I like to think that most of the people who come across this blog, who don't know me from Adam, but genuinely find some of the content interesting, are drawn in because of what I write about mental health.
It's a subject matter that one in four of us experience in any given year, and pretty much everyone knows someone they care about who's had a rough time. So given that it's potentially relevant and useful to strangers reading this (and it's certainly what people who know and love me want updates about, bless them) I don't actually write about exactly what depression feels like very often.
Well, I've had a really rock bottom day today, so I thought I'd describe it for you.
Part of the crapness, the loneliness, the feeling of being trapped, is due to not being able to tell anybody. Or at least, not have anyone understand. Or sympathise.
It's a mild version of that first day back at work after Christmas, where everyone you pass in a corridor asks "Good Christmas?" and you have to make a decision about your answer. I know plenty of people, braver than me, who put up with much more, who are probably screaming at the screen "Just say 'Fine thanks, how was yours' and move on. What's the big deal?" and they're probably right. But if your Christmas was less than idyllic, a tiny little bit of you dies each time you lie. Worse still, if you say something non-committal like "It was mixed" what you don't want is for the questioner to continue probing, wanting you to go into detail and put your fence-straddling answer that you're now massively regretting into context.
Now I'm not bah humbug enough to propose that we ban people asking how your Christmas was on the first day back in the office. I just think you should be able to give any answer you want, but still have it glossed over in the spirit of the whole question, whatever you reveal.
But back to today.
I'm not well enough to work at the moment. I've been trying my best, and probably doing a passable job, but fretting enormously about it, and in need of some rest. So my kind and understanding boss suggested that I come home at lunchtime on Monday and take the rest of the week off sick. Which I did.
I then had my third session of ECT on Tuesday. It went absolutely fine, but I don't feel an iota better. The docs are confident though that I'll start responding within the next couple of sessions.
In the meantime, life goes on. I have two beautiful, small boys who are full of energy. I don't want them to know I'm ill. I don't want them to look back later in life and say 'I always knew when mum was ill because she wasn't as fun/had less patience/lay crying on the kitchen floor'. Well I pretty much blew that last week, as I snapped at Logie more viciously than I've ever done before, then all three of us sat crying in the kitchen. That was a low point.
Today, all I wanted to do, with every cell of my body, was hide away, stay in bed, read a book, not be in the world. Ten years ago, during a bout of depression, I could do that. Now I can't. That's not a complaint, it's just an observation. Maybe it's no bad thing, I hear you say.
Today I took Felix for his swimming lesson at 10am, Logie for his at 11:30am, then we had lunch there afterwards with friends. But this isn't really telling you how I felt, is it? I felt on the verge of tears the entire time. I felt terribly terribly wrong inside, like an imposter pretending that normal life was going on regardless, desperate for someone to notice the pain that I was in and do something.
Because it is a pain. Imagine someone's stuck a drawing pin in your eye. No, that's probably too hard to imagine. Imagine it's been stuck under your fingernail, and it's really fucking painful, and tender, and all ALL you can think about is trying to get it out. The pain doesn't go away for periods, and only come back when you remember about it. It's there. All the time.
And while on the outside you're getting someone into their trunks, making conversation about how bad everyone's colds were last week, inside you're thinking 'I just don't think I can do this any more. I'm going to snap. I'm frightened, I feel it's very close. I don't know what that actually means, but believe me - I'm literally counting the next few seconds, please someone come and rescue me, I CAN'T KEEP GOING'.
And it hurts. I mean, it's clear to you at the time that it hurts, but you only have to zoom forward in time to a time when you're better (I'm lucky, I have good reason to believe that that time will come for me), and then look back at this moment, and you'll be even more horrified. The contrast between ordinary everydayness, mildly late/hungover/existentially concerned about your work-life balance is not even on the same scale as this terrifying, pressing feeling that you are literally about to implode.
Or imagine it was happening to a friend of yours, someone you really care about - imagine the sympathy, and advice, and free childcare you'd be offering them. We are never as kind to ourselves when it comes to mental health problems as we are to friends and family that we love.
I don't want you to try and read some sort of implicit suicidal ideation into this, because that's not what's happening. I am not thinking about killing myself, or making any sort of plan to do so. I wouldn't do that. I have a husband and two children whom I adore. I have a treatment that has 100% success rate in previous episodes, so no reason (apart from the pessimisim that is part and parcel of depression) to believe that it's not about to work again, and quite soon.
But that only adds to my feeling of being trapped, funnily enough. Because I still feel as acutely awful, and desperate for something to happen, to change, and incapable of believing that this could continue for even another five minutes because it's just so inhuman and unbearable. But what am I going to do? Nothing. I know that. So what is the point of feeling so hideous? None. But it's not a feeling I can control. So what can I do? Nothing.
And once the kids were in bed, I still couldn't collapse under the duvet. Because it's Logie's birthday on Saturday and I wanted to make his cake. Because life goes on. Even though mine doesn't feel like it is. Even though I feel like I'm not giving myself a chance to get better, because I can't have a ten-hour sleep and a day without stress.
But who can? Does this just sound so spoilt? Probably. I just needed to tell someone.
Thursday 23 January 2014
Friday 3 January 2014
Pneumonia and anxiety
Forgive me, my 28 readers, for it has been two months since my last post.
A lot has happened since then (no shit Sherlock - most people spend the run-up to Christmas on holiday in the Bahamas with their To Do lists at a record low length).
My main excuse, given that I usually manage to post even when ill, is that I've got a job. I work three days a week for the most magnificent campaign called Time to Change, which is kicking the shit out of stigma and discrimination around mental health (maybe they don't word it quite like that - I'm new).
It's a campaign I'm honoured to be part of, and you should check them out. I can tell you - in fact, I may have mentioned this once or twice before - that it's bad enough having a mental illness, but feeling ashamed of it, or worse, being discriminated against because of it, is equally as bad.
So I won't be posting on this blog quite as regularly. Which is a shame for me, because it's one of the things I enjoy doing most. That and eating cold gravy straight from the fridge.
I suppose I could make this entry a round-up of everything that's happened since I last wrote, and then a series of resolutions and aspirations for 2014. Instead I think I'll stick to my usual stream of consciousness, include 53 clauses in each sentence - sometimes separated by dashes - sometimes by commas, which can become quite confusing when you're reading it as you never know which words I meant to emphasise, and then when we've both completely lost the train of thought, take refuge in a conclusion of sorts preceded by a semi-colon; the ends of my sentences sometimes bear no relation to their beginnings.
I was going into a depression when I last wrote. It got worse. I had ECT. It didn't work as quickly as normal - I had to have six or seven sessions, with the last few at a higher voltage than normal. That meant that my memory loss and cognitive impairment were greater than normal. But it was still a price I was happy to pay to be…well, happy, again.
I interviewed for the job, which is a one-year maternity cover contract, and was very open about my mental health status. I got it. I started on December 2nd. I haven't been handling things very well. Although I can tell you that work, in the sense that you're mostly sitting down all day and rarely have to deal with human excrement, is a lot easier than childcare.
But my anxiety levels have been creeping up. And I've had some serious wobbles over Christmas, so we're wondering if it's turning into something else. Why is it happening? Is it because of the stress of juggling work and home, a new job, preparing for Christmas and an ill baby? Or does it come on anyway, and I find pegs to hang my anxiety on?
I'm not sure it really matters why. Although I usually lean towards the latter. But at the moment, all I know for sure is that my mental health isn't great, so I'm not dealing with stress in the way that I usually would.
After this last course of ECT we decided to try maintenance ECT. This means having it on a regular basis, to try and stop me getting ill, rather than waiting til I get ill, and having it to treat something that's already started. I'm due to have my first session at the end of February, but we're thinking about bringing it forward.
Enough about me, and my woes, which I know are non-existent if you look at them rationally. Poor darling Felix was really poorly in the week before Christmas. And you know how I love an actual medical crisis. In fact, I'm quite good in a crisis. It's afterwards that I fall apart.
He'd had a cough for about a week, which got worse over a weekend. On the Sunday night he had a temp, and was wheezing. On the Monday morning he was a bit worse, though I nipped to the BBC for a quick meeting before taking him to the walk-in clinic at Hammersmith hospital (work guilt versus mother guilt - such a juicy battle).
He quickly got worse once there. Temp went up to about 103, and his breathing was rapid, abdominal (ie his tummy was going in and out, rather than his chest) and the doc could hear crackles in his chest.
Let's whizz through the next bit. Salbutamol inhaler while I held him like a strait jacket and he screamed, diagnosis of bronchiolitis, chest x-ray, diagnosis of viral pneumonia, test for TB, blood tests and insertion of canula which was also screamingly traumatic, transfer in ambulance with lights and sirens to St Mary's Paddington, test positive for virus called RSV which is very common, a terrible night with no sleep, nebuliser, prescription of antibiotics just in case it was bacterial pneumonia (because of the high temp and there being more crackles on one side of his chest than another), discharge.
Paediatric doctors and nurses are interesting animals. For one thing, I realise now that you probably don't go into that profession (or at least stay in it) because you like kids. Because most kids hate being ill, hate the nurse that is sticking a needle in them, hate the doctor that is keeping them in hospital. The nurses have to be tough as boots to manage those long shifts, and maybe the doctors do it because fixing children is hard, and they want the challenge?
Anyway, all you want when your baby is ill is to work out what the doctor or nurse ACTUALLY thinks, rather than what they're telling you. Because it's pretty obvious that what they tell you depends on how they're reading your attitude. If you seem worried, they're reassuring and play things down. If you seem confident and keen to go home, they become more cautious. So I was constantly trying to eavesdrop their huddled conversations in the corridor, or by the nurses' station.
On the whole, they were very good to us, and we were much much luckier than some of the other very poorly children on that ward. But I'll never stop kicking myself for not saying 'But you're a paediatrician' when the nice Scottish doctor who asked us if we wanted to be discharged or stay another night said 'If it was my child, I'd be happy to take him home and manage things there'.
So back to the present. Felix is fine now. It's amazing how quickly they can get seriously ill, and how quickly they bounce back again. He is crawling and cruising and babbling in the most delicious way. Logie had a brilliant Christmas, got in a complete lather about presents, barely finishing opening one before wanting to start the next, and in an unexpected development, has learnt to put his pants on by himself.
I veer from being okay a third of the time (usually after I've had a drink or a tablet, admittedly), not okay a third of the time (usually when I'm confronted with a work document that I think is beyond me, or when the boys are shouting at the same time, and there's no question of what my natural reaction would be - it's flight) and pretending to be okay but actually not, a third of the time.
And what about Jon? Who hasn't had a mention in this entire piece. Well, Jon is a godsend. He listens to my fears about my mental health, which come out in a torrent most evenings, because I also have a fear of keeping them in. He looks after the boys and lets me sleep when I need to - particularly this week - and generally is my companion throughout everything. I couldn't manage without him. Although it must be noted that when I gave him a list of things to bring to hospital for our overnight stay, instead of my normal underwear which should be easily located at the top of the drawer, he somehow found and brought three pairs of the smallest, most unsuitable pants that I have not been able to wear (nor wanted to) for at least two years.
I couldn't manage without my lovely mum either, who keeps us, the boys and our house in much better order than we'd achieve on our own (she is, in her own words, a laundry junkie). She dropped everything and spent several days with us when Felix was ill. She helped me do the last-minute wrapping that parents up and down the country were doing late on Christmas Eve.
It is my great good fortune to be surrounded by family and friends who love and support us all. Often, I feel like I'm letting them down. Oh god, this is beginning to sound like a suicide note, or worse, one of those round robin letters that come in a Christmas card.
So let me sign off with a photo, taken on New Year's Eve, that has many layers of symbolism, and I think you'll agree makes an excellent pictoral metaphor for 2014: my best boys, going round the supermarket in a shopping trolley, having the time of their lives.
A lot has happened since then (no shit Sherlock - most people spend the run-up to Christmas on holiday in the Bahamas with their To Do lists at a record low length).
My main excuse, given that I usually manage to post even when ill, is that I've got a job. I work three days a week for the most magnificent campaign called Time to Change, which is kicking the shit out of stigma and discrimination around mental health (maybe they don't word it quite like that - I'm new).
It's a campaign I'm honoured to be part of, and you should check them out. I can tell you - in fact, I may have mentioned this once or twice before - that it's bad enough having a mental illness, but feeling ashamed of it, or worse, being discriminated against because of it, is equally as bad.
So I won't be posting on this blog quite as regularly. Which is a shame for me, because it's one of the things I enjoy doing most. That and eating cold gravy straight from the fridge.
I suppose I could make this entry a round-up of everything that's happened since I last wrote, and then a series of resolutions and aspirations for 2014. Instead I think I'll stick to my usual stream of consciousness, include 53 clauses in each sentence - sometimes separated by dashes - sometimes by commas, which can become quite confusing when you're reading it as you never know which words I meant to emphasise, and then when we've both completely lost the train of thought, take refuge in a conclusion of sorts preceded by a semi-colon; the ends of my sentences sometimes bear no relation to their beginnings.
I was going into a depression when I last wrote. It got worse. I had ECT. It didn't work as quickly as normal - I had to have six or seven sessions, with the last few at a higher voltage than normal. That meant that my memory loss and cognitive impairment were greater than normal. But it was still a price I was happy to pay to be…well, happy, again.
I interviewed for the job, which is a one-year maternity cover contract, and was very open about my mental health status. I got it. I started on December 2nd. I haven't been handling things very well. Although I can tell you that work, in the sense that you're mostly sitting down all day and rarely have to deal with human excrement, is a lot easier than childcare.
But my anxiety levels have been creeping up. And I've had some serious wobbles over Christmas, so we're wondering if it's turning into something else. Why is it happening? Is it because of the stress of juggling work and home, a new job, preparing for Christmas and an ill baby? Or does it come on anyway, and I find pegs to hang my anxiety on?
I'm not sure it really matters why. Although I usually lean towards the latter. But at the moment, all I know for sure is that my mental health isn't great, so I'm not dealing with stress in the way that I usually would.
After this last course of ECT we decided to try maintenance ECT. This means having it on a regular basis, to try and stop me getting ill, rather than waiting til I get ill, and having it to treat something that's already started. I'm due to have my first session at the end of February, but we're thinking about bringing it forward.
Enough about me, and my woes, which I know are non-existent if you look at them rationally. Poor darling Felix was really poorly in the week before Christmas. And you know how I love an actual medical crisis. In fact, I'm quite good in a crisis. It's afterwards that I fall apart.
He'd had a cough for about a week, which got worse over a weekend. On the Sunday night he had a temp, and was wheezing. On the Monday morning he was a bit worse, though I nipped to the BBC for a quick meeting before taking him to the walk-in clinic at Hammersmith hospital (work guilt versus mother guilt - such a juicy battle).
He quickly got worse once there. Temp went up to about 103, and his breathing was rapid, abdominal (ie his tummy was going in and out, rather than his chest) and the doc could hear crackles in his chest.
Let's whizz through the next bit. Salbutamol inhaler while I held him like a strait jacket and he screamed, diagnosis of bronchiolitis, chest x-ray, diagnosis of viral pneumonia, test for TB, blood tests and insertion of canula which was also screamingly traumatic, transfer in ambulance with lights and sirens to St Mary's Paddington, test positive for virus called RSV which is very common, a terrible night with no sleep, nebuliser, prescription of antibiotics just in case it was bacterial pneumonia (because of the high temp and there being more crackles on one side of his chest than another), discharge.
Paediatric doctors and nurses are interesting animals. For one thing, I realise now that you probably don't go into that profession (or at least stay in it) because you like kids. Because most kids hate being ill, hate the nurse that is sticking a needle in them, hate the doctor that is keeping them in hospital. The nurses have to be tough as boots to manage those long shifts, and maybe the doctors do it because fixing children is hard, and they want the challenge?
Anyway, all you want when your baby is ill is to work out what the doctor or nurse ACTUALLY thinks, rather than what they're telling you. Because it's pretty obvious that what they tell you depends on how they're reading your attitude. If you seem worried, they're reassuring and play things down. If you seem confident and keen to go home, they become more cautious. So I was constantly trying to eavesdrop their huddled conversations in the corridor, or by the nurses' station.
On the whole, they were very good to us, and we were much much luckier than some of the other very poorly children on that ward. But I'll never stop kicking myself for not saying 'But you're a paediatrician' when the nice Scottish doctor who asked us if we wanted to be discharged or stay another night said 'If it was my child, I'd be happy to take him home and manage things there'.
So back to the present. Felix is fine now. It's amazing how quickly they can get seriously ill, and how quickly they bounce back again. He is crawling and cruising and babbling in the most delicious way. Logie had a brilliant Christmas, got in a complete lather about presents, barely finishing opening one before wanting to start the next, and in an unexpected development, has learnt to put his pants on by himself.
I veer from being okay a third of the time (usually after I've had a drink or a tablet, admittedly), not okay a third of the time (usually when I'm confronted with a work document that I think is beyond me, or when the boys are shouting at the same time, and there's no question of what my natural reaction would be - it's flight) and pretending to be okay but actually not, a third of the time.
And what about Jon? Who hasn't had a mention in this entire piece. Well, Jon is a godsend. He listens to my fears about my mental health, which come out in a torrent most evenings, because I also have a fear of keeping them in. He looks after the boys and lets me sleep when I need to - particularly this week - and generally is my companion throughout everything. I couldn't manage without him. Although it must be noted that when I gave him a list of things to bring to hospital for our overnight stay, instead of my normal underwear which should be easily located at the top of the drawer, he somehow found and brought three pairs of the smallest, most unsuitable pants that I have not been able to wear (nor wanted to) for at least two years.
I couldn't manage without my lovely mum either, who keeps us, the boys and our house in much better order than we'd achieve on our own (she is, in her own words, a laundry junkie). She dropped everything and spent several days with us when Felix was ill. She helped me do the last-minute wrapping that parents up and down the country were doing late on Christmas Eve.
It is my great good fortune to be surrounded by family and friends who love and support us all. Often, I feel like I'm letting them down. Oh god, this is beginning to sound like a suicide note, or worse, one of those round robin letters that come in a Christmas card.
So let me sign off with a photo, taken on New Year's Eve, that has many layers of symbolism, and I think you'll agree makes an excellent pictoral metaphor for 2014: my best boys, going round the supermarket in a shopping trolley, having the time of their lives.
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