Wednesday 9 November 2011

Oh, hi, what?

*stumbles in*

Shit.

*stumbles out again*

*stumbles back in with big bouquet of 'SORRY FOR BEING CRAP' roses, like every bad boyfriend throughout history*

So, it's been a really really long time since I updated my blog. Part of this has been technical problems -my laptop went in for repair and that turned into a three month long saga about how fucking shit the company I sent it off with are- and part of it has been health problems, and part of it has been that part of me feels like if I don't write it down, it isn't real. I write it down on Facebook but on facebook everything disappears so fast....everything is gone in a few days and you can forget. With blogging, things stick around. They stay.

*

Health wise, things have been shit. In late August I started having seizures. A lot of seizures. Between 2-6 a day. At first we thought I was just fainting. I have been known to faint quite a lot, so we didn't think much of it. But it got more and more frequent and more and more scary and it didn't seem to have any logical cause and I started shitting bricks about the fact that I was just randomly passing out ALL THE TIME. I scouted around a bit and eventually figured out that I wasn't fainting, I was having Atonic Seizures. We figured out a day when my in-laws could take Terror Tot so we could spend the day in A&E trying to get someone to figure out what was wrong with me. After a kerfuffle with a shitty A&E nurse, an hour and a half in another clinic and a seizure on re-entry at A&E, I was eventually admitted 'overnight'. 'Overnight' turned into 'for three days' and for one of those days I didn't see a single doctor or get given a single test. It was horrific, because the ward I was on at one point threatened to ban Terror Tot from visiting on the ward, because she was 'too loud' and could upset the other patients, so the next day I didn't see her at all, and Mr A had to go back to work while I was still in hospital, so for a day I didn't see her and only saw him for 12minutes. It was miserable and lonely and this coupled with having no friends come to visit me (despite a few FB hints (ok, a lot of FB hints)) made for quite an unhappy few days.
Eventually I had an EEG and a consult with the head of Neurology. The Neuro's felt that what I was having weren't epileptic attacks, but non-epileptic seizures. They bounced me to Psych, and together with Psych I decided to go on medication (SSRI's) to control my stress and anxiety and therefore control the seizures. They discharge me, I go home and hug the crap out of my baby.

I get hold of the tasty tasty psych drugs (Citalopram) and start taking them. Immediately, things go Really Quite Wrong Indeed. First of all I feel sick, and spaced out, and very very numb, and that lasts for a bit, and I think I'll be happy when it passes but I'm not, because what comes next is so much worse. Scary scary scary depression. Like, my friends are worried about my safety and I'm staring dreamily at kitchen knives and talking frankly about how if I wanted to die, no one could actually stop me and that my life is pointless, I'm just trudging through it until I get to a natural resting point and then I'll jump off a roof or something. It was horrific and I thought I'd be happy when it passed but I wasn't. because guess what? Yes. It got WORSE.

It started with a gentle but swift *pop* out of the depressive cycle. I wasn't any happy, but I suddenly had the urge to Get Up And Do Things. I started doing crafty stuff, to take my mind off and Make Myself Feel Useful. Then I started doing little DIY projects. Stuff I'd been meaning to do. Hells yeah, I thought, look at me, being all useful and shit! Look at me and my productivity! Medication ROCKS. Then I couldn't sleep properly. I'd sleep really fitfully and wake frequently, and I'd wake up early and not be able to get back to sleep again. I wasn't getting any rest during the day because I was So Busy Being Productive. In fact, I was SO busy being productive that some days I didn't sit down between waking up in the morning at 10 or 11pm, and even when I was sitting down I'd be at my sewing machine, working on something. I began to realise that I felt possessed. I wasn't productive, I was manic. I couldn't stop. I was miserable and exhausted and near tears all the time but the pills just would not let me stop doing stuff.

I went to my GP and asked her to take me off the pills, because I couldn't cope. Then came two weeks of misery while I weaned off them, and then a new prescription (Sertraline). We're currently about a week into the Sertraline and so far there've been no huge changes, but I am climbing out of a pretty big depressive-pit. The last week I've slept most days and I haven't really got out of bed in a while, because bed is safe and comfortable and warm and bed doesn't make me need to do things. If I'm in bed, I can pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist.
I can pretend that crippling manic episodes on low-dose anti-depressants aren't a giant red flag for Bipolar Disorder. I can pretend that Bipolar would explain....a lot. Like, my whole personality and everything I've done since I was 15. I can pretend that the few feelers I've put out with people who know about these things and who I trust to be honest with me didn't return the info that yes, bipolar seems likely.
I can pretend that I might not have another mental health label before I'm 24.

*

I've been doing a lot of craft stuff lately. I started an Etsy shop and it's fun and I like the community. I like having a sense of purpose. I like feeling good about myself. I like doing things with my hands. I'm not bad at this stuff, not by a long shot. I'm not amazing, but I'm better than the average person, and that makes me feel good.

*

Terror Tot is doing really well. She is officially no longer allergic to dairy and we're making up for 2 years without it with loads of everything she's never had before. I'm enjoying this stage of her life. She's so communicative and every new word is a revelation and every new quirk makes my heart skip a beat, and every new skill remind me that this isn't MY baby here, this is a person I just happened to give birth to.
And everytime she grows up a bit more I get a little bit sad that I'll never give birth to another baby. My heart dips and my stomach drops and my chest rises as it fills up with hurt and loss, and I swallow it down and breathe it out and scrub my wrist across my eyes and tell myself I wouldn't really want another baby. Not really.