coldutewarmheart

I wrote this on 14th of October, but never got round to publishing then, so am putting it up now.. I've now been discharged (and things are going fairly well), so I'll try to put another more-up-to-date update up soon ☺️ ---- These last couple of weeks have been amazing and awful and difficult and hopeful and pretty much every other emotion possible! Mentally I'm doing so so so much better. My PTSD has settled. In these last few days I've got to the stage where I feel comfortable and confident with a lot of members of staff, which is amazing. Yeah, I'm still anxious. Yes, I still struggle to envisage my future. But it feels like I have options and there are possibilities and I can build a worthwhile and satisfying life. In comparison to where my head was prior to admission, this is all incredible. I don't pretend I'm 'all better' mentally, because I'm not and I do still have a lot of issues, *but* I've come a really long way in these last few...

I found out on Wednesday that I'm going to be admitted into hospital again. Shocked is an understatement. I wasn't expecting it at all. Not one bit. Even now it doesn't feel real. I'd gone to hospital for an outpatient appointment in a spasticity clinic with a rehabilitation medicine consultant. I thought it was a case of assessing whether I had spasticity and if so deciding whether to go down the route of Botox injections or muscle relaxants. I thought that was as drastic as it was going to get.. I arrived at my appointment to be greeted by the consultant, another doctor, and a neuro-physio. As some of you know, I have medical/post-hospitalisation PTSD, following some traumatic experiences and an incident where I was treated  abusively by 2 members of staff. Hospitals and I don't mix well, so I was pretty anxious. She started taking a bit of history about how I ended up how I am. It's always hard to know where to start given that I've had chronic conditions...

This week has been mental health awareness week, and, having had my own battles against mental ill-health this year, I didn't want to let it pass by unnoticed. This time last year, I couldn't speak about mental illness from personal experience, but now- unfortunately- I can, having been through an episode of depression almost a year ago, struggled with anxiety, and having most recently developed Post-Traumatic Stress. There is still a stigma associated with mental illness, yet it affects so many people. It scares me that so many people don't get the help and support they desperately need, because they're scared of judgement. I remember when I first had a major struggle with my mental health, just under a year ago. It was terrifying, but it was also terrifying to let people in. My depressive episode convinced me that people would think less of me if I let them see that I was falling apart. It's simply not true. The people who really care about you will do their best ...

Advanced warning - this post is long ! Fellow fatigued people in particular- you may not want to read all at once! In the past I've shared all my medical battles and worries on here very openly. In the past, things have gone quiet only when I was too ill to write, too busy to, or there was little change so little to share. This time it's been a bit different. My long silence hasn't really been entirely for any of those reasons. The truth is that I needed some time and space to process things and understand things privately. When I received my first chronic illness diagnosis, it was many months before I talked openly about it with anyone; this time I was having to have daily discussions with doctors for months and was having to communicate with lots of different people fairly constantly. I couldn't, and didn't want to, hide my illness in the same way as I did back in 2010, but there were certain elements that I didn't want to share publicly/openly. I wanted the p...