Obviously my big stressor right now is not knowing whether to go back to my PhD and, if not, what to do with my life. We could manage with me not having an income for a couple of months, but not much longer, I have to do something. I’m trying not to fret about this, I have opened myself to opportunities, I’m sure it will all work itself out in time
@purplepadma that sounds good, and arguably longer if needed. My view on this is that if you talk to the right people and have space, you will make the best decision you can. There isn't a right or wrong answer. If I can help at all as a relative stranger, do let me know, DM any time.
Well my meeting with the pro-bono psychotherapist was a bust. He doesn’t believe in bipolar and thinks it’s basically a marketing ploy by Big Pharma. So that’s really not a good fit with me and my worldview, the diagnosis makes sense of my experiences in a way no other explanation has. Guess I will have to shop around for a therapist.
Pain spike. So much for getting some shit done. Fair wodge of codeine, heat and now diazepam but I still can't turn my head properly. Typing isn't great.
I'm half wondering if this is partly migraine sending my pain receptors haywire. Chucked it in the migraine log along with today's visual disturbances.
@purplepadma They asked me to keep a migraine diary 4 weeks before I started a new treatment to determine if it's working - they didn't bother telling me before that...
My migraines aren't always classic, if I get a full on scotoma I'm really triggered by something like flickering light (which I avoid like the plague) but I get a lot of low level visual shit all the time. Last month I had a 2 week daily cluster of migraines, possibly worsened by hospital access stress to get my appts!
@purplepadma I don't think the log is going to help cos there aren't really any patterns and I kept getting told "stop hyperfocusing on symptoms" as a cause for symptoms - Catch 22 then. If I log them, I inherently focus on them. If I ignore them, I have no record.
@purplepadma Yuuup. That's why I'm litigating the repeated phoning nonsense and demanding they fix their letters/comms, website with contact details and systems that send people phone appts as part of my claim.
I figure I'm putting them on notice that I will simply keep adding to this or a new claim EVERY single time, till they fix the discrim systems they've had 30 years to fix.
@purplepadma Neurology especially pisses me off cos they are often atrocious at environmental triggers and don't seem to be able to explain to me why my brain went beserk in 2016.
It's all a bit "shrug" "dunno" "brains" and I don't buy that, it seems decided incurious that they don't understand environmental triggers like lighting and so on.
Still latest migraine doc seemed more clued up than the rest, not least recognising I'd been dicked about & fixed it. Now to see if treatment works...
@purplepadma I often fail to pursue, but this time I just about managed it.
I figure that if some of us with strength/capacity can/do pursue, then we help our fellow crips who can't.
It is also easier that my impairment isn't mental illness, as you guys get the "discrediting" much worse than most others. My case is fairly basic, severe/profoundly deaf person says "no phones" hospital did phones. They won't push it to court, but if they did....
I didn’t garden. I went back to bed where I felt much safer. I dozed fitfully, depressed dreams. Missed lunch, missed the best of the weather. Came outside to find Tom and Miss Cinnamon pottering about sorting things on the patio. I just feel useless, an onlooker
@purplepadma I'm really glad you're over here cos I'm trying to extricate myself from Twitter which is stressful compared to the Fediverse which is largely nice.
I love that people can send nice messages to and from. We can't fix the shit, but we can hold space and kindness for one another till shit hopefully passes.
Its been clear for ages that many public service cuts are false economies.... as a friend of mine pointed out some time ago, if you cut early intervention & prevention services (which can be relatively cheap & effective), you then enlarge the demand for more expensive (and often mandatory) crisis services....
A new IFS study that looked at closing police stations, suggests, likewise that every £1 saved by closing a location increased social costs by £3!
@ChrisMayLA6 A friend of mine who has regular stays in mental health institutions has found a MH gardening group once a week was lifechanging cos it gave a safe focus away from home. This has now been cut due to lack of funding. There is nothing for "care in the community" if you are severely unwell a lot of the time.
Similarly we send people out of prisons to live in shitty crime-riddled places with no house, job, money and wonder why people reoffend. It's absolute madness.
OK so wasn’t a CPN, she’s a social worker, but she’s going to support me jointly with a CPN who will come next week for at least the next few weeks. She’s v happy that I’ve taken 2 months off to try and get better. Told her I was scared of everything spiralling out of control, …ODing, running away, police being called, etc. very last thing I want is to end up in hospital god knows where and be on daily med pickups for the rest of the year. Must remember that to counter the planning.
Good news is there is sick pay for up to 12 weeks after all! I just need the SW to ask one of the doctors for medical evidence justifying my absence. She’s also going to ask about PRN sleep meds.
@purplepadma Cos that would be too much like insight?
Or maybe she assumes cos she's crap at the basics, that you with your more serious condition aren't good at the basics, which is presumptious and annoying!
@purplepadma I hate that. It's not that someone with more severe issues erases the less-severe, but sometimes people need to recognise severity.
I get this from people who fall off horses, injure a shoulder and tell me cos magic surgery fixed them, my from-birth fucked shoulder with no anatomy to fix-to should be fixable with a simple op too. Like I've not seen 2 the top hospitals in the UK about it & scared ProfSurgeons.