Tag: Hospital

Gentle Shoots Of Hope

I entered this year softly. Sparkling into it from one minute to the next, without expectation. But finding joy on the other side of the second hand.

I could now spend a paragraph on the 2020/2021 disclaimer for happiness, the guilty acknowledgement of everyone who may be suffering, that feels as though it has become mandatory whenever you write or talk about anything remotely good happening to you in pandemic times.

But I won’t, because in this moment it feels disingenuous. The events of the last couple of years may have thrown it into sharper relief, but virus or not there have always been people who have it worse than me and those who have it better.

So – no disclaimers. We’ve all had challenges from the dung heap of life thrown at us. I don’t believe bad things happen for a reason. But I do believe that it is the rubbish times that make magic moments shine when we happen upon them.

I spent New Year’s Eve last year (2020/2021) in hospital – just one day in a holiday package that started with an admission on Boxing Day. I didn’t feel well enough for people. Including my husband and children. Dinner came with a serve of ‘seasonal vegetables’ leached of colour and boiled into malodourous oblivion. Dessert was my nightly mouthful of dry medications washed down with tepid water. Long before midnight I was obliterated by that medication and happy to be so. Joy was not part of the equation.

When it came to thinking about New Year’s Eve plans for last year, I had only recently discharged from hospital after another Bipolar flare. A brief 3 week admission starting in late October that bled well into November.

I juggled the idea of having friends join us for what is a special evening for me.

From the ages of six to thirteen I grew up in Germany, in a culture that celebrates New Year’s Eve joyfully and raucously. I remember towers of champagne glasses filled and overflowing with bubbles from the top tier down. There was music and animated conversation, which gave way to the fireworks at midnight. People bought their fireworks from the supermarket and let them rip into the newborn year from their snowy backyards.

On New Year’s Eve 2000 I introduced my (then new) husband Michael to this way of celebrating. We were living in the UK, but had travelled back to Germany for the holidays. We spent that New Year’s Eve with Sandra, one of my closest friends, and Thomas – her partner, and their friends. We had raclette, lots of drinks, and laughed so hard. Just before midnight, we climbed into our coats, boots, hats, scarves, and gloves and walked, stumbling ever so slightly, down to the beautiful lake Sandra and I had spent childhood summers swimming in and childhood winters ice skating on. It was freezing. Too cold to feel our faces. The whole village was there. The air smelt of nothing but fireworks. We were in our twenties and euphoric.

Thomas died barely six weeks ago. The loss of someone we loved has been compounded for me because I can’t hug his wife – my lifelong friend whose hand I used to hold as we jumped into a New Year.

New Year’s Eve in Australia is different. It is the hot afterthought to a showy Christmas. The vibe around New Years for many Australians is ‘Meh – can’t be bothered.’ or it’s a night of heavy drinking that culminates in a headache on New Year’s morning and a set of resolutions, which won’t last past January.

And yet I celebrate the ending and beginning of years…when I can. In part it is fuelled by nostalgia. It is also because I have learnt to celebrate things while I can, because there will be times when I have no choice whether I get to celebrate or not. There are times when I am too unwell. Times when it’s overboiled vegetables instead of home cooking.

Not celebrating can also be a missed opportunity for making memories. Memories of joyous hours, which become part of everyone’s narrative. Memories that become unspeakably precious in hindsight when we have lost those we shared them with.

And so, I sent out some invitations and had a beautiful night.

There were candles and sparklers and laughter across an increasingly messy tablecloth as the night moved on. We ate pistachio baclava with mint and rosewater syrup and white peach sorbet for dessert.

By 2 am the house was buzzing. I had picked up my older child and two of their friends from another party to join the other couple of kids already at home for a sleepover. In the early hours of this New Year my house was steeped in happiness.

For me, 2022 has started with love and energy, and out of the losses and difficulties of the previous year I sense gentle shoots of hope are emerging.

One of the positives of 2021 was that my memoir Abductions From My Beautiful Life was published. For an excerpt and more info click here Book

You may like to check out how some of my other years have gone in these posts:

2020 Ends In Hospital

Covid Lockdown In A Psychiatric Hospital

2018 – The Year I:

Freedom Fighter? I Have Some Questions

Original image from ABC news has been altered

I am curious about where you are coming from. And it’s good to have a curious mind, isn’t it? So, I wanted to ask you some questions.

You know how you won’t take advice about Covid prevention from the doctors who believe in Covid (ie the majority of doctors)?

Are you aware that these are the same doctors you get your general medical advice from?

Here’s a specific scenario:

Let’s say one of your children came off their bike and… actually that raises another question – do your children wear bike helmets? I don’t want to make assumptions here, because in the same way you ‘have an immune system’ to protect you against Covid, I’m sure you are aware your children ‘have a cranium (skull bone)’ to protect them from head injury?

Do you view a bike helmet as an artificial and unnecessary device when the body has a perfectly good natural bony protection against brain injuries? Or am I drawing unreasonable conclusions about your beliefs here?

My apologies – I digress. It’s that curious mind of mine.

Let’s just say your child comes off their bike, knocks their head (helmeted or not), passes out, wakes up, and vomits. What do you do?

In that situation I would take my kid to the emergency department of the nearest hospital, but maybe you wouldn’t? From what I know about you so far, you and I make very different medical decisions.

But for the purpose of this piece of writing I will assume you do go to your nearest hospital’s emergency department. And if this is the case, my question to you is this:

Do you realise that most (if not all) of the doctors you encounter in the hospital believe we are in the middle of a global Covid pandemic and will advise that a combination of masks, widespread testing, selective quarantine, and vaccines are helpful measures to manage it?

And if you are aware of this, and you don’t trust their expertise when it comes to advice about Covid, how do you trust those same doctors to treat your child’s head injury?

How do you cherry pick which parts of your doctor’s expertise to trust?

If you take your child to hospital, do you jump onto Google before you leave and consult the same sources you do for your Covid information about the best way to treat a potential concussion in a child?

Or would you delay the care of your child’s head injury until you found a doctor who also believed masks are unnecessary and that Covid vaccines are part of a giant human experiment?

I mean, any doctor will treat your child. They have sworn an oath to treat everyone – neo-Nazis, child molesters, murderers – sorry, not equating you or your child with any of these demographics – just making the point that the doctor you see will treat your head injured child (even if they fundamentally disagree with your stance on ‘your freedoms’).

If you are reading this in Australia, you live in a first world country. If you have access to social media – and especially if you occupy an influencer space – there is a good chance you have enough to eat, a roof over your head, and access to first world medical care – including a hospital emergency department if your kid sustains a head injury.

You have an abundance of freedom.

If where you get your information from tells you not to be vaccinated – it may be inaccurate – but you do have the freedom to take that advice.

But when it comes to your refusal to follow other public health directives (masks, testing, etc), this is not about your freedom. This is about your unwillingness to accept any inconvenience. This is about you putting yourself first 100% of the time. It is you putting your convenience and comfort above the health and lives of everyone else, especially the many vulnerable people you share this country with.

So to my last question:

If you accuse the medical and scientific communities’ advice of curtailing your freedom when it inconveniences you, but then choose to rely on the mainstream health system when you have a medical emergency – Is that not the definition of hypocrisy?

Further reading

Medical Decision Making And The Wallpaper Effect

Covid Year 2: Timing Your Perspective

Covid Lockdown In A Psychiatric Hospital

Veterinary Work In The Time Of Covid-19: Unspoken Truths

Covid Year 2: Timing Your Perspective

Welcome to year 2.

The frantic newness of the pandemic has worn off, although the announcement of a lockdown still triggers an anxiety that (for some people) expresses itself in toilet paper hunger.

As we move into the second year of life with Covid I feel as though I am part of sick game of involuntary musical statues. During intervals of relative local stability we all dance to the music of few restrictions. But there is a sinister undertone – our movement can be stilled instantly when the Covid puppet master stops that music and we are all turned to stone for a while.

When Covid cancelled our family trip to Heron Island this time last year it was disappointing, but I countered it with perspective, a stiff upper lip. After all what was a lost holiday in the big scheme of things? So many people were worse off.

So, we rebooked the Heron Island trip for this year. We’d been due to leave on March 30. The anticipation of it had built joyously for the whole family. I was particularly looking forward to it. Our last family holiday in December was marred by the onset of a bipolar episode the day after we arrived that saw me unable to enjoy it and heralded more hospital time. 2020 Ends In Hospital

I am stable now.

Over the weekend two of us dutifully took Covid tests for minor sniffles, both of which returned negative with plenty of time to spare before our scheduled departure.

When I woke up on Monday morning, the day before we were due to leave, I actually thought we would make it. And then news of the 3 day Brisbane lockdown broke, and my joy turned to misery. Our household was plunged into mourning. There were tears, cries of shock, and lead filled stomachs as we processed this loss for a second year in a row.

Is my wording a bit dramatic?

Are you itching to respond with the catch cry of this first world country, the mantra of our year?

 ‘It’s ok because others have it worse than you.’

Does that make it ok?

Should this fact completely invalidate our experience or feelings? Does our disappointment, grief and anger have anything to do with someone else’s (potentially worse) experience?

No. It is totally unrelated.

 And often swallowing our feelings through gritted teeth can be unhealthier than just vomiting them out and moving on.

I first encountered the results of suppressing my emotions because ‘others had it worse’ the night before my daughter’s first birthday, thirteen years ago.

The condensed version of the time surrounding her birth (if you haven’t already read about it in some of my other posts) is this: A 32 hour labour on 2 hours sleep, developing postnatal psychosis 7 days later, a month later catatonic depression, months in a psychiatric hospital, electroconvulsive therapy and much medication, and finally home by the time my baby was 4 months old.

As I recovered, I practiced a lot of gratitude for my healthy baby, which in itself is not a problem, but I had not allowed myself to process my feelings about that time before I plunged into gratitude.

The night before her first birthday I was out to dinner with friends. I could not stop thinking about what had been about to happen to me the year before. On the way home I pulled into the maternity hospital car park and lost it.

I wailed, tears and snot streaming down my face. It was ugly. But I finally owned my grief, and silenced the pernicious little voice in my head that had been telling me that I had no right to my feelings because I had a healthy baby and  ‘others had it so much worse’.

It was only once I’d allowed myself to feel my feelings that I could move on baggage free and feel genuine empathy for those who, in the big scheme of things, had experienced worse.

I am not naturally inclined to drama. I am all for perspective. At times I have been quick to paper over my children’s strong emotions with perspective, not because it is helpful to them in the moment, but because it lessens my discomfort at their distress.

Perspective serves an important purpose. If it is timed right. Once the initial urgent feelings have been dealt with and released, perspective can help us move on with our compassion for others intact. But forcing it too soon can trap us in resentment and on the exhausting hamster wheel of pretending we’re ok, when we’re not.

 Perspective (however well intentioned) would have been an unwelcome guest in our house just after the news of the holiday cancellation broke. However, 2 days later it had just started to soothe me with the knowledge that it could indeed have been much worse.

Proof that this could have been much worse came just now. The Brisbane lockdown ends at noon today. Covid has pressed play again. Brisbane people get to dance into their Easter holidays.

For me? Right now? Perspective has again momentarily retreated.

Excuse me while I go away and vomit up my feelings about the military precision with which our holiday was assassinated. We were turned to stone over the exact two days when we needed to be dancing.

I will welcome perspective back once I have emptied myself of this minor resentment and am keeping everything crossed, that maybe the music won’t be stopped on our third rebooking in September.

You may also like to check out:

Making Sense Of It (introduces the concept of a ‘tantrum allowance’)

Covid Lockdown In A Psychiatric Hospital

When Covid-19 And Bipolar Recovery Collide With Unexpected Results

2020 Ends In Hospital

I am going into hospital later today.

And I am aching to get there, straining towards the moment I close the door to my hospital room on a world I am the wrong shape for right now.

How did I get here this time?

Fourteen days ago I had a regular appointment with my psychiatrist. Just a Bipolar 1 Disorder monthly maintenance appointment. I was completely asymptomatic.

Thirteen days ago I left for our beach holiday and forgot to pack my swim wear. Subtle. I mean that could happen to anyone. Right? But by the following morning I was symptomatic alright. My short term memory and concentration were dissolving like sugar cubes in boiling water.

A buzzing pressure behind my eyes radiated up my forehead. I knew from bitter experience, if I did nothing, soon that buzzing could make me second guess what was real or not.

That was symptomatic enough to page my psychiatrist on a Saturday morning. It’s only the second time I’ve paged him out of hours in 14 years. He called back in under three minutes.

Over the last nearly two weeks, the first of which I stayed at the beach, he telephone consulted with me every second day, adjusting medications, a little more of this, a little more often of that. I slipped from my bed gratefully into the ocean, timing the most sedating medications for times when I’d be in bed not the ocean. I seemed a little better, maybe? But then not.

Back home we continued every second day phone consults, adjustments. This is by far not the sickest I have ever been (although psychosis and catatonic depression requiring ECT to reverse, do set a very low bar)

So why would I want to go into hospital, rather than continue treatment at home?

Here’s why:

The surface of my brain feels as though it is covered in papercuts and being surrounded by people and noise is like having lemon juice dribbled over the cuts.

Trying to hold in the irritability of being around people and noise (including my close family) is like being intensely nauseous with someone threatening to punish you if you vomit.

One of the parameters I use to assess how close I am to needing to go into hospital is ‘the sandwich test’. Think about the amount of concentration and short term memory it takes to make a sandwich – nothing fancy, just two slices of bread, some butter and one topping. For most healthy, able bodied, able brained adults, this is not a challenging task.

Right now – I can still make a sandwich, but it’s a challenge. I am making a decision, based on past experiences, not to wait with hospitalisation until challenge becomes an impossibility.

As for the seasonal timing – Christmas and New Years celebrations? I am veteran enough in the management of this illness to know it has no knowledge of nor respect for holidays and anniversaries. I could list my tenth and fifteenth wedding anniversaries as times spent in hospital, a longed for trip to Paris cancelled because of recent hospitalisation, and that would be the beginning of a list so long I’ve forgotten most of it. These times are just human constructs. If it swallows them I don’t dwell on them.

Instead I celebrate the unscathed special occasions extra hard, to make up for the times there is nothing.

The final reason for going into hospital now, is because I can access this level of care. I am fortunate to have the option of going into a private psychiatric hospital when I am sick. The standard of hospital care I will receive will be excellent. It will far exceed anything the public psychiatric hospital system has to offer.

I loathe getting sick enough to need hospital support. But perhaps even more than this I loathe the hypocrisy of someone with my privilege not utilising that support because of some misguided stigmatising ideas about what it means to be a patient in a psychiatric hospital.

I am profoundly grateful I can afford care in a good private psychiatric hospital. And part of my own recovery, once I’ve stabilised medically, is to remember there are many people living with this illness, and other severe mental illnesses, who are learning to live with them with far less support and privilege than I have. When my recovery feels hard I focus on this:

If I access the supports I am fortunate to have, I am more likely to be around for long enough to help raise awareness of the inequality between our private and public mental health hospital systems, and work towards our public mental health hospital system actually supporting some of our most vulnerable when they need it most.

If you are new to Thought Food and would like to know a little bit about who I am when I am well, you may like to check out:

Who Am I ?

Radio And Podcast Interviews

Reintegration: Be Careful Out There

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free image from Canva

This past week has not been pretty.

Aside from a call to the poisons information centre, three visits to the dentist, one to a paediatric physiotherapist, one to my psychologist, recalcitrance and poor behaviour from me and my children, it also included a near fatal accident.

I nearly killed a young man at the beginning of this week.

And I did not want to write about it. The shame and incomprehension of this close call burn me in waves. But this incident bore a loud message, which I did want to write about.

On the first day back of school after months of lock down, I hadn’t planned to drive my children to their schools. We are walking distance from both. But time does strange things on school mornings. It slithers away at warped speed and suddenly, the window to comfortably walk to school on time slams shut. So, I drove them, on the proviso that this was going to be an exception.

Driving conditions during isolation have been muted. The amount of traffic diminished to that of a tiny country town in the middle of the night. School traffic ceased. Work commuter numbers slashed.

On that first day back at school, cars converged on the local streets and clustered around the schools like flies on a carcass. Drivers were filled with more emotion than a regular school drop off warrants. Joy. Fear. Dread.

My feelings? Happiness over the end to at home learning mixed with mild irritation at not having managed to get both kids out the door on foot on time. And once I’d dropped them, an urgent need to get back home and away from the chaotic traffic.

Impatience bloomed. I decided to make a right turn from a side street onto the main road across two lanes of traffic, to get me home more quickly than a series of left turns would have. The car in front of me went during a break in traffic in the first lane and was let in by a driver in the second lane.

I could see the same driver in the second lane holding a space for me to cross. So, I went.

I don’t remember if I glanced to my right to check the first lane was still clear. But the moment I slammed on my brakes and a young man on a red motorcycle had to swerve to avoid me, is burnt into the pit of my stomach.

I am a careful driver. In over 25 years on the road I have never had a serious accident. I have never driven drunk or while under the influence of prescription medication or non prescription drugs. I don’t text and drive. I was not sleep deprived or sick that morning.

So why this serious error in judgement?

Distraction, yes.

But there was more to it. While we have been in isolation, our worlds shrunk to our homes and occasional short car trips on empty roads, it has almost been like a lengthy period of hospitalisation.

I know from all the times I have discharged from hospital after weeks inside that just because I am out of hospital, my life doesn’t just snap back into place. I have to put the pieces of it carefully back together.

Re-entry into the world after isolation is the same. Our reflexes are slower. We are more vulnerable to chaos.

I am not nostalgic for isolation time. I don’t want to regress into the woolliness of those early iso days, drifting down deserted streets, staring perplexed at empty toilet paper shelves surrounded by people with harried expressions behaving as though the world was ending.

I will be very happy to never again step into the uncomfortable ill-fitting role of someone attempting to assist with my children’s at home learning.

But the jolt of re-entry has been a wake up call. A wake up call that I need to take the time to consciously reintegrate after this most bizarre episode of ‘home hospitalisation’.  My brain and body need some adjustment time. My children’s brains and bodies need some adjustment time.

Perhaps the most poignant aspect of my near miss accident happened immediately afterwards. The young man on the motorbike pulled over and came up to my car. I wound down the window ready for, and feeling deserving of, his abuse and anger.

He didn’t abuse me or even swear.

He asked: ‘Did you not see me, because that was really close?’

All I could say was: ‘No, and I am so, so sorry. I am so sorry.’

I will never forget the young man’s face, his emotional intelligence and compassion in an adrenalin soaked moment. And I will never forget his parting words:

‘Be careful out there.’

We need to collectively ‘be careful out there’ as we re-integrate after isolation or we will misjudge situations and possibly make fatal errors.

Postscript:

The other lesson learnt the hard way by another member of the family this week (and one I doubt has anything to do with reintegration) was not to open a tube of superglue with your teeth.

 

You may also like:

Don’t Try This At Home: Schooling

The Other Curve Being Flattened

My Mental Illness Makes Me A Better Parent

 

Interruption To Regular Programming

red white and yellow medication pills
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com

I am in hospital, compromised by my standard symptoms that precede a manic or depressive episode. Looking more manic at this point though. The three symptoms are: lack of concentration, loss of short term memory, and pathological irritability.

If you have never been ravaged by them, then listing these symptoms can make it sound as though I am just a bit ditzy and cranky.

So wrong.

It’s going to take it out of me but let me see if I can paint a more accurate portrait of this beast. I am not yet so sick that it has silenced me.

The memory loss and lack of concentration leave my brain moth eaten. Holding onto thoughts long enough to articulate them takes a lot of effort. It is like using tweezers to try and catch tiny fish darting around in a big aquarium.

And the irritability? Surely as a rational, compassionate human being I should not feel so permanently unreasonable. I always insert the word ‘pathological’ in front of this symptom to try and describe just how out of control the stream of swear words is that run through my head when I am surrounded by people within ten metres of my personal space.

I say ‘pathological’ to describe the feeling of having hundreds of mosquito bites, my hands tied, and someone running a feather over the bites while they make fun of me. Sometimes it feels more like I’ve been sandpapered and then doused in lemon juice.

It is excruciating.

I will eventually get better. I always do. I know in time I will have the reserves to write properly again, and I will eventually go home and continue to rehabilitate. But for now, any spare energy is going towards doing what I need to do to get well, and if anything is left over it is going towards giving some moral support to my husband and children. So there may be some time between posts.

I always hope it won’t be too long but have been here often enough to know that it will take the time it takes and focusing on it won’t speed my recovery.

Stay tuned.

You may also be interested in:

Misunderstood Mania

My First Time

 

 

Who Holds You When You’re Broken?

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I’ve been told the first time we met I was shuffling slowly up and down a blue carpeted corridor. Slumped body. Empty eyes. I barely registered being asked how I was with a slowly exhaled

‘Not so good.’ before moving on with my pram.

I say ‘I’ve been told’, because I don’t remember our first meeting or the following weeks. I was sicker than I’d ever been. Not many people would have repeatedly made friendly conversation with someone as unresponsive as I was.

She did. At a time when she wasn’t well herself.

When I finally re-emerged after several months of illness, I was delighted to find I had a new friend. A friend I never would have met in my geographical or professional circles. A friend who, like me, had spent the early months of first-time motherhood in a psychiatric hospital instead of at home.

Continue reading “Who Holds You When You’re Broken?”

Wriggle Room

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Clarence, our pet python, always leaves himself plenty of wriggle room. Even when he’s just doing the grocery shopping

Picture your life. When everything is going fairly well. How much space between your skin and its boundaries? Are you booked to the hilt? What happens when the unexpected stressors hit? A sick child, a death in the family, a redundancy, a relationship break-down? Do you have the wriggle room to absorb some of the shock and stay afloat? Or does the thought of these boulders coming at you make your chest constrict, because you know that if anything else is piled on top of you now, you will go under?

Continue reading “Wriggle Room”

#NotFitspo

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Mirror message at the gym

ON GOOD DAYS WORK OUT

ON BAD DAYS WORK OUT

HARDER !

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the fitness industry: I don’t agree.

My first thought when I saw and snapped this image was: ‘YES – so true.’

But then I stopped to think about how this statement applies to me and my exercise habits. I realised it was simplistic at best, and dangerous at worst. Here’s why:

Continue reading “#NotFitspo”

Wedding Breakfast Spoiled

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I had plans for this post to be much softer than the last. No politics or indignation…

I started with excellent intentions. I slept in, made banana pancakes for breakfast, a big plunger of coffee, got the paper, and planned to read about the royal wedding preparations, the politics of which I am not particularly invested in.

So, I opened The Weekend Australian. I never got to the royal wedding preparations on page three.

On the front page the following words tore at my eyeballs:

‘Killer grandfather had acute depression’

Continue reading “Wedding Breakfast Spoiled”

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