I am getting better.  A bit.

I saw the lovely mental health nurse  (new to my Very Helpful Psychiatrist’s practice) on Monday and she helped me sort myself out.  I’m less anxious about having to take the anxi0lytic (for now) although I did have a panic attack at 3 am last night because I thought Connie had a tick. (Paralysis ticks are very common here at the moment and are deadly.) She didn’t, but it took me a while to settle back down.

Tuesday was group therapy day and as usual very helpful.  I am truly converted from sceptic to believer – things come up from other people in the group that you might not have been ready to deal with yourself, or even have realised were lurking at the back of your brain (or wherever it is they lurk in there) and it HELPS.  SO much.

But it’s exhausting, so Wednesdays are pretty much a bed day.  It was 1:30 before I woke up.

Gordy continues to recover well – but it’s a slow process.  Dad went over to pick him up for his doctor’s appointment yesterday only to find Gordy and his ute MISSING – oh noes!!  Turns out Gordy had decided the ute needed a drive to charge the battery and anyway he thought he’d drive over to the doctor’s to check what time the appointment was… bit of a shock when the doctor then told him he might not be able to drive for 6 months! OOPS!

Never have been able to stop him driving...

(we’ll see what his cardiologist says, Mum thinks the GP was being conservative.)  It’s tiring for Mum and Dad, too.  And Ju has started some new nursing training (yay!) and Hanneul turned TWENTY this week!

And – drum roll please…. I found out today that I got into university!

I’m going to be enrolling in a Bachelor of Arts (part time, on campus) at the University of Southern Queensland here in Toowoomba.  The plan is to only do one or two subjects a semester at most, and the aim isn’t so much to actually get a BA as to use my brain for something other than worrying, and to get out of the house. I’m hoping to enrol in the Writing and Society major (creative writing) – it’s a 12 unit interdisciplinary major – well, that’s the plan at this stage.

I’ve just looked up the textbooks for the first two units I’ll be doing – one is mandatory for all students (Introduction to Communication Studies) and the other is Introduction to Australian History.

And – *gasp* just priced the textbooks – I better be able to get some of them second-hand, because there is NO WAY I can afford them all new from the university bookshop!  Shopping around (through the wonderful booko.com.au) I can get then for less but its still a LOT of money.  Oh dear.

One problem at a time…. breathe…. and right now, dinner.

Meanwhile, I’m back from the doctors, having had to jump through hoops for bureaucracy – which it then turns out we didn’t need to jump through until APRIL.  (GRRR!  Damn the lack of clear information from the government on this issue!)  My poor GP was politely frustrated and I felt dreadful, but at least I can use some of the documentation to support my QTAC application – we didn’t have time to get to writing a supporting letter.  Luckily I had already booked another long appointment for a fortnight’s time…

Part of the forms we filled out today required a scored assessment – in this case, a short form version called a DASS-21, which measures depression, anxiety and stress over the last week.  Trouble is, it doesn’t have any way of taking into account life circumstances like, say, YOUR BROTHER HAVING A CARDIAC ARREST.

My scores were rather high.

To add to the general merriment, I’ve been changing my med1cati0ns, always a fun fun FUN thing to do.  On the plus side, my appetite has been drastically and suddenly reduced as I’ve tapered off from the ser0quel.  Remember me ranting about how miserable it was making me, how the never ending need to eateateateat was making things so much worse? At least now I have a psychiatr1st who understood how very distressing that was and how important it is to lose the we1ght!

But the anxiety and panic are also very real and although I think I’ve coped remarkably well with what’s been going on in the last week, I am tired.

And my thyro1d is wonky again, but my GP and I are working on tweaking the med1cati0n for that, which should also help with the we1ght loss and the you know, thingummy whatsit… MEMORY!!

I write stuff down. A lot!

But in GOOD news – he’s talking, he’s able to give directions (to the Korean food shops at the Central Markets in Adelaide so Mum and Dad could pick up some bibimbap (also seen on the cover of this month’s SBS “Feast” Magazine)  for Ju- because comfort food when you’re exhausted is a Good Thing.  Gordy can move his arms and legs, too, which is a Big Thing. These are amazingly hopeful signs, given what the outcomes could have been.

Latest report I had this morning, he was slightly better, having had stronger antibiotics overnight, and was able to clear some of the muck from his lungs.

So he’s still in the ICU for now.

And now to the rain.

It’s been wet and miserable for a few days now.  And we do get nervous when the weather bureau starts issuing severe weather warnings… after the floods in January last year, nobody believes any more that “Toowoomba never floods (it’s on top of the range).” So as I’m writing this in the warm, dry shed/studio, poor Mr Beloved is out in the pouring rain ensuring that it stays that way: he’s installing a “make-do” sandbag system (an old tarp and lots of dirt) and some big pieces of timber which will help to divert water away from the doors.

Not pretty, but should do the job...

(The rain is already pooling in the short time between getting this far and Mr Beloved having a break while I took a photo…)

Paranoid? Perhaps.  We like to think of it as being prepared.  Places not that far to the west and south of Toowoomba have already had rainfalls in excess of 200 mm this week.  The ground is already soggy, and that’s exactly the sort of conditions last year that lead to all the run-off from what felt like the entire hill ending up in our yard…  The Bureau of Meteorology reports Toowoomba had just over 25mm of rain (that’s an inch) overnight, and even though the official rain gauge at the airport is currently showing only 0.8 mm since 9am, we know that’s not an accurate measure of how much rain OUR house gets.  I can guarantee that the dog got more rain on her than that in the journey between house and shed!

Let’s hope we’re being overly pessimistic, and that the rain stops soon.  There are very few days when I wish for a clothes dryer – weeks like this though…

So now we just wait.  Have I mentioned that their son, 20 year old university student Huneal Hanneul[sorry, kiddo, your Aunty can't spell!] (he’s studying mining engineering and is doing very well, we’re so proud) is being brilliant – driving Mum and Dad to the hospital, going housework, and so on?

I wish I could be over there to help, but there’s really not much I could do.  I am determined to get over to Adelaide SOON to see him, but only if it’s not going to make more work for everyone.

Gordon in Leeton in May, 2009

We’re all very grateful that there were at least two doctors who are fans of The Hillbilly Hoot  (a weekly gathering of musos and fans at Adelaide’s Community Radio Station 3D). From the reading I’ve been doing (I’m certainly no expert) the sooner CPR is done after a cardiac arrest the better the chances of the patient’s survival and recovery.  And he had GOOD CPR – but even lousy CPR is better than none. (Do you really need me to provide the references? I can – study after study has shown it.  If you have ANY doubts, and someone is not breathing and has no heartbeat – START CPR.  Get help as soon as you can because the breathing part is hard to keep up on your own, but just do it!!)

Those are the words I woke up to at eight o’clock this morning.  Swimming up to the surface, fearing the worst, but so relieved to hear “He’s in the ICU…”

Gordy had a heart attack heart failure last night. [updated after  I spoke with Mum and Dad this evening.  The difference is - his heart just stopped.  Not a blockage - just STOPPED.]

Fortunately, he was somewhere where there were a couple of doctors (if I heard Mum right on the slightly fuzzy connection [yes, I did, two doctors!]) who started CPR straight away; the ambulance only took five minutes to reach him, and he was admitted to intensive care in one of the best hospitals in South Australia [Royal Adelaide].  He’s in an induced coma [on a ventilator] and they’re keeping him cool; they don’t know yet if there will be any brain damage. [The ICU doctors are going to start warming him up again overnight, about 24 hours after they started cooling him.

A quick Google search shows why the ICU cooled Gordy: "The American Heart Association (AHA) issued recommendations for cooling cardiac arrest patients for up to 24 hours as far back as 2005. However, critical care physician Peter Marshall, MD, says only about 10 percent of hospitals offer it even though it is proven effective, more patients recover function than in the past and spend less time in the hospital."  That was from a 2010 article from the Yale School of Medicine, "Putting the patient 'on ice' can make a lifesaving difference".]

He is reacting to the sound of his partner, Eunju’s, voice, so that has to be a good sign.  I refer to her with great admiration as “Super Nurse” because she trained as an Intensive Care specialist nurse before she took on an echocardiography traineeship when Gordy was diagnosed with heart issues a few years back.  And apparently she was planning on studying mental health and diabetes specialisations this year – see what I mean – super nurse!  So there’s really no one better to have by your side.  And I know she’s a HUGE comfort to Mum and Dad.

I’ll fly to Adelaide if I’m needed but at this stage there’s really not much anyone outside the ICU can do.

Just hope for a good outcome.  He’s 39.  He’s my brother and he’s a very cool bloke.

Today will always be my sister’s birthday, even though she’s gone.  She would have been 41 today.

I remember the day this photo was taken.  She’d started feeling unwell around July.  At first the doctors weren’t sure what was wrong.  But eventually I heard – a brain tumour.  One of the nasty types – fast spreading, inoperable.   She was just 32 and had never been a smoker or a drinker, never used a mobile phone… had been a runner,  always fit, a vegetarian or vegan for most of her life.

When I met up with her at the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Arts Cafe that day in October I was shocked by how much weight she’d already lost.  She joked that she had the “most expensive hairdresser in Sydney”, since her pixie cut was the result of her neurosurgeon  removing a large piece of the tumour that was pressing on some important parts of her brain.  The surgery was never going to be a cure, though, and she made the decision not to have radio or chemotherapy.  She wanted to live the life she had left.

Sadly, it wasn’t long before she couldn’t manage in her own flat anymore, and she moved into Sacred Heart Hospice, part of St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.  Mum and Dad pretty much left their house in Wagga and moved to Sydney to be with her.

She was so clever, so funny, so brave.  She celebrated her 34th birthday with a party at Sacred Heart with many friends and with family around her.  And then a month later she was gone.

Jennifer Patricia Miller (“Nif”)

18 January 1971 – 19-Feb 2005

This is it – a Belling (from Britain) multifunction, double oven stove with ceramic cooktop.  SO EXCITING!!  The electrician will be here first thing in the morning to connect it and then LOOK OUT!

I’m NOT going to go berserk cooking cakes and desserts, because I’m trying very hard to eat better.  But on payday I’m hoping we can get a nice leg of lamb (oooh, roast meat, how I’ve missed you!) and before then I think we have enough veges on hand to make the notorious zucchini slice.

I am going to gradually replace my cake tins/cookie slides/ baking tins that have gone rusty and can’t be rejuvenated.   And we need a frying pan or wok for the top of the stove, that’s for sure – our benchspace is so limited that we need to put away the electric frypan we’ve been relying on as soon as we can.  Somehow I need to get all my art stuff out of the kitchen so we can use the kitchen table as benchspace…. yikes, we have some reorganising to do!

(I’ve still been sick with the Dreaded Lurgey this week – today was the first morning I haven’t woken up coughing.  YAY! )

Not much else to report – I’m happily reading cookbooks and looking forward to making a birthday cake in the next fortnight.

Awwwwww!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

(He was 2 in this picture, and that was when we lived in Dubbo.  Almost all our childhood photos are trapped on slides – no prints – so I really treasure the few I have. And yes, Mum, I will be asking for more boxes of slides!)

Note: I tried to find a decent photo of what he looks like now – he’s tall and handsome – but I can’t find a single one!  I must get the family to take some pics SOON!

Dad (and Mum close behind) when they visited last year.

He does lots of stuff – vintage cars, model trains, church stuff- and now that they live in Adelaide, he gets to spend more time with my brother and his family, which is good for all of them.

I’m hoping to see them later in the year.  Meantime – HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD, I hope you can work out how to see this on your iPad (or Mum, can you please show him this post?!)

I’ve linked to it because I think it’s a good initiative, and maybe someone will find it helpful.  Gawd knows if you’ve read more than one post on this poor blog, (or any of my previous livejournal posts or blogs that have vanished into the internet ether)  you know that I struggle with mental illness Every.Single.Day.  I’m very open about it, not least because I live in Australia where our universal health care system means I can get treatment even though I have a very limited income.  Talking about it could eventually bite me on the bum, I guess – but so far, so good.

I don’t talk about my battles with bipolar disorder and anxiety just to whinge about them – (although sometimes it might seem my blogs are one long whine!).  The reason I talk about mental illness ALL THE TIME is that I think talking about it helps de-stigmatise it.  And despite greater education and lots of well meaning campaigns, there is still a stigma.  I think a lot of people are scared of mental illness – scared of not knowing what to do to help, sacred of what might happen … perhaps even scared that it could happen to them. (And statistics show that this last is more likely than you think.)

And you know what? Sometimes the abso-bloody-lutely simplest thing is the best thing you can do.  Just ask someone “Are you okay?”  – and LISTEN, really listen, to the answer.  If you feel you can do more than that, at work, at sport, at school or uni – then please, go and sign up to get more info.  Costs you nothing – could save a life.

This year RUOK? Day is Thursday, September 15th.

It should be every day.  But of course, compassion fatigue overwhelms us all – so many causes, so many worthy ideas.  If ONE person who reads my blog would just ask someone who needs it RUOK?  – I will be grateful.