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Category Archives: hospital

in hospital again

I came into hospital yesterday. This place is much more like a hospital than the previous place. At Northside it was easier to find similar people to talk to whereas here there are fewer people and they have different problems to mine. I saw the psychiatrist today and did heaps of paperwork for the TMS treatment. It was explained that I will be having treatment twice daily, five days on and two off, for four weeks. After that I will need to attend for three days every month for “top ups”. It seems like such a long program but if it works it’ll be worth it. I start treatment on Wednesday so I’ll write my next post after that with my newly magnetised head LOL.

the call has come

I saw my psychiatrist today and he rang the hospital to see what was happening. So now I have a date to be admitted … this Sunday. I was told that if I am suitable for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) I can expect to be in hospital for 4 weeks. This really shook me up. I can’t handle the thought of being away from home and my dogs for that long. I’m not even used to going away on holidays, so I have never been away from home for that long and I’m a homebody at the best of times.

Once I got off the phone with the hospital I fell apart. I could not stop crying. I think it was shock. I rang my psychiatrist’s secretary and asked for him to call me. He did and I explained my worries. He said “let’s take one day at a time and if you need to come out sooner you can”. I get scared that once I’m in there I will be trapped. It is probably an unreasonable worry but I keep thinking that if I don’t improve the resident psychiatrist may schedule me and make me stay.

I’m depressed, and now I’m scared too. I have a massive headache and I feel sick.

Is this how everyone feels when they are referred to a psych hospital? Or are others happy to go because it can mean getting better? For me it is always a double edged sword. I hope that they will allow me out to keep my weekly appointments with my psychiatrist because I’ll need those to be able to cope.

I’m taking my laptop into hospital so I hope to be able to update this blog with posts about the TMS treatment.

still waiting…

… arrgghh! I’m in a state of flux. Partly I am continuing as usual and partly I feel paralysed by waiting for a phone call from the hospital. It is NOT a good feeling on top of depression and anxiety. But it is out of my control so all I can do is continue w-a-i-t-i-n-g.

waiting …

I have to go to hospital again. I’m not coping. The new meds combo is starting to work, I think, but not enough. My pdoc wants me to be admitted for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. This means a stay of a few weeks.

No one likes hospital and I’m no different. Anything new and different freaks me out, and I’m not very good at talking with new people. My pdoc did say that I will be able to leave the hospital for my appointments with him, so I hope that is correct. I’m also worried because I have signed up for a Mindfulness Meditation course that starts the end of the month and I don’t want to miss the weekly classes. Maybe I can get out for a few hours for that too.

Right now I feel isolated within myself. I have all these feelings that I don’t even want to share with anyone. No one would understand the crazy way my mind is working at the moment, and my emotions are all over the place. I feel like I want to go to sleep for a long time and wake up in a different world where my needs are being met and I don’t have bipolar.

try to maintain hope

I took a long break! I’ve been on the meds merry-go-round again with Avanza added and dosages adjusted up and down like the proverbial pair of drawers. It is doing my head in rather than improving it!

In the long run it may turn out ok but for now it is painful. I have been super-low — thinking about suicide all the time — not that I am going to, but that is where my head is at. Nasty images. My psychiatrist wanted me to go to hospital today or soon but the “other half” says we can’t afford it, so I’ll just have to cope. I’ve been crying so much I’ve had an asthma attack. It is bad that this comes at Easter holiday time. I’m never any good at holiday times though.

My appointments with my psych have been changed too. I have been lucky because I’ve been able to see him twice weekly but he is now going to cut his hours to three days a week. This means I have cut down to once weekly from next week onwards. It is the only decision that could have been made but I feel as if I have taken one hand off the lifeline and I’m scared. There is no one else I talk to who listens to me. I am usually the one who listens. So it helps me a lot to have a psych who will listen to everything and not insist on staying on a particular track.

I don’t know how I am going to go over the next week. My mum is coming to stay too so that means I have to hide my feelings really well. It is stressful. But, unless I have a windfall, hospital is out so I have to be here regardless.

I hope I survive.

my circuit-breaker

I came home yesterday after twelve days in a psychiatric clinic. My psychiatrist had given me the choice of going in voluntarily or being scheduled. Of course I chose to go voluntarily.

Twelve days is a short stay considering I could have stayed for a month to have ECT. However, the clinic psychiatrist decided that I am the wrong sort of candidate for ECT (oh no, I can’t even get mental illness right!! joke). So my stay was more of a stabilisation and regrouping.

I was able to get into a healthy sleeping and eating pattern, and to improve my med taking routine. Not that I don’t take my meds, but my timing is often less regular than it ought to be. I also found it useful attending group sessions and socialising with other patients. It is so nice talking to others who “get it”.

The therapy the clinic uses is ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy http://www.actmindfully.com.au/acceptance_&_commitment_therapy

Coming home was not exactly easy. It was great being greeted so enthusiastically by my two labradors because I had missed them lots, but actually being here is weird. Suddenly there is no routine I have to follow and I’m on my own again. It is surprising how quickly you adapt to a schedule organised by others. I am feeling emotionally wobbly, not very strong, as if it could all happen again.

My psychiatrist has noticed that I always improve when I go into hospital, even if it is for physical reasons such as a knee operation. To this end he has suggested I may need several “circuit-breakers” a year to get away from everyday life and to stabilise myself in an organised setting where I have no stress. So that is the plan for now.

finally agreed

I have finally agreed with my psychiatrist and the “second opinion” psychiatrist that I really have no option other than to try ECT. My biological depression has gone on for too damn long.

They assure me it is safe, has a 60-70% success rate (medication alone has a 50% success rate), and has few side effects. One side effect is some temporary memory loss with 99% of people regaining all their memories over a two month period. Of course there is that 1% (and that is a LOT of people) who have persistent memory loss. I’m freaked out that I will be one of those.

I have managed to delay the start of treatment as I have some basic commitments in the first half of October, so it is likely I will go to hospital on October 23rd. I don’t know if I will be able to keep up my blog in there (the hospital has an internet cafe) but I will try to as I’d like to note my experiences.

For now I’m both depressed and scared. I’m not sleeping well and crying a lot. I’m not really in the right state to make any decisions but I do trust my psychiatrist so will stick by my agreement.

decision almost made

Everything is getting worse.
I am seeing another psychiatrist this week for a second opinion re the suitability of ECT as a treatment for my depression. I know this psychiatrist as I have seen him when mine has been away, so I’m not going to feel uncomfortable. He knows my background, I can talk to him, and I respect his opinions.
I think it is likely that he will also suggest ECT. I have spoken with a couple of people who have had it, plus a couple of technicians who administer it, so I do feel better informed now and I’m close to making the decision to go ahead. However, I can’t go into hospital for another month because of important commitments, so who knows, maybe the depression will have lifted by then.

depression not lifting

I thought that I was coming good and that I would soon enter a “normal” stable state. I was wrong. I can’t seem to kick this depression and it is so painful and debilitating.
Although I keep a medication list and journal for my psychiatrist, he now wants me to add another dimension to my reporting: whether my depression is objective or subjective. This is because I have said that I feel some of my depression is due to life events that cannot be made better with medication.
So a time when I think that my depression has not been triggered by external events, it is more likely to be biologically based and therefore objective. When I think that my depression is caused by the situation I am in, the way I am reacting to my environment, or the thoughts I am having, then it is subjective. Sometimes there are elements of both.
The purpose of this is to see if my medications are working on the biological causes of bipolar disorder and to establish what direction psychotherapy sessions need to move in.
It is very hard for me to break my depression down this way because most of the time I am so full of negative thoughts and feelings I’m not sure what the cause is. But I’m going to try, even though my concentration levels are very low right now (it is taking me ages to write this entry). Not trying, and not finding a new direction from which to attack the depression, will mean having a trip to hospital for ECT. A path I do not wish to take.

If anyone has experience of ECT please leave a comment. I’m interested in the pros and cons.

fragile

I’m feeling really fragile. The reduction in Lovan and Edronax has affected me a lot. I am so depressed. I saw my PDoc today and had trouble engaging in the session. I felt in pain and was dissociating. He suggested I go to hospital to get through this period of medication change. I don’t want to do that. I was in hospital in January and I really don’t want to go back.

I told him I’d stay safe until I see him again on Thursday and I can ring him if need be. I’ll be glad when the changeover is completed though, This is really messing with my head and my emotions.

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