was relieved to have her establish that there are no known harmful effects from taking hayfever pills when you're breastfeeding, because I had been taking the odd one, but was annoyed with myself for telling the truth about Beconase. She explained that you have to use it twice a day, for two weeks, for it to have any effect. As I've tried it half-heartedly a couple of times, with no joy, I thought afterwards that I should've lied and gone for the next thing up, which would've been a steroid nasal spray.
But what do you know? I've been using it now for almost two weeks, and my nose is noticeably better than it was. I still use the strong stuff (Sudafed Mucus Relief is my current fix) occasionally, but I need it much less often.
This could in part be down to the other remedy I've been trying recently - local honey. That's the thing apparently, if it's been made by bees pollenating the precise plantlife that's causing your reaction. The catch is that it's been a very bad year for bees, too cold and wet (remember that weather?), so most small-scale beekeepers don't have much surplus. But I have laid my hands on some Ealing honey, from just a couple of miles away, and very delicious it is too in my morning coffee.
So my secret, guilty fantasy has turned out to be a damp squib. But another fantasy, of a much more wholesome and entirely fabulous kind, is alive and kicking, and I'm going to inspect it on Thursday.
A place called the Mermaid Maternity Retreat is opening this week, and I've written about it for a magazine coming out next month. It's basically the last word in luxury, and sensible treatments, for new mums and their babies.
It's the brainchild of Nick Balfour, father of four daughters (can you imagine? I can't) who got sick of shuttling all over London to see various random 'experts' recommended by friends, to try and sort out whatever thing that particular baby or childbirth experience was inflicting on them - a feeding expert here, a cranio person there, etc. You know the drill.
It's had a bit of bad press recently, and very unfairly in my view. Either you think it's a travesty that the NHS doesn't provide all this stuff as standard, or you think it's a flawed concept, but you can't have it both ways. Yes, it's expensive, but having forked out a fair amount after both my babies and clocked up many miles in the car, there is a logic to it. Especially if you can be sure that the people you're seeing are top of their fields.
Felix and I have been treated by their osteopath, I've had some reflexology, and I can vouch for both.
Some of the packages are actually quite good value - for example, for £200 you get two home visits from a feeding expert and can attend unlimited drop-in clinics. I spent £130 to see my breastfeeding expert in her home, half an hour away, and it was worth every penny.
But here's my secret fantasty about it: the idea of escaping to a plush bedroom, with a 24-hour nursery, an osteopath, feeding expert, reflexologist, paediatric osteopath and masseuse on hand, when Felix was, say, eight weeks old, I was going mad with sleep deprivation, Logie was throwing major tantrums, my back was killing me and I was totally at my wits' end...that prospect is so heavenly that I'm thinking of putting Felix (five months tomorrow) back in, so that I can go and stay there.
I'd have to wear a wig though. (Can you imagine how unpleasant that must be in this heat?) Because my hairline is receding so far it's not so much a widow's peak as a new mother's M-shape.
When my hair is back, if I tuck a loose middle bit behind my ear, you can actually see a small triangle of scalp behind that strand.
I worry because hair loss runs in my family, on the female side. But I think that a similar thing happened after I had Logie too, and some of it grew back, a bit. I have a vague memory of pointing out some baby-hair-type regrowth with relief.
Since then I've moved hairdressers, so I can't ask the current one what she remembers - and she's far too nice to say it was a problem anyway. She gave it a really good cut a few weeks ago, quite a good bit off, looked like there was a dead cat on the floor afterwards, and NO ONE has noticed.
That's probably because I always used to wear my hair up in a messy ponytail, regardless of whether it was newly cut, or clean. Because I hated the sensation of it on the back of my neck, when I was hot, or was rolling my sleeves up to tackle some laundry, or found myself stuck for small talk. Any excuse. But I've got the fear about something called traction alopecia, even though only people who have Croydon facelifts every day really have to worry about that.
But such is my concern that I've worn it down, determinedly, every day since then. Yes, even in this heat. Even at Felix's christening, when I was waltzing about at the side of the cricket pitch afterwards in 30 degrees, or hurtling down the bouncy castle obstacle course slide in an undignified manner.
It's been quite a challenge for me, as my compulsion to put my hair up is so automatic that I've had to break the habit by not ever having a hairtie on my wrist or in my bag. Which is jolly annoying. Especially when you're about to go swimming (the pool and the bath don't count).
Another addiction that I've been keeping secret for some time involves my nose. I am a nose spray junkie.
The thing is, I simply can't bear having a blocked up nose. It drives me mad. I feel like I can't do anything - eat, type, be nice to my children - if I can't breathe through my nose properly. Or sleep. Especially sleep. It's a bit like when I've taken my lenses out, or am wearing a pair of glasses that's the wrong prescription; if I can't see properly, I feel like I can't hear either.
There's always an excuse for it - a cold, pregnancy rhinitis, hayfever - but for a long time now I've been using those very strong nose sprays you can buy over the counter. Despite being fully aware that the more you use them, the more you bugger up your nose, and the more you need them. But like every good addict, I can't stop. I am dependent on it, even though I know it's part of the problem.
However, my hayfever has been dreadful this year. Lots of people are saying that, and some friends are experiencing it for the first time. My nose has been out of control with itching and congestion, I had to leave our summer party with our neighbours early because I couldn't stop sneezing, and sometimes even my eyes go too.
Added to which, I had a small sore patch inside one of my nostrils, obviously from my substance abuse. So I thought it was finally time to go to the GP and fess up.
You know when you have those sort of sad, dramatic fantasies about how something is going to turn out? They're usually confined to one's teenage years, but I have a penchant. Well, I had this idea that she was going to castigate me and send me to some specialist where the waiting room was full of cocaine enthusiasts, with collapsing noses.
Instead, she mildly pointed out that I shouldn't keep using it, said my nose was fine, and prescribed me over-the-counter hayfever pills (ceterizine, available to buy as Piriteze) and Beconase, an aqueous nasal spray for allergies. Actually she also wrote up a prescription for eyedrops as well, but when I questioned whether I could use them because I wear contact lenses she was quite taken aback, and said that no one had ever asked her about that in her whole career. Check with the pharmacist, she advised - who confirmed it was no go.
I was relieved to have her establish that there are no known harmful effects from taking hayfever pills when you're breastfeeding, because I had been taking the odd one, but was annoyed with myself for telling the truth about Beconase. She explained that you have to use it twice a day, for two weeks, for it to have any effect. As I've tried it half-heartedly a couple of times, with no joy, I thought afterwards that I should've lied and gone for the next thing up, which would've been a steroid nasal spray.
But what do you know? I've been using it now for almost two weeks, and my nose is noticeably better than it was. I still use the strong stuff (Sudafed Mucus Relief is my current fix) occasionally, but I need it much less often.
This could in part be down to the other remedy I've been trying recently - local honey. That's the thing apparently, if it's been made by bees pollenating the precise plantlife that's causing your reaction. The catch is that it's been a very bad year for bees, too cold and wet (remember that weather?), so most small-scale beekeepers don't have much surplus. But I have laid my hands on some Ealing honey, from just a couple of miles away, and very delicious it is too in my morning coffee.
So my secret, guilty fantasy has turned out to be a damp squib. But another fantasy, of a much more wholesome and entirely fabulous kind, is alive and kicking, and I'm going to inspect it on Thursday.
A place called the Mermaid Maternity Retreat is opening this week, and I've written about it for a magazine coming out next month. It's basically the last word in luxury, and sensible treatments, for new mums and their babies.
It's the brainchild of Nick Balfour, father of four daughters (can you imagine? I can't) who got sick of shuttling all over London to see various random 'experts' recommended by friends, to try and sort out whatever thing that particular baby or childbirth experience was inflicting on them - a feeding expert here, a cranio person there, etc. You know the drill.
It's had a bit of bad press recently, and very unfairly in my view. Either you think it's a travesty that the NHS doesn't provide all this stuff as standard, or you think it's a flawed concept, but you can't have it both ways. Yes, it's expensive, but having forked out a fair amount after both my babies and clocked up many miles in the car, there is a logic to it. Especially if you can be sure that the people you're seeing are top of their fields.
Felix and I have been treated by their osteopath, I've had some reflexology, and I can vouch for both.
Some of the packages are actually quite good value - for example, for £200 you get two home visits from a feeding expert and can attend unlimited drop-in clinics. I spent £130 to see my breastfeeding expert in her home, half an hour away, and it was worth every penny.
But here's my secret fantasty about it: the idea of escaping to a plush bedroom, with a 24-hour nursery, an osteopath, feeding expert, reflexologist, paediatric osteopath and masseuse on hand, when Felix was, say, eight weeks old, I was going mad with sleep deprivation, Logie was throwing major tantrums, my back was killing me and I was totally at my wits' end...that prospect is so heavenly that I'm thinking of putting Felix (five months tomorrow) back in, so that I can go and stay there.
Felix at his christening. (No, that's not my newly-let-down hair - that's my fat, wrinkly FACE.)
Monday 24 June 2013
Cradle cap and the chicken pox vaccine
Answers to questions I didn't know I
needed to ask:
1) Yes, the World Health Organization
has recently changed its advice about weaning. (And yes, they spell it with a
Z, which is annoying and wrong.)
Apparently they've brought it back to
four months. They used to advise waiting til six months to introduce solids,
but every mum I know who's a few years or decades older than me started their
babies earlier than that. We started Logie a bit sooner too. Because he
was hungry.
Anyway, like lots of bits of advice that
have changed in recent years, it's changing back again. I can't actually verify
this because I have left my laptop at home and am on the world's slowest
computer, which has a nervy spas just doing a google search. Simply deleting a
word makes it freeze for five seconds. So if someone wants to double-check
this, knock yourself out. But Felix's paediatric osteopath (with a cool
hairstyle that makes you think 'Yes, short hair can look really good on some
people, maybe I'll have my hair cut too, and my hair that's always been thin
and frizzy will probably magically behave and suit being short') told me this,
and says that this will trickle down to the NHS fairly soon.
2) Yes, there is a vaccine for chicken
pox. Logie had it last week. It's routine in America, Australia and various
European countries. It'll probably be included in the standard national
immunisation programme in the UK sometime in the next few years, when they can
find the money for it. So one currently has to pay for it privately, but I
think it's worth it. It's 88% effective. Should stop him getting shingles in
later life too. One injection in the bum, which they can have as soon as they
turn one. Then a booster at around five.
3) There is probably a link between
cradle cap and reflux. (Felix has both. Logie had neither so I'm a novice in
both areas.) Something to do with a hormone and a milk protein. According to
the paed hair osteo. See above re my inability to look this up this too.
4) No need for google on this one,
because it's the paed osteo's own opinion: it's doubtful that putting babies
down on their backs has prevented more than two out of a million cot deaths in
recent years. The 'Back to Back' campaign was based on eliminating a number of
risk factors, including smoking and co-sleeping, which are now thought to be
the main culprits. There is no evidence about sleeping positions on their own
contributing to SIDS. But there are a lot more babies out there with flat
heads.
Questions I would genuinely like you to
answer, so please e-mail me back if you have any suggestions. Or tweet me. Or
leave a comment. Forward this to your friends, please - I really need answers:
1) If there is a hidden track on a CD,
and you are in the car and you like listening to that track more than the one
before it that officially has the number, is there a way to jump to it
directly? I refer you to the Bastille album and track 12.
2) Why don't more people make underwired
nursing bras? Or even ones with moulded cups? I know it'd be a bit tricky,
might include a few brains in the workshop scratching their heads, but come on
guys, you put a man on the moon, you want your wife's boobs to look good don't
you? (I'm assuming that there are zero females in the nursing bra manufacturing
industry - or only some kind of weird, misogynist, anti-procreation women.) I
usually wear Anita breastfeeding bras, as they're the only make that are
underwired.
It's bizarre that there isn't more of a
choice. Because our boobs are supposed to be so sore and organic and precious
and malformed when we are breastfeeding that we couldn't cope with underwiring,
or wouldn't want it? Not true. Because you're not supposed to be bothered about
how they look during this time of your life? Even less true. When you have big
boobs, are over 30 and on your second baby, you don't want your embonpoint to
look like a shelf. A spilling-over, horizontal, hammock of flesh with a line
cleavage that looks like a bumcrack.
I've recently started wearing my normal
bras with moulded cups, and been - quite frankly - amazed at how good my boobs
look. When you are fat, boobs are ALL YOU HAVE. Moreover, when you are fat
because of baby weight or being old, the fat is especially wobbly and oddly
distributed, so a decent bra is your true friend. You might as well draw
attention to the only bit of you that men might appreciate and thin women might
envy.
Having to strip to the waist every time
I want to breastfeed isn't terribly practical, but occasionally it's worth it,
so that when dressed I can look in the mirror without visibly flinching. Or
wear something nice, that requires proper scaffolding. Or simply something
low-ish cut, as nursing clothing tends to be; all v-necked tops and wrap
dresses, at least for those of us too meaty to wear jeans and a tailored shirt.
Nursing bras don't seem designed to go with nursing clothing - you can always
see the wretched, ugly bra that is unsupportive in both senses of the word.
So. Either tell me where to shop, or
take this idea and run with it. Set up a business. It's a gaping hole in the
market.
3) Why don't babies' toenails grow
anything like as fast as their fingernails?
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