Posts Tagged ‘CMHT’
Good days, Bad days…
I’ve had a lot of good days lately. My mood has picked up sufficiently that I am feeling almost “normal” at times now and certainly manageable at others. I have actually felt happiness or contentedness, something I wasn’t really sure was possible any more. My concentration has been improving and my confidence is growing.
I have started to contemplate the idea that I may finally be heading towards some form of recovery. Maybe, just maybe, we have found the drug that works, despite the problematic side effects.
I have been foolish though in thinking the bad days had passed. I had hoped that I wouldn’t feel that bad again, at least any time soon. I really didn’t feel good yesterday. I woke up feeling low and felt worse as the morning went on. For the first time in a while I felt seriously suicidal, as opposed to the passing thoughts that had been floating around, but which I could brush off relatively easily. I was having to really fight the urge to just thrown in the towel. I felt anxious and uneasy. I’ve been struggling with strange dreams and nightmares lately and they were bothering me. Everything just felt wrong somehow. I wanted to crawl back in to bed and hide there. It felt like nothing had changed. I thought I was past all that, but I was wrong.
Things did start to improve again yesterday evening, but I am feeling a little shaky still. I feel like I’ve been knocked off balance and I’m struggling to right myself.
I am trying to tell myself that this is normal, recovery isn’t a smooth process and bad days are to be expected, but it doesn’t ease the disappointment. Telling myself this didn’t make yesterday any easier.
I hope that things will pick up again, but I am worried that this will set me back. One of the things I struggle most with is the idea that I will never be completely well again and there is always a fear of relapse. A bad day is like a mini relapse and it makes me question if it is all worth it. What is the point in carrying on, if in 6 months, a year, 20 years I end up severely depressed again and try to kill myself? My thinking may be screwed up, but I just wonder if I may as well get it over with.
I had been thinking about going back to work. I do miss it and I’ve been missing it even more when I’ve felt okay. I wonder why I am not there. I know I have only just seen Occy Health and I agree that I’m probably not ready to go back just yet, but I was starting to think that I will be able to do it. Even 3 or 4 weeks ago when I was there, I doubted it would ever be possible. A run of good days has made me think it is, but this bad one has put the doubt back. I worry that it would only take a couple of bad days at work and I would be back where I was before.
I’m still really struggling with the future. I panic when I think about what lies ahead. I am scared of therapy. I am scared of going back to work. I am scared that I will relapse. I am scared of commitment in all shapes and forms. I am scared of getting married. I am scared of buying a house. I am scared of getting old.
I am frustrated, because I was meant to be seeing Dr M on Thursday and I got a phone call today to say she has cancelled. I am disappointed, as after yesterday I felt I could really do with seeing her again soon. I wanted to discuss the Reboxetine. I think it is time to increase it to the “therapeutic dose” (4mg b.d.). I hope that those extra 2mgs will be enough to stave off the bad days. I just hope it isn’t enough to tip the side effects into not-worth-it territory. She was also going to discuss what we can do to ease the side effects, particularly looking at sleep again – the insomnia is the biggest problem. I quite wanted to know what ideas she had come up with since I’d last seen her.
I now have to wait another 2 weeks. It is going to end up being 6 weeks between appointments by the time I eventually see her and we were aiming for every 2-3 weeks, so that’s not so good. It may still be better than the CMHT, but I could have done with seeing her sooner.
I guess I will just have to manage how I am. We will see what happens. I’d like some more good days.
A Little Clarification…
My last post, Distressing Diagnosis… was a little on the rushed side and basically unfinished when I posted it. I knew if I didn’t publish it when I did, I wouldn’t get the chance for a while, but I kinda wish I’d held back. I’ve been back and edited it a little, but it still doesn’t say everything.
Edit: (17/03/2010) – I’ve actually ended up reworking this post quite a lot too. I didn’t read it back yesterday and since then I’ve realised it was all over the place and made little sense. It is a little better, but I just find this so hard to write about objectively. I am struggling with it all.
Lets get one thing straight. Dr M isn’t a horrible person or a bully. In many ways she’s actually quite nice and well meaning. She is trying hard to help. I can see that and I appreciate it.
She said she doesn’t want to do anything that will make me worse, and she did agree to remove the diagnosis in my notes when I said it wasn’t helping. I guess I can’t really argue with that. I asked her to change her diagnosis and she agreed to do so. I don’t think she’s changed it in her mind, even if she has on paper, but that is at least something.
She genuinely thinks she is helping and that she is doing the right thing. She keeps saying that she will make me better and that the future is hopeful. She is always very positive and encouraging. Many patients probably really appreciate this approach, but I find it a little too much. I don’t see enough evidence to support her positivity and that can actually be damaging. It makes me lose faith and trust. I find that she can ignore the negative, which means I don’t feel like I am being listened to or taken seriously. Unfortunately she doesn’t seem able to recognise this or she is unwilling to adjust her approach.
She also gives me her time – lots of it. She tries not to rush her appointments and lets them take as long as they need to, even if that means she runs behind fairly often. One of my ward rounds was over 90 minutes long, which when I realised seems pretty incredible. She saw me regularly on the ward in addition to the weekly ward rounds. She is now seeing me fortnightly as an outpatient, as opposed to the huge expanses of time between each CMHT appointment (4 months!). This is a good thing. It is closer to what I was used to in The Priory and a vast improvement on my other NHS experiences. Usually they sit you down and before you know it the appointment is over and nothing seems to have happened.
There are certainly good points to her care so far. I think it probably is an improvement on my other experiences with the NHS, but there are issues and I am finding those hard to deal with. Overall though I don’t think she’s a bad psychiatrist. I am just not sure she is the right doctor for me and I am not sure I am the right patient for her. Things just don’t seem to be working.
I don’t think it helps that we just don’t seem to get on. She was not impressed with my initial request to not be patronised and I think that clouded her opinion of me right from the start. She doesn’t seem to understand my job and why I like it. She doesn’t seem to know how to deal with me questioning her. I have a real sense that she just doesn’t like me for some reason. There was one point that she pretty much said that she couldn’t get on with me in “real life”, although I can’t remember the context now. My bloke tells me that is paranoia, but I remember it because I was shocked at the lack of professionalism and was upset that she didn’t like me.
I know I can’t hold this against her though. People don’t get on with each other and that’s a fact of life. If she doesn’t like me then fair enough. I’m not sure I’d get on with her in “real life” either. It wouldn’t matter though if it didn’t affect our therapeutic relationship. I worry that part of the reason she has diagnosed NPD purely stems from a sense that she doesn’t like me. Is it because she thinks I’m arrogant because I didn’t want to be patronised? Is it because I don’t agree with her opinion? I fear that in many ways it probably is.
It’s always going to be easier to trust and work with someone you get on with and I am finding this hard. It was one of the things I found great about working with Dr G. We got on well and could talk about anything, not just my treatment. It felt a lot more therapeutic and less clinical, which I think is important when dealing with mental illness, which is so entwined with emotion. I miss the way things were with Dr G and I am not used to the change. I don’t see the relationship with Dr M ever being like that. I find it hard to talk to her and hard to trust her. I am meant to tell her how I feel, yet I don’t feel comfortable doing so.
I also struggle with the fact that she doesn’t seem used to dealing with patients who are capable of getting dressed, eating and general functioning. Even if you had just tried to kill yourself, said you felt absolutely terrible and were threatening to do yourself in, if you could get up and about, communicate, eat and drink etc. then you are not really depressed and should be discharged. There seemed to be little acknowledgement of the fact that patients hide how they are feeling and put on a mask. There was a lot of focus on the functional side of depression and little acknowledgement of the emotional side and how patients felt. I wasn’t the only person who noticed this. A few of the more functioning patients felt that they were always being pushed to go home, treated as if they weren’t really ill and made to feel like they were a fraud. One patient was discharged too early a couple of times because she always hid how she felt and seemed “well” but she ended up back in hospital within days. You would have thought they would realise this was a problem. I don’t think this is purely down to Dr M. There were unbelievable bed pressures and the nurses weren’t exactly great at observation, but at the end of the day she makes the decision to discharge.
I wondered if this was because she is used to treating patients who aren’t functioning – those who are catatonic, staying in bed, barely speaking etc. In many ways these patients probably are more severely depressed, but that doesn’t mean they are more “worthy” of being in hospital. Non-functioning patients are a lower risk because they aren’t even capable of hurting themselves, where as a functional patient who is dealing with distressing thoughts needs to be kept safe. There didn’t seem to be much acknowledgement of this. I always felt like I was being told my problems weren’t important and that it didn’t matter how I felt.
Maybe Dr M has a problem working with me and other patients in a similar situation because she just finds it easier to deal with patients that do as they are told and don’t answer back. I guess anyone would find it easier to deal with people that follow blindly and don’t question things, but it is wrong to judge those that aren’t like that. Maybe it is as simple as a power trip. She likes to be in control and feels threatened when that power balance is upset? I don’t know.
It was also a common complaint on the ward that she thinks she’s really in touch and that she knows what you are thinking, but the reality is she’s often a long way off. Sometimes you get this hint that she might actually understand and then she says something else to contradict that five minutes later. It can be quite frustrating because you get this feeling of hope that she is listening and understands and then you get disappointed. You often feel like she is jumping to conclusions or judging you and I find it hard to talk to her. I don’t have this problem with Dr N and I never had it with Dr G. They listen to you and seem to understand what you are trying to say.
I think my feelings towards the NPD diagnosis have made it hard for me to work with her. I am offended and upset by it and I associate her with this distress. It feels like a personal attack and I find that hard to deal with. I don’t want to be considered as narcissistic, arrogant, self-serving etc. I want to be a “nice” person, someone that people can trust and get on with. I read the descriptions of people with NPD and I am scared that anyone could think I was like that. I am disgusted with myself that someone can think I am the horrible person that the NPD diagnosis describes. I can’t handle my thoughts and emotions around this and I need someone to direct those frustrations at. I guess naturally I will direct them at her. As much as her views of me may be misguided, my feelings towards her are skewed because of my feelings around this.
I still don’t think the NPD diagnosis is very accurate (although I do understand to some degree why she may have diagnosed it). I certainly don’t think I meet the criteria and I think she was wrong to diagnose it in the way she did. I really question her judgement and it is going to be hard to work with that in mind.
Personality disorders seem to be her diagnosis of choice and that worries me. She seems to be giving anyone that doesn’t respond well to medication, functions “too” well or who doesn’t fit in the usual boxes, a personality disorder. There was someone on the ward who was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder many years ago and she had seen multiple psychiatrists who agreed with that diagnosis. Dr M began treating her, quickly questioning depression and suggesting her personality was to blame for her thoughts. There seemed to be no logical reason for this, only the fact that she functioned fairly well and medication had stopped working.
I guess in many ways a PD diagnosis means the emphasis is on the patient to get better and not the doctor. If the patient doesn’t improve the psychiatrist doesn’t need to justify herself in any way. The patient is also fairly powerless because any questioning of the diagnosis could be considered a symptom of the disorder. “I’m the doctor, you’re the mental, now do as you’re told”. It probably helps that there is enough of an overlap between symptoms of a personality disorder, general life experience and other conditions that there will probably always be some evidence you can use to back up your opinion.
A little off topic perhaps, but I do still want a second opinion on the diagnosis, but I don’t know how I go about getting it. With the diagnosis lifted from my notes, I don’t know where I stand. My personality is now “under investigation”, but does that mean she is going to change the way she thinks about me? I doubt it. Do I just wait and see what happens when the therapy referral comes through or do I try and get things clarified now? Presumably there are still mentions of the narcissism on my notes, so will that influence things in future?
I wonder if I should ask about the Affective Disorders clinic in Manchester. A couple of people have suggested it to me and they have someone who focusses on “complex needs”, who may be able to comment more on the relationship between my mood disorder and any personality problems. There’s also the CUPS service in Cardiff, who has a similar service offering second opinions to anyone in the UK with complex mental health issues. The problem with these services is they require referrals from your consultant and I don’t know how to ask her, without sounding like I don’t trust her opinion.
I don’t know.
I still don’t really know what to do or think about it all. In some ways I know I should just try and forget about it now that the problem label has been rewritten, but the therapeutic relationship thing is a problem. I still have to see her every couple of weeks after all and I don’t know how things are going to work.
I guess my conclusion is though that Dr M isn’t all that evil. It’s the NPD diagnosis that’s the problem and it is going to be an elephant in the room for a while I think.
Discharge…
So it is official. I am being discharged from The Priory by Dr G. I contacted her yesterday about the outcomes of my NHS appointment and her secretary called me back to say she will sort out the discharge paperwork and copy all my notes to send over to the CMHT. I knew it was coming, but it was still a little weird to know the decision has been made and put into action.
I am really going to miss her support. In a couple of days it will be a year since I first met her and a lot has happened in that year. She has been there through everything and has done her best to help. I wouldn’t be here by now if it wasn’t for her. On many an occasion my promise to her to keep going has stopped me acting. I am not going to say I’m grateful for that, because I still wish I wasn’t here, but I am sure my family are grateful.
Mood wise I’ve come back down from last week. Things started to calm down on Friday and by the weekend I was back to numb, monotonous depression. I’m missing the buzz from last week and disappointed that the promise of hypomania hasn’t been fulfilled, but in a way I am glad it is over. Impulsivity is always a real risk when I am wired like that. The flat depression isn’t fun either though. I am so bloody bored of feeling like this. Able to function, but wishing I wasn’t. Stuck in some kinda half-existence, where I go through the motions but feel so little and care even less. In a way it is better to feel worse, because at least then you are feeling something.
Today I was interviewed for local radio. Next week they are focussing on mental health in the run up to World Mental Health day on 10th October. The BBC came to Creative Remedies this afternoon as they want to feature the scheme on one of the shows. I was a little surprised when the staff asked if they could interview me. I had no idea what I was going to say, but managed to get through it and hopefully with a little editing I will sound half-coherent. I’m not quite sure why the outreach team picked me as I’ve not been going for long, but I guess I come across as fairly confident and talkative in sessions, where as a lot of people are quiet and reserved.
The team were asking me about ideas for advertising and improving the scheme. There are a lot of things they could do with it so it will be interesting to see how things go and what suggestions get implemented. They also want to set up a website about the sessions and to have somewhere to display our work. Of course I have experience in that area, so it looks like I’m going to work on that with P, one of the outreach workers. I think the team are quite keen to make use of my skills!
Not much else to report. Life goes on.