More and More Appointments.

At the moment it seems as though, if I'm not in an appointment with a doctor/nurse, I'm booking one. There was one today - bloods, to check my thyroid and blood sugar; this Thursday, a follow up from my last medication change; the I booked my new therapist - an actual shrink this time - for the 3rd week in May; on the second week of June I've got an appointment with the consultant at the RVI for my light treatment appointments. 

I know that on Thursday I'm going to have to tell my doctor that the Fluoxetine just isn't cutting it and he's already insinuated that, since I was having difficulty adjusting, I'd have to have something new. I hope it's a new SSRI rather than something altogether new - I'm concerned that I'd have a far worse withdrawal/new medication reaction to something that wasn't an SSRI.

I'm getting an actual psychologist instead of a high-intensity therapist because the CBT, even though it was helping a huge amount, just wasn't making the grade in the long run. It helped me make my illness less obvious to others, I bottled things up and people didn't realise because I didn't get the physical symptoms or I didn't react like I usually would have. I told the doctor that I wanted to work further into my past rather than the immediate present because I felt that it helped more when I did things like that with my regular intensity therapist in the first place. I did say this last autumn but no one took any notice back then.

Other than that, I'm still having difficulty finding the motivation to do pretty much anything - go to college, walk to work etc. Hopefully before long they'll have me put right but in the mean time, I'm just going to try my best to do a little bit of something every day. I'll try to walk to work tomorrow instead of getting the bus there and back - I know it's not a long walk, only about half an hour but when I leave the house it just seems impossible...

At least I finally finished that essay for college - took me an extra month but I did it in the end... I've lost about 25% of my grade already and I might even just get 40% overall but at least I handed it in in the end. I wasn't even going to do that the other day. This morning I even contemplated dropping out but then I pulled myself together, made and paid for some amazing business cards and got down to doing the essay and the photo editing. (Click here for more info on my photography and my college work.)

Yesterday involved a lot of personal stress - potentially why I'm feeling so skewed today. Fortunately I have since found out that everything's been resolved well and there's no longer anything to fret about so that's good at least!

I've recently discovered a newfound love of drawing manga and whatnot. I've been on Paigeedraw pretty much everyday since I downloaded it a week and a half ago. I've been uploading pretty consistently too - the only day I've not done anything at all is today because I was determined to do that essay (even though it literally took ten hours to write 1200 words - horrendous for me!). I bought myself some coloured pencils rather than jumping straight in and shelling out £60 for some Copic markers but I haven't had the chance to use them yet. I think I'm going to get some extra overtime in and save up for some Copics, a Fitbit and a set of fancy fat/muscle measuring scales like the Aria ones on the fitbit site... 

I've realised that I want to be fit, regardless of weight or size - I just need to remember that in my not so good moments. I'm going to set myself some goals - I took the idea from the lululemon site earlier today - so I'm going to to do vague ten year and five year ones and then more specific one year ones. I'm going to do three categories (health, personal and career) and there'll be two goals per category. There's a handy worksheet here that I'm thinking of downloading and printing off at college on Thursday.

As for pole dancing, everything's going pretty well. I've almost mastered the split grip and I learned the corkscrew spin the other day. Then I ripped open the side of my middle finger and was consequentially useless for the last ten minutes of my class... I missed it on Monday because I was just so exhausted but hopefully I'll be back in on Friday. I'm also hoping to get my own pole up in the spare room this week sometime. It'll be good to have one here to practice on all the time - maybe that way I'll get better and fitter faster.

Anyway, that's it for now - I'm off to put pizza in the oven for Matt and myself. I might even make myself a packed lunch to take to work tomorrow since I'm doing eight hours rather than my normal six hours. I've got a load of salad and some Quorn chicken style pieces and pitta breads and houmous... The options are endless!

Ticking along

My latest doctor's appointment, which went pleasingly well, was the day before yesterday. It was just a routine check-up for my newest meds (the Diazopam from just before Christmas). It was nice to be able to say that everything's going fine and that the tablets aren't making me sick or worse than before.
I don't know how or why it's happened, or really even when it happened to be honest, but everything has calmed down. When I say everything, I mostly mean that I have calmed down - I'm not flighty or scared or nervous all the time, I'm relaxed and composed and secure for the first time in well over a year. Matt thought the sudden change in my mental state was his fault but I think this proves that, while I'll admit sometimes he really didn't help, it was never down to him. That it was all me, all in my head.
Drinking is getting easier too - since I've settled into the medication I've stopped having panic attacks after half a bottle of slowly sipped Rekorderlig. Everything is pretty much back to normal. I'm still hearing things and I still get times when I just feel overwhelmed by things or sad/hopeless/withdrawn but I think what I have to remember is that this kind of thing - long-term, severe depression etc - takes time to heal. I just have to be patient with myself, I can't force it and neither can anyone else.
My last two CBT sessions are this Monday and the one after. Sarah and I will be working on coping, consolidation and maintenance techniques. I'm not sure if I'll be getting any more CBT sessions. Or anything like that at all. I'm not too sure whether I'd want them either. It took a very long time for me to see any benefit from them but then again, having someone who truly understood from a medical/mental point of view to talk to every week really, really helped. The support I got from Stephen and Sarah helped more than anything I guess, as well as their knowledge, of course. I guess I do want to stop this depression at the root cause but I suppose since it's major trigger was nine years ago and it's also probably a lot to do with my genetics, I'm not sure if trying to 'cure' it once and for all would actually just make things worse...
I'll have to talk to Sarah about it next week.

Beyond all of that, the new year's been pretty great! I've not really done much but work and tidy although I did meet up with Charlotte yesterday. That was really good, we had a good catch up (well, I sat and gorged myself on cheesy pasta and garlic bread in Pizza Hut while she talked at me for three hours - don't get me wrong, mind, I had a really great day seeing her for a while) and we had a bit of a shop and a bitch and a moan about things too. She's still with that good for nothing but kindling, bastard boyfriend but ever since me, Matt and my mother scared the shit out of him on the 31st, he's been treating her better. I still wish she'd just get rid of him but that's not likely to happen anytime soon unfortunately...

Anyway, that'll have to do for now, I'm after something to eat before work. TTYL!

Breakthroughs

I keep having little breakthroughs at my CBT sessions. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I've gotten home after a session I forget what it was. The breakthrough and the thinking patterns it brings don't tend to leave me, just the actual thing itself. I find this really rather annoying because I always want to write them down...

I guess I want to record them so that when I'm feeling really awful, I can remember how I should be thinking and how I can change my thinking and my behaviour to something better and more effective/productive.
I'm getting a little better at it now but I know I could still improve.

I think, tomorrow, I'm going to spend most of the day tidying the flat and things - it's getting a little out of hand... After tidying I'm going to pop into work and buy an iPad 2 - I'm astoundingly excited about this, it seems like a beautiful use of my christmas money. I think I'm going to come home, sync it all up with my mac and my iPhone, take the music off my phone, update my iPod and properly organise my life a bit. I'm feeling surprisingly productive at the moment!

Medicated

So since the blog's maiden voyage - well, post, rather - I've done a few things. I've been to the doctor's. The wonderful, jumpy Dr McMeds then upped my Citalopram to 30mg from 20mg and put me on 2mg of Diazepam - a sleeping medication administered if Propanolol 'doesn't quite hit the mark'.
I've also decided that this 'privacy' lark is pointless - if I was THAT bothered, I'd obviously have created a totally new and relatively untraceable email address rather than using the one connected to everything I have (pretty much) on the internet. And not just that but I know this blog is linked in some way to my Google+ account so privacy is pretty much a moot point. That said, hi folks, I'm Sarah. I'll be putting up an about me somewhere and possibly editing this page in other ways to add more of the 'me' element.
The last major thing I've done, I think, is tell my mum about all this. Not the blog, but all of the depression and anxiety and therapy and medication. I always thought I'd never do that because she'd worry too much or freak out or be angry but she was surprisingly calm about it all. She said she was relieved and proud that I was doing the right thing and getting help when I recognised that I needed it. When I told her I hadn't wanted to tell her in case she was worried, she said she'd been worried about me since Georgi died (more on this later). There was also some truth-telling on her part as well but I'm not too sure how appropriate it is to mention all of that really. As much as I'm not bothered about my privacy, the personal dealings of my friends and family are another matter entirely.

All that said, I have to go and get ready for work now. I'll do a 'Medicated cont.' either tonight when I get in or tomorrow.