So.   Didn’t go to my group of scrapbooking friends today- called them up  tearfully and said I wasn’t doing well, was worried that I might end up in the ward today – that’s how overwrought I was about these damn obsessive thoughts and anxiety symtoms (jaw clenching leading to neck-aches, worse back pain and fibromyalgia pain, and my usual gastro symptoms, which are SUCH fun…)

Got in to see my Very Helpful Psychiatrist today (suspect I stole some of her lunch time, she’s amazing at squeezing people in for emergency appointments) and with Mr Beloved by my side and my helpful notebook of what happened when (symptoms and med1cation changes) we worked through what was going on.

Ahhhhhhhhh!!!  Relief!!

Yes, of course your anxiety symptoms are worse, what with every thing that’s been going on with your brother and your family being so far away and the university application but guess what?  We can increase the med1cation we were in the process of changing, and that will help with anxiety, sleep, and pain.  Of course as a responsible psychiatrist I won’t let you get addicted to the anxi0lytics.  And you know what work you have to do psychologically to make room for these FEELINGS, yes?

Yes.

I do.  (Arrgh.  Hard work… needs to be done.  Good that I am seeing the Helpful Psychologist tomorrow.)

And from next week the Very Helpful Psychiatrist will have a Mental Health Nurse on staff (covered by medicare) so for these sort of crises I can see the Nurse and save the (expensive and time-precious) visits to the VHP for more crucial things like med1cation changes and BIG crises.

(and I also now know that if the anxi0lytic doesn’t work that in an emergency I can take another one within about half an hour.  Good to know. )

In other news, I got my transcript in the mail today from waaaaaaaaaaay back when I studied at the Australian National University.  But that’s a story for another day.

And Gordy is doing well, has his AICD implanted yesterday, still in hospital today.

But I finally got my “personal statement describing the way in which your education has been adversely affected by your condition, disability or disorder” written as part of my QTAC application.  That was very draining, too, having to explain why I’ve failed not completed previous attempts to study…

All that after a night of very little sleep.  I ended up taking an anxi0lytic at around 3 am, and was still bothered by obsessive (but not dangerous) thoughts… they were so bad that they even intruded during the guided mindfulness meditation I was listening to – so I did the whole 20 minute mindfulness exercise over AGAIN, and finally got a couple of hours sleep.

I’ve managed to make an appointment to see my psych1atrist on Thursday… on the recommendation of the Dr at group today.  Hmmmm.

Then I see my psych0logist on Friday and I’m probably asking her to write a supporting letter for my QTAC application and then I can send it those next parts IN!   The latest update on the QTAC site says that I have met the minimum course requirements for the courses I have chosen (but that is not a guarantee of an offer of a place.)

So. Very. Tired.

Haven’t called Mum and Dad yet to get an update on Gordy… will do that next.

Well it’s been an interesting day!

Firstly, I went out to the university for my appointment with the Disabilities Resources Coordinator.  She was very helpful, but I’m sort of doing things in the wrong order – it was better to grab the appointment with her while I could.  She made lots of notes about the changes to exam conditions I would need – can you believe that with all the technology available during term time, they insist that exams are HAND WRITTEN? How retro!  (I can understand why they do it – obviously you can’t let a student have access to their computer during a “closed book” exam, especially on a wireless access campus – but for most students I imagine it would be the only time all year they are required to actually write with a pen and paper.  The poor lecturers probably struggle to read the illegible scrawls that result.)

I, however, physically CANNOT write for two hours – my hands swell up if I try to write for more than about 10 minutes.  Just one of the little joys of my particular f1bromyalgia.  Yay.  Nor can I sit without moving for long periods.  I need to get up and stretch, walk around, take medicat10n… and so on.

There were other considerations – needing extra thinking time for exams (becuase of the muddleheadedness medicat10ns bring), being provided with a (blank, not connected to anything) computer so I could type exams, form letters in case I needed extensions of time to complete assignments.

Then I came home and filled in my QTAC online application.  As far as I could, anyway – I have a dozen pages more of forms that I need to supply as additional documentation: I have to write a statement explaining how my illness has affected my previous study; I need supporting letters from at least one of my doctors, and I need certified copies of transcripts from my previous attempts at study.  KerCHING$$ ouch!  The one from the local TAFE wasn’t bad – $13, and the Australian National University in Canberra was $15, but it HURT to have to send Charles Sturt University (which waaaaaaaaaaay back in the dim distant dark ages when I Knew Everything Because I Was a TEENAGER  was the  Riverina Murray Institute of Higher Education) $50 to get a piece of paper showing the subjects I FAILED.  OWWWWWWIE!

It’s also quite confronting having to say “Well, yes, I did try to study before, but welll.. you see, the first time I was a teenager ( and so I thought I knew EVERYTHING and I left uni to get married (and hooo boy that one was a big mistake); then I went back to uni again but that time I got really sick with glandular fever which eventually became fibromyalgia and I spent years in bed and the depression got bad; and then the LAST time I tried studying was not long before I got my actual official Bipolar diagnosis (and gosh, didn’t that explain a LOT of what had been going on….) but hey, please let me have another crack at it, this time I’m at least aware of my limitations?

Anyway.  Nearly time to go work out what to make for dinner…

Anyway.  Walking along…

All of a sudden, I wasn’t.

I was on the floor.

Ouch.

Managed to land without breaking anything, just a grazed elbow, bruised right hip, and somehow put my jaw out of whack again (How?!).

As I was doing the turtle-scramble of getting to my knees to push myself to my feet, a kind older lady with a walking cane in her shopping trolley came to help me, got me to hang on to her trolley and guided me over to the nearest seat, while I tearfully explained it was probably the change in medicat10n and she sympathised that it happened to her because of inner ear problems “but I doubt I could have got up on my own, dear, we’d still be waiting for four strong men to come and help!”

(This is the second time I have been in distress at this same mall. And the second time that an older woman has been the ONLY PERSON who has stopped to see if I needed help.  Nobody else stopped, other people just walked past.  Hard NOT to draw the inference that it’s older women who pick up the pieces, isn’t it?!)

Maybe I should work on my balance....

I sat for a little while, phoned Mr Beloved to let him know what had happened and settle myself, and then got on with the shopping.

I’m not sure why I fell over.  Could be the medicat10n change – I’m definitely feeling a bit wonky lately.  Then again, the pa1n itself (neur0path1c pa1n from my back injury as well as f1br0myalg1a) or the pa1nk1llers can make you a bit unsteady, too.  I see my GP on the 30th and hopefully we’ll have time (after filling in a huge bit of government paperwork so I can see my psych0l0gist for 10 appointments this year) to discuss what’s going on.

In any case I think I won’t be driving by myself until we get this sorted out, which is frustrating.  And I’ll call the psychiatrist tomorrow to make an appointment just to be on the safe side – she’s very up to date on medicat10ns and s1de effects,  and I’ll need her to fill in a form for the university stuff anyway…

And now off to think about dinner.

I was really CROSS because I’ve been making a big effort to keep all the filing more organised, especially since I’ve been aware that I’ve been less [mentally] well… and so the expenses of trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps begin.  $39 for a replacement copy of my name change plus $8 for registered post. (I have to get certified copies of current ID before I can send the forms off for that though…)

Then there’s the $60 fee to apply to QTAC (they handle all Queensland Tertiary Admissions).  I’m not sure yet which certificates I need from various medical professionals to say I’m disabled (grrrr… I hate having to claim that, but I know I need the help…) and I’m not sure exactly *when* they have to come into the application process – hopefully that should be clearer after Monday’s appointment.

IF I get in to uni there’s the “Student Services and Amenities Fee” which might be as much as $263.  Then there’s textbooks (hopefully second-hand, and of course the ever helpful comparison site BOOKO will be my friend) and the usual paper, ink, transport etc… luckily the bus goes from just up the block straight out to uni, so that may prove cheaper than paying for parking out there. Something else to investigate.

And and of course I have to go to the Government Agency Which Controls Our Lives and ask them how this might impact on our pens10ns… I’m hoping that by trying to do SOMETHING USEFUL with my life they might leave me alone.  (please?)  (They may even give me a small supplement, which might just about cover my bus fare.)

It’s a long time since I last tried to go to uni.  Things have changed ENORMOUSLY.  Apart from me being 20 odd years older, I mean.  There was barely ANY SUCH THING as Teh Interwebs back then – hard for you youngsters to believe, I know!  I mean, do people even use pens and notebooks in lectures now? There was no such thing as just cutting and pasting huge slabs of someone else’s work – my goodness, if we wanted to plagiarise we had to type it all ourselves! (On my 386! BEFORE WINDOWS!!!) And the rattle of dot matrix printers could be heard late into the night at the end of each week as assignments were due… and the uni academic’s newsletter actually had a quaint little guessing game each fortnight where the aim was to recognise part of a novel – imagine how quickly you could identify that now – a couple of quick quotation marks into the search engine of your choice and Robert’s the sibling of your parent.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to try ONE subject this semester,  and I’m going to go on campus rather than online – mainly because I need the social outlet.  Otherwise the only times I see people I know is my little group of scrapbooking friends, or medical appointments.   If I can sit through 9 am-2 pm of group therapy once a week (ok, with morning tea and lunch breaks, sure, and having a bed day the next day) then I’m hoping I can manage one lecture and one tutorial a week, with perhaps a library study run in between?

(Apparently you can switch between online and on-campus modes if you need to, though.  Hmmm.  That could be useful.) And if I get in, this is the subject I pretty much HAVE to do (since it’s the compulsory one for most B. Arts students: Introduction to Communication Studies).

I’m not actually aiming to get a Bachelor of Arts, by the way.  If I manage that, cool.  (I only have 9 years to do it.)  At this stage, the idea is to get me doing something so I am less depressed and panicky.  But I am (nominally) enrolling in the Writing and Society (Creative Writing) program, and if you’re really interested you can look at the recommended enrolment pattern for the 12 unit interdisciplinary major here.

Phew!  I’m tired just finding all that out.  I’m a bit worried that this might all be too hard… but I have to try.  I need to do something.  Attempting some study seems like a fairly harmless something to do.  My memory is pretty dodgy these days, and I’m not as bright as I used to be but hey – P’s get degrees, I don’t need to knock myself out getting High Distinctions and attempting a full time study load… just seeing how things go.

I’ve been dealing with panic attacks.  Oooooh boy.  At least now I know I can take the pill (l0razepam) but I’m very aware that it’s easy to get addicted to them, and I sometimes feel like a failure when I have to take one.

Take the piiiiiiiilllllllsssss.....

But it’s SO MUCH BETTER to take the pill and be calm instead of spiralling into hours of misery and panic and thinking I can’t breathe and feeling like I’m going to vomit and having to run to the loo every 5 minutes because I get instant diarrhoea with the panic.  Isn’t that just a charming detail?  Just writing about it is embarrassing.  I wish I could even say what triggers the damn panics, but most of the time I can’t – once it was as simple as my ears getting clogged from this cold and feeling like I couldn’t unblock them and WHOOSH  -  panic.  Embarrassing.

And I’m FINALLY changing over med1cat10ns!  I’m feeling a bit wonky because of that, too, I think.  The nice psychiatrist has said I can cross over the T0pamax (the new one, that might help me lose weight, as well as stopping the m1gra1nes) and the Ser0quel (the horrible one that made me constantly hungry) – that is, I can start and increase the T while decreasing the S,  until I’m on the dose I feel is right of the T and the S is completely GONE.  And the nice psychiatrist is *available*, even if it’s just getting back to me in a phone message, so I feel much safer doing this than when I’ve changed other med1cat10ns.

And group therapy starts again this week.  Who knew, back when I started going, that I would actually be looking FORWARD to going to group therapy and the help it gives?

So that’s about it – just trying to keep going.  Still toying with the idea of maybe possibly doing a university subject but perhaps not this semester… maybe when I’m feeling a bit more stable.

ACTUAL SIZE! They breed BIG mozzies up here.... (well, they felt this big...)

The cheap and nasty banana lounges went back to the big chain hardware store – they STANK!  They were unbearable.  Glad we got our money back on those.

Yesterday arvo I spent lying on the floor of the lounge wrapped in a wet towel with the fans blowing on me… I am really finding this heat difficult, and I think I have to attribute it to the change in med1cat10ns – I don’t remember struggling with it this much in previous heatwaves.

Today we did some more tie dyeing – a friend’s daughter is having a “hippy” birthday party so I offered to make her a t-shirt – and Mr Beloved needed a few too.  The shirts are baking in plastic bags in the sun and are too hot to touch – a good sign, because it helps the colours batch and become really intense. Photos to follow.

I have picked up ANOTHER damn head cold – this time it’s gone straight to my ears.  Every time I blow my nose my ears block up even more.  MISERY!!!

Right – time to get showered, do an inventory of what’s left in the fridge, and head to the greengrocer – another baking session when it cools down tonight (zucchini slice again) should see us through the next few hot days.  Just as well we don’t mind eating the same thing for a week at a time!

Yesterday was a BAAAAAAAAAD combination of things – the hottest day we’ve had here for a while; very painful injections into my jaw to get the filling repaired and the TMJ and neck pain I get from pretty much any dental work (but I am still so chuffed with myself that I had the small filling done with no locals at all – go me!) a very bright full moon, and our bedroom facing west into the hot afternoon sun – it was SO HOT in there that lying on the hall floor was cooler and more comfortable.  Plus days of building anxiety and panic for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on -  possibly exacerbated by heat related lack of sleep – I get super worried when I can’t sleep (which of course makes things worse, worrying about not sleeping is worse than the not sleeping itself!) because I am scared lack of sleep will trigger a manic episode.

Last night in the small hours I tried using the mindfulness skills MP3 and felt like I got some rest while I was trying to focus on that – but it wasn’t until about 5 am that I finally collapsed into sleep and was able to get my CPAP mask on and LEAVE IT ON.  (When I panic I get funny about the mask.  And it’s unpleasant on a hot night to have that much STUFF touching your face, you know?

ANYWAY.  The Helpful Psychiatrist noted that heat waves are BAD for mental health patients – in fact, in some places there is apparently a setup to send ambulances for people most at risk.  So many of the mental health med1cat10ns mess up your thermal regulation – and if you can’t sweat, you overheat.  (I have an added twist in that my HRT isn’t right – I’m looking into getting it changed – so hot flushes can suddenly arrive that leave me COVERED in sweat, I mean dripping, not just a ladylike glow.  Great combination there, huh! Not sweating at all when I need to or swimming in it!)

After tearfully explaining that I hadn’t been sleeping and couldn’t tell if I had a tummy bug or if the churning stomach and frequent trips to the loo were caused by anxiety she said “Well, quick way to find out: take an anxiolytic and see if the symptoms improve”.  I’m hoping that now I know what taking the prescr1pt1on (At1van, l0razepam in the gener1c) feels like I’ll be able to learn the difference.  I put one under my tongue as soon as we picked them up at the pharmacy, and whether it’s because we were in and out of the air-conditioned shops (and aircon in the car, SUCH a luxury, my first car with aircon!) – my snuffle-panic has stopped. Mostly.

And she also suggested a trick she learned from a fellow student when she was studying medicine: on the super hot nights, wrap yourself in a wet sheet.  (Or towel).  This makes so much SENSE!  After all, it’s what I did when my poor old cat Moet got heatstroke.  I wet an old towel and have had it draped around my shoulders (and two fans blowing) while I write this. It’s almost dried and I have felt much cooler.

We also went to the big chain hardware store and bought two very cheap and nasty banana lounges – they’re very plastick-y so we have them set up to outgas as much as possible before we want to use them tonight – it’s so much cooler outside than in at night that for at least part of the night, I think I’ll be resting under the back patio, which is often the coolest place if you ask the cat – and cats are well known experts at finding the coolest spots!

(Just back from the chiro, and ahhh! the manipulation has helped my TMJ and neck.  Now I just need to rest well later in the cool.)

Going to go lie on the floor somewhere in the house and try and at least close my eyes, although I can’t sleep without my CPAP machine.

HELP!!!

Ahhh, sleep, I NEED you!

I’ve definitely broken a filling – I managed to get a good look at it last night.  Lost about a quarter of a BIG amalgam filling in my second lower molar. I have lots of fillings, and most of them were done before I was in my mid twenties… I suspect this particular one could date from my childhood, so possibly 30 years ago. That’s probably about the lifespan of these fillings…. fingers crossed that it’s the only one that is giving up! (And hey, I’m NOT a dentist, so I could be totally wrong about that. Well, fancy that. here’s an article saying 10 years is a good run! )  Also fingers crossed that the nice dentist can repair the filling, and not have to replace the whole thing…

I’m also reminding myself that it’s okay to feel anxious. It’s *struggling* with those feelings that causes the problem.  And I am accepting that for me anxiety feels very physical – I keep having to run to the loo, my mouth is dry, my stomach hurts.  And I can’t fix it with more food (not even more frozen grapes!) – I just have to stay calm and let the anxious feelings be there.  I can get through this.

Just gone one o’clock.  (I’m browsing whilst writing, it doesn’t really take me that long to write 300 words!)

I could really do without the next door neighbour SCREAMING at her toddler every 5 minutes  – I swear, that kid must think his name is either “Djuwarna Belting?” or “LEAVE IT!”  At least this time there’s just one toddler, his Mum, and a teenager who may or may not be the mother’s offspring…don’t know, don’t care, just want her to bloody well respect the fact that she is NOT alone in the neighbourhood and that not everyone cares for her DOOMF DOOMF DOOMF music all day and night!

I doubt they’ll last long, anyway – when I had to go over the other day and ask for the stereo to be turned down, the “responsible adult” came to the door, beer in hand, at 3 in the afternoon.  The screeching gets worse during the day until it peaks at around 5:30, when “Djuwarna” becomes “SIT DOWN! EAT IT! Djuwarna Belting?”

1:20pm.  34.5 outside, 33.1 inside.

Going to work in my art journal for a while now.