Where I’ve been for the last week…

WARN ING: Do NOT read this if you’re easily triggered or upset by stuff. This blog is not meant to be making recommendations on what you should do, I just need a place to vent and get some off this crazy off my chest.

Ok, some of you may (though I very much doubt it) have noticed my absence from here, twitter, facebook and the other places I spend killing time for the last week or so. This is because I don’t remember anything from Tuesday afternoon until Thursday afternoon.That’s right, I’ve completely lost two days of my life.

Now to reiterate the above warning, please stop reading right now if you’re easily triggered or upset. This is your last warning, if you continue there’sno going back and you can’t say I didn’t warn you.

The reason for the missing days is that on Tuesday afternoon I took a fairly colossal overdose of pretty much everything I could find. But no, being all geeky and scientific I carefull y researched the likelihood of doing away with myself vs the chaces of it doing long term harm if I survived as evidently I did. So, that was paracetamol out of the question.  I took the rest of my Effexor, about 3g of the stuff. Then when that didn’t seem to do anything after 10 minutes I chucked half a bottle of diazepam into the equation. THen I started running out of things to take, so started on Nick’s lamictal and took most of a box of that. After that, I don’t remember a thing. Apparently, while in the state I also read up on and took a couple of dtrips of citerizine. What precisely I thought a mild over the counter antihistamine was going to do, I don’t know, as I said I don’t remember this bit.

Now the rest is pieced together from what I’ve been told. My parentrs got home, found me and phoned an ambulance. I got an RRV and ambulance and then got blued all the wy into to xxxxx hospital, which at about 15 miles away is quite impressive. Now I’m more than a little miffed I don’t remember this as runing around with lights and sirens sounds kind of fun.

On arrival at A+E my GCS was apparently 4 (which for non medically minded peeps is really quite shit) and because effexor leads to heart arrythmias and lamictal is an anti convulsant, my heart was doing all kinds of crazy shit it really shouldn’t. I wish I had a picture to show you, but tragically nobody remmebered to take one. Then I got moved into resus and people stuck a whole bunch of needles in assorted parts of my arms and considered having to intubate me but my airway never quite got to that stage.

Then they tried to decide where to put me, clearly home was out the question as I was still in a coma. They wanted to put me in HDU, the high dependancy ward with lots of nurses and shiny machines but they only had one bed and they wanted to keep that for someone who was really sick. So, apparentlyI ended up on the ward I used to work on. Which was a great move, both in terms of maintaining patient dignity and privacy and respecting that the people I wokred weith and considered friends problably didn’t want to see me in a coma. But anhwho, once my GCS had got up to a whole 8 or 9 they movew me across to the short stay ward which has a grand total of 6 staff for 35 beds and is mostly full of old people waiting to wither go home, go to a home, or die. And that’s where I woke up on Thursday afternoon.

Now that’s what really happened. What I thought happended was very Life on Mars, except for I didn’t become a ploiceman in 1973. I was convinced I’d been on some sort of St John residential course. Gone to bed and not wanted to wake up the next morning, because I was really deeply asleep and couldn’t have woken up even if I’d wanted to. I “remember” the people on the course kept trying to wake me up but then giving up and coming back with the Dr on the course who was apparently going to look after me as I wasn’t very well and people kept shining lights in my eyed which was really annoying. That’s pretty much it. When I finally came round I had no idea where I was or what day it was. The only person I vaguely recognised was the nurse who’d been loooking after me who had been the deoctor in my coma world and I think that’s because he’s the one who talked to me throughout and always explained what was happening even if I wasn’t responding which I’m eternally grateful for.  In the intervening time I’d had 8 bags of fluids and been incontinent twjce which is a lovely thought.

It took about 24 hours after that for me to be able to stand at all and even now I’m still fairly wobbily, my stomachs churning coz of all the crap in it, I have bruises over both arms from all the needles and my hand eye coordination is even more shot than normal hence the awful spelling in this.

I saw the psych on Friday afternoon and talked all this through with him. He reckons my problems are more deep seated than just plain old PTSD so now I have a brand new shiny diagnosis – Borderline Personality Disorder aka Emotionaly Unstable Personality disorder (see, I tried to tell people I’m npt just a hormonal woman!). This is not a good thing althoigh it does explain a lot about the way I’ve behave in my life. In fact it’s a shit scary diagnosis to have as the only thing that I’ve really heard about it is it’s prettly much untreatable and makes people run away from you screaming and holding wooden crosses. On the plus side, effects do diminish after 40 so I’ve only got to make it through another 20 years of this and I’ll be fine.

Then they sent me home so I was home lewss than 24 hours after reganing consciousness. No care plan in place, no support structure other than another referral to CMHT and a phone number for a crisis team. Given I have a loathing verging on a pathological hatred of using tellephones, none of this is actually much help. This despite the fact I’ve said I’ll probably do it again. To be fair, there was another option they could put me in the local nutjob hospital but that’s full of REALLy crazy people, paranoid schizohrenics, people who think they’re Jesus and the like and so would problably just end up  with me medicated up to the eyeballs and listening to the preachings of the Second Coming of Christ (who’s really just a builder called Steve). Or some such.

So now I’m back at home trying to do anything at all to avoid thinking because if I think my mind implodes. I just can’t deal with a new shit scary diagnosis, teh fact I tried to kill myslef, coming down off about 6 drugs at once and parents who think the best plan is just to pretend nothing ever happened. It’s all too much for my little head to handle. That and the first thing that happened when I got home was my mum nagging me about my laundry being done. It’s a tad difficult to use a washing maching when in a coma. So I’m functioning but barely.

And the worse thing of all is dealing with the fact that I would do it again, hopefully with marginally more success because as awful as it sounds the 2 days I was in a coma were the nicest two days I’ve had in years. They are the only time in living memory when I haven’t had something to worry about. And that scares me, it scares me a lot.

So I don’t know where this leaves me. I’ve been failed yet again by a system tht won’t help even when you need it most. And that’s not right. Someone shouldn’t be sent home the day they wake up from a very serious suicide attmept (bellieve me, this was no little cry for help) with no support. I cannot cope with all of this but I cannot not cope as I have no other options.

So today’s take home lessons from the mini thesis this post has become are:

• The human body is remarkably strong against atempts to destroy it
• Talk to unconcious people. Even if they don’t respond, believe me, some of it gets through
• Drug overdoses really fuck with your digestive tract

Ifanyone’s read this far they pretty much deserve a medal and I do truly apologise if I’ve upset someone. Nut I had to get some of this out of my head. I’ve only got a little head, there’s only so much it can hold at once. And there’s a hope that someone somewhere will be able to help me.Even if it’s just a comment so I know someone somewhere cares jjust a little bit.