WTF!

This post is a little different than my normal efforts. I find myself in another ‘crisis’ junction in my life living with bipolar. This time I feel aggrieved to be here because I shouted for professional intervention since May 2021. I need to get this out because from here I need to take another tack, try something else. I will go into more detail on what that is next time but I will refer to it in my conclusion here.

I asked in May for a referral to a psychiatrist to discuss my medication options because I was now back at work after a near nine-year hiatus. I had a newborn baby with a rare condition a three-year-old boy and a daughter who was taking her A-level exams. I also had a beautiful partner trying to keep the plates spinning on the plates. The drugs made me drowsy and sometimes I couldn’t wake up in the morning. I only wanted to look at other options. The referral was rejected because I wasn’t suicidal. Things cranked up and by September, work is crazy our daughter has now been in hospital four times and I couldn’t cope. I approached my Doctor for the same discussion. They rejected the approach on the grounds only a psychiatrist could change or discuss my meds. WTF! So I self-prescribed. I looked at my workload for the following day and took what lithium I thought I could cope with. On the weekends I took the full amount. This was prompted by a book recommended to me called Lost Collections by a fellow professional I loved it but it was so fucking wrong. Recommending the book was also fucking wrong. My family bears the brunt. I was shouting in work erratic and eventually placed my partner into a conspiracy that I believed so much it nearly destroyed us just before Christmas.

I got my referral now that I was ‘acute’ and I was reunited with my previous psychiatrist who looked at the life events that were pressing down on me. Baby Eve’s health, we had received little support, where we lived, and what we had witnessed in terms of knife crime, a damp house, and no apparent help with that and the DWP. Two years ago they placed me on a get back to work program and I felt so good about it and still do only to receive a call two years later telling me I hadn’t notified them I had returned to work. WTF! That has produced a paper trail to satisfy them that has taken my partner weeks to compile on top of everything else. The psych adjusted my meds and offered me a support worker to help with the above. This was Nov 13th and by January 19th I still hadn’t met him. I told him to forget because I feel 70 odd days was unacceptable. He said OK! Didn’t check with his boss my carer just took the word of the MH patient. I next see her on March 1st.

This can’t go on any longer and as I look back I realise the whole ten-year journey and the 20 odd years before my diagnosis of bipolar disorder I suffered from long bouts of depression. I brought it all on to myself. I have lived perpetually in a low mood and self-pity. All I achieved was the same. It comes right back at you. I now want to attract something different. So I am going to be positive I am going to have PMA positive mental attitude. I know have all this off my chest. Eve is getting lots of help now, the landlord is attempting to authorise work to tackle the damp even my hernia is about to be sorted. It’s all coming together and I will write the odd post on my journey into positivity and how I get on.

I have so much going for me. My family, three beautiful children my partner who is endlessly at my side watching my step. What pressure for her. Work is wonderful because we get up and help people and provide answers for them I’d never leave someone 70 odd days. So moving forward It isn’t the meds I need to adjust it is the workload and embrace myself because guess what I’m fucking awesome because I’m still here, still fighting, still winning and I’m so lucky. So many people aren’t and it doesn’t end well for them and their families and it is wrong!

Positive Mental Attitude! For now also meds. In time I may be free of them but I will respect them more for now. I am not weak taking them but they are only ever part of the solution. Never encourage anyone with poor mental health they don’t need their meds, particularly mood stabilisers. It’s not cool.

The Kids

Us with Eve.