Tag Archive for 'psychiatric assessment'

1st May – New Month – New Start

Published
by
thetoad
on 1 May 2008
in Dieting, Food and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

Greetings audience, I offer my apologies for neglecting the blog for as long as I have.

Basically, after the psychiatric assessment I lost the plot a little bit – going over the past and stirring up the mud at the bottom of the pond is never good for me and I got a lot ill for a couple of days. I didn’t much feel like blogging, in fact, I didn’t feel much like doing anything much at all.

Then when I’d just about got myself together, TuT had to go away for a couple of days for a training course for his job. I know couples that don’t mind separation, that can deal with one of them spending Monday to Friday away and just spending weekends together, but that is not the relationship TuT and I have. We both HATE being apart. Especially at night. It was playing on my mind, TuT’s impending departure for a few days, and this further added to my stress in trying to get over the psychiatric assessment.

TuT left on the Sunday afternoon, leaving me with an empty hollow feeling in my stomach, that was never full, no matter how much food I ate. I tried to stick to my weight watchers points, but was comfort eating. I hate spending long periods of time on my own. I was also scared to death that something would happen to TuT on his long drive to the North.

On the Monday I decided to treat myself to something nice for lunch as I was hungry and hadn’t really eaten a proper evening meal on Sunday evening. In town there is a sandwich shop – doing all the typical sandwich fillings and jacket potatoes, but it is run by Thai people. In addition to doing the normal stuff you expect from a sandwich shop they have a Thai menu.

I was craving a Chinese take away with TuT away, but, they are never open at lunch time, so I thought I would satisfy my craving with a Thai Takeaway. I ordered the Thai noodle soup – with eager anticipation. What I got was a bag of micro-waved supernoodles, the vegetable component was carrots and cauliflower – I had no idea that cauliflowers were Thai?! And a few pieces of sandwich chicken. I was disappointed, but starving, so ate a fair bit of it, but then felt really bad.

Supernoodles can be up to 12 points – and they are certainly not worth 12 points. So I just felt like I had ruined weight watchers on something that wasn’t even worth it.

I recently read an article that explained that cravings are not actually your body signalling that you are low on a particular vitamin or mineral. For example just before your period you sometimes justify the chocolate craving as your body needing sugar and magnesium. Or if you crave crisps it’s because your body is low on sodium. In actual fact these cravings are down to a craving for comfort as these are the foods that we associate with happy and comforting times. It’s a psychological craving as opposed to a physical need.

I read this article after the Chinese takeaway cravings I’d experienced whilst TuT was away; and it made sense. Chinese takeaways are my favourite take away and TuT and I often enjoy one together on a Friday night at the beginning of the weekend – I have rarely ever ordered a Chinese take away on my own before moving in with TuT – so I was craving the togetherness of enjoying a Chinese takeaway together, which is something I always associate with Friday nights and the beginning of TuT and I’s weekend together.

On the third day of TuT’s absence my parents arrived for a short stay. They weren’t up for bedding down on the inflatable air bed in our spare room, so stayed in a nearby hotel.

Spending days with my parents also spelt diet disaster. Already, thanks to the evil “Thai” noodles and comfort eating I had a 1lb gain on the scales on the Tuesday morning weigh – in. It was annoying, but not unexpected, due to the foods I had been eating.
My parents took me to the posh sandwich shop over the road for Tuesday’s lunch and then we had some lagers whilst watching the football in the evening, and finally, for me, a Chinese takeaway!!! Craving satisfied, whilst sharing with my mum.

The next day saw us going to Brighton for the day and we went for a lovely lunch at an “all-you-can-eat” Italian – pizza, pasta, salad and garlic bread. It was delicious and I tried to focus on filling up on the delicious salad bar.

In the evening I wanted some “mum cooked goodness”; so I got mum to cook tea for us all out of the ingredients I had in the flat. We had savoury mince with mashed potatoes (the aunt bessie’s frozen version! – thank you Delia!) and vegetables. It was comforting and delicious and fairly healthy I would say; although by this point I had abandoned sticking to my weight watchers points allowance as I had no idea how to point what I had eaten so just tried to keep things as healthy as possible, whilst not pointing.

TuT returned on Wednesday night – hurrah! So happy he returned safely. The parents left on Thursday lunch time and I was pretty stressed out by all the changes. It was wonderful seeing the parental units, but a total change to my usual routine and with TuT being away as well, plus still getting over the psychiatric assessment; the upshot was by Friday I lost the plot big time.
I had this constant churning feeling in my stomach and was convinced that cosmic forces were out to get me. I couldn’t stop crying and my head was constantly buzzing with sounds and thoughts. I managed to get through to the nurse that had conducted my psych assessment – by this point I was thinking that I needed to be on the psych ward I felt so spaced out and frightened, all the time, with a churning stomach. It was awful.

The nurse agreed to see me that afternoon, and there was talk of a doctor being called in to potentially give me something to calm things down a bit for me. I was a total state.

After seeing the nurse things calmed down a bit. I talked through everything and the churning feeling eased off somewhat. The psych nurse explained that there had been a mess up with my referral to the day hospital and it would be a while before they picked me up, so in the meantime she would see me – “off the record” as it were, to keep an eye on me until my support system was properly in place. This was reassuring.

TuT and I enjoyed a wonderful weekend together, without the shadow of TuT going away as we had had the previous weekend.
Tuesday morning revealed another 1lb gain, which to say I had been comfort eating with TuT away and hadn’t pointed my food the whole time my parents were staying and when TuT came home, was expected, and to be fair, with what I’d eaten, I could have deserved to have put on a little more.

I just need to focus now. I bought one of the weight watchers journals, and I am going to fill in every single bite of food and every single drink and track all my points properly from now on.

I am also wearing my weight watchers points pedometer and trying to beat the previous days bonus point earning score.
So yesterday, armed with my trusty pedometer on my pocket, I marched to see my psych nurse for my second appointment with her and to find out the progress of my referral to the day hospital.

What surprise news I was greeted with when we met, She has arranged to take me on her case load officially and will see me until my referral to the day hospital comes through and continue to support me during my attendance at the day hospital. She is my official care co-ordinator and I now have the support of my own permanent CPN (community psychiatric nurse). This level of support is something I have not had since I lived in the north and is a big relief.

Today is the 1st May and I am a big believer in starting new things, or improving on old things. So first thing, I need to keep all you readers entertained and get blogging again! I think I’ve got off to a good start!

Psychiatric Assessment

Published
by
thetoad
on 16 April 2008
in Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So, yesterday was different from my usual Tuesday – no Weight Watchers weigh-in, not out of choice, but after a good two months of waiting, I had my psychiatric assessment for the mental health team based in my new coastal location.

I was very anxious about it. With all the moving around TuT and I have done in the last twelve months we have had experience of four different NHS mental health services and it really is a post code lottery of what is on offer depending on which part of the country you are in.

Living in the north had different ideas of what was a good level of support, and the same is true of the south. The problem with these psychiatric assessments is that you have to go through everything; I have been involved over the years, with various mental health teams since I was 15. At 28 years old now that is over 10 years to go through to give an accurate background of my mental health.

So when the CPN (community psychiatric nurse) took TuT and I through to the little office to do the assessment I was very anxious, but reassured that she had my official looking file and had got some notes from Milton Keynes, where I lived for five months before moving here.

The seats were uncomfortable and I ended up sat on this rotating-retro square desk chair – I felt like the director! And so began the tale.

Beginning with the abuse that I can remember occurring from the ages of 10; to being taken to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic when I was 15 because the school told my mum I was acting strangely and that was why I was getting bullied; apparently I was bringing it on myself with my the way I was behaving.

Then through sixth form when I discovered self harming as a way of coping and perhaps enjoyed getting drunk and messy a little more than my friends.

Then from sixth form to university with the beginnings of my disordered eating, through the famous “breakfast/tea diet”.
Into university where I nearly ended up being admitted as an in-patient to the psychiatric ward in the north, but managed to persuade them not to as I wanted to finish my degree in Liverpool. The agreement to skirt my admission was that I would see a Psychologist.

So then into my third year at university I had to come home to the north every other weekend to see the Psychologist.
Then graduating, starting work in administrative roles, with the psychologist tagging along in the background whilst I ended up on anti-depressants and was struggling to get any sleep.

Then into 2003 when I made my first suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. The hot summer of 2003 when I spent most of my nights sat in my bedroom self harming and taking overdoses. Whilst getting angrier and angrier at my parents for allowing the abuse to happen when each night I was reliving terrifying flash backs and just felt completely unable to cope.

Days were spent in the psychiatric day hospital and nights were spent losing the plot and drinking with friends I’d made from the day hospital.

Things between my parents deteriorated to the extent that my new psycho-therapist placed me in supported housing for people with mental health problems.

I lived there for about a year before moving home and going back to work part-time as a legal secretary. Which went well for about two months then the solicitor I worked for took on defending a man accused of abusing his step-daughter. When having to photocopy daily his step-daughters statements, which I couldn’t help but read, but mirrored my own experiences of abuse, I knew the step-daughter couldn’t be lying, but we had to defend the step father.

By the autumn I was back in hospital as in-patient following another overdose. From there followed a cycle of returning to work, getting ill and stressed, getting admitted as an in-patient, going back to work etc.etc. and so on. Until my employers got sick of having to find cover for my secretarial role, and on discharge from my admission in August 2004 I came home to a letter sacking me and telling me not to return to work again.

At around this time I started seeing and soon moved in with, my ex-partner, who turned out to be a violent and abusive, manipulative alcoholic. Life was based around alcohol and was total chaos. I returned to my parents on a couple of occasions but he would always talk me round with promises to change and that life would be better.

I was totally unable to contemplate going back to work with how badly my mental health had deteriorated and couldn’t see any way out, any way to improve my life. So in January 2006 I started the year with a massive over-dose, my most serious and nearest I’d got to actually finishing the job and ending my life, and on recovery, another in-patient stay on the psychiatric ward.
My new psychiatrist had taken me off all my medication and I was just flying along through life, trying to keep things as normal as possible whilst living with a violent alcoholic. I started attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, which made me feel a bit better about things and improved my self-esteem. The improvement in my self esteem meant increases in the violence from my ex-partner.

Eventually in June 2006, wandering the streets at 4am after the ex had locked me out I decided to take control of my life and declared myself homeless. The ex went on holiday and trusted me with the flat keys to feed the fish and collect his post, I used the opportunity to clear the flat of all my belongings, re-housed my fish with my brother; and spent another hot summer, this time three years later, attending the day hospital and living in a bed and breakfast whilst I waited to be re-housed.

During this time I met TuT and after six weeks of being with him moved to South Yorkshire to live with him; I knew I loved him and wanted to be with him forever and I wanted a fresh start away from everything that had happened in North Yorkshire.
There’s been plenty more that has happened whilst I have been moving around the country for TuT’s work and we have been at the mercy of whichever mental health team we were living under.

I was pretty exhausted after covering all this history with the CPN conducting the assessment. There is a place fairly near to us that will be able to help me come to terms and deal with the abuse when I am ready. In the mean time she would like me to attend the local day hospital here. So I am now waiting to hear from them and am just hoping that I won’t have to go through another assessment at the day hospital and go through the whole story again!

I spent the rest of the day exhausted and feeling like I’d sat a couple of A-Level examinations.

Today the sun is shining and the weather is wonderful. I am going to a different Weight Watchers meeting at 10:30am to find out how the last week of tracking my points has gone – I am at the mercy of the scale-gods! Wish me luck and I will post my weigh-in result when I get home.