All at Sea - with a bucket and spade!

Cousin Linda is over from Canada. On Friday we had a do. I did a buffet. We ate in the garden.

Jeanette and Emma played with the shock ball. Cousin Linda emailed home.

Me and Emma posed for next year’s christmas card photo.

Pete, Lorraine and Enisa drank red wine. Well, Enisa didn’t. She’s underage. For another 11 days. We share birthdays. On 23rd May, I will be exactly double her age. For the only year of our lives. Leah joined us after Brownies. Cousin Linda bought her flowers and goodies in a posh bag. We all got goodies in posh bags. It’s a ‘from my house to your house’ thing. Must look that up. Me and Emma got flowers, canadian maple syrup (beautiful) and a room vaporiser set. It doesn’t vapourise your room. That would be silly. And somewhat of a cruel joke. It vapourises the fragrant liquid so everything smells like vanilla. Instead of cats and rabbits.

Later we played nurses. On account Linda is a real live proper nurse. As opposed to a mental health nurse. Or a student nurse. We measured everyone’s blood pressures and came up with very different readings. To give them a choice. It was fun. I was swaying and giddy because it was so much fun.

Now, I am not having fun. I am essay-ing and revise-ing. But in ten days, it will all be finished and done. Then I will spend some proper quality time with cousin Linda. She’s gone away to Scotland for a week. Then she’s back round our way. She’ll be around for my first week off. She’ll be staying over the road at Jeanette’s. My mum will be spending some time at our house. We shall do things. And go places. And chat.

I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve done the mental health act 1983, the main sections (2, 3, 4, 5.2, 5.4, 136 and some others), mental health review tribunal, mental health act commission, second opinion appointed doctors. And I’ve done cards for the DSM-IV (WHO 1992) and ICD-10 (American Association of Psychiatry, goodness knows when!).

Tomorrow, I’m going to cards for the ten essential shared capabilities, recovery values and philosophies, NIMHE values framework, The CNO Nursing Review recommendations. In theory anyway.

I think then (another day) it’s ‘just’ the symptomotology of various diagnoses - mood disorders, anxiety disorders, childhood disorders, personality disorders, dementias and psychoses with particular reference to prodromals, not forgetting to mention negative symptoms and defining ‘delusion’, ‘hallucination’ and ‘illusion’

Have I mentioned that I’m losing the will to live! Well, maybe not. I am quite tired though!

I made this for Emma about 5 years ago. It’s a pea pod full of peas. It’s funny. But reeeally badly made. The little peas all have faces. But they’re so awful, they don’t even look like faces. I really couldn’t ever properly photograph them let alone put them on the world wide web. In my defence, it was one of my early creations.

It ended up on her desk at work. I’d completely forgotten about it until it came home three weeks ago as part of the mass exodus of Emma and Emma-junk from Swanswell Trust. Thankfully, she’s taking it to her new desk next week (at Warwickshire County Council) so I don’t have to look at it any more. By the by, she seems to be enjoying her new job

Today, in fact NOW-ish, I’m going to do the last bits of reading for my assignment and add the last bits to my essay plan. My reward tonight, Dr Who (lovely lovely David) followed by casualty!

I didn’t know she’d sussed me out so well

I shall be keeping it forever!

We had an interesting lesson today in what it must be like to hear voices. We were given these sheets of paper and asked to put ourselves into groups of three. One person sat in the middle and acted as the voice-hearer. The other two sat on either side and acted as the voices. I was a voice. We used the sheets. Only I made up my own things to say on the rationale that the voices usually pick on things that are personal to you. We just let rip for a couple of minutes.

I’ve done the exercise before so I probably didn’t learn anything new. And I’ve heard voices anyway - although to be fair they were pretty pleasant. But I do think the exercise is a good one. It certainly makes sense of some of the odd behaviours that people sometimes exhibit during psychotic episodes - furtive glances to the side, shaking the head, grinning and other facial expressions that seem out of context, taking ages to answer etc etc. No blooming wonder with all that going on in your little old brain! And no wonder people talk back or just tell them to “Shut up!”

It did make me laugh though when Lindsey handed me her sheet at the end. She rather does amuse me somewhat!

The last few days have been odd. In some ways a bit crappy, in other ways quite good.

When I was younger, I didn’t used to sleep very well (mostly mental health related). It wasn’t really a big problem. It was just part of how things were. I regularly slept for three, four, at most five hours a night. I could even go for a couple of nights without any sleep at all and there wasn’t really any impact. I think I used to run on nervous energy a lot of the time.

That was all a very long time ago. For the last few years, I’ve been a pretty good sleeper. Seven, eight hours a night most of the time. I’ve gradually evolved into a ‘head hits the pillow and I’m out’ type person. It’s nice. I like it.

The thing is, I’ve had a lot to do the last week so I’ve had a few “late night-early morning” type things going on. And it’s really had an impact. I’m knackered! My body is struggling a little but not too much. It’s my emotions. I’m more sensitive, more stressy, more easily annoyed and I think probably slightly more needy of friendship and reassurance. Whether it’s just because I’m more ‘normal’ nowadays (whatever that’s supposed to mean) or whether it’s the effect of aging on the body’s ability to compensate for these things, I really don’t know. But what I do know is, I’m going to get some good sleep tonight and be pretty strict with myself no matter how much work [I think/decide] I have to get done.

Despite the stresses and strains of being overtired (and a couple of fairly minor situations that have felt bigger as a result), I’ve been very aware of how lucky I am. I use the word lucky because I can’t be bothered to think of another one, not because I think that luck is entirely responsible for the way my life’s turned out. I don’t. I think I’ve played a big part in it all. I think God’s played a big part. And I think my friends and some of my family have played a big part. And there’s probably an element of chance in their too.

Little things that have happened this week have made me realise I’m loved. And probably because I’ve needed to know it, it’s kind of hit me at a deeper level. Little things people have said, done, texted, emailed, facebooked etc have been heartwarming. And I’ve appreciated it perhaps a bit more than I ordinarily would.

Anyway, I’m grateful. Very. So if you’re one of the people who’s been nice to me this week, thanks xxx

The picture above is a little wooden ‘ornament’ I picked up from a charity shop about ten years ago (blimey that makes me sound old). It cost next to nothing but it’s really special to me. I remember when it caught my eye. It really spoke to me (not in a psychotic way you understand)! I interpreted it in two ways. The first is that I am the bigger sheep and also the smaller [black] sheep. Sometimes I feel more connected to, and aware of, one and sometimes the other. But God always sees both and accepts me anyway. The second is that I am the black sheep and the bigger sheep is God. Anyway, it’s very special to me. I hope I never lose it. I might cry.

If anybody’s sytill reading, sorry this is so long and a bit deep. Like I said, I’m really really tired. The good news is Dr Who’s on in five. I enjoy the company of both Emma and Dr Who. And David Tennant always lifts my mood (in a phwoar type way)!

I made a card using some scrapbooking papers, adhesive ribbons and other stuff. And wrapped the little prezzie in matching paper and ribbon

We went to Weatherspoons. I had steak. It was rather lovely.

Below: Laura, aka the birthday girl. Emma Special and Claire.

Below: Lindsey with scary hair. Actually I like it! And red wine. We shan’t be seeing each other for a while

It was very nice putting posh clothes on and being all civilised with each other. For a little while anyway. As opposed to being rowdy and acting like children at Uni day after day. No. Really. You’d be surprised…

I have tidied up now. All packed and about to go away for three days. I’ve got some work packed, an Adrian Plass book. Some craft stuff to doodle. And a few games (Blokus is fab). I hope Lorraine survives the bunnies. And vice versa. Bless her! Cheery bye

It’s really good fun so far. Proper mental health stuff. Nothing in depth or heavy yet. So far, we’ve just been thinking about prejudism. Funny really ‘cos I didn’t even know it was a word. And values. It hasn’t got too heated so far but it’s gonna. Someone with schizophrenia gets pregnant. Does the Christian doctor have a right to tell her not to abort? Should the CPN encourage her to abort? Does she have the insight to think it through and come to her own decisions? For goodness sake, someone with schizophrenia even having sex!!! Maybe she should be sterilised! Capacity? Child protection? Yep, it’s gonna get heated!

The tutor is really funny. And quite lovely. He reminds me of a teacher I had at school. He manages to keep order without seemingly doing anything. I think it’s going to be a good 8 weeks.

Apart from the exercises. I don’t like the exercises. I don’t think of myself as any vegetable. Or animal. There’s nothing quirky about me (well nothing exceptionally quirky that I want to share with a group of 30 people). But this one was fun….

We had a pile of A4 paper and a stapler. We were asked to build a paper tower. It was such a laugh. I made a man and a dog. Ecca made a boat for them. In the meantime, someone (Emma? Laura? Clare? Lindsey?) made this wonderful tower. We got top marks for teamwork. And beauty. I think they meant the tower not the group. But it did fall apart when someone blew on it so we didn’t do so well on strength.

I’ve already got 12 books out of the library. So much for calming down a bit this term. It just isn’t going to happen. I have two settings when it comes to projects. Manic. Or off. And assignments are basically projects. My back hurts from lugging a huge pile of books from one floor of the library to another. I was in there for six hours yesterday. I only popped in.

It’s because I discovered the third floor. The beautiful, heavenly, magnificent, enchanting third floor. It took me three and half hours to get out and make it back down to the second….

I had my last shift of my first placement today. The 8 weeks has gone really slowly in some respects and really quickly others. I got a lovely card with a brooch pinned on to it and a really lovely message inside. That meant a lot to me. I’m going to miss some of the patients alot. 40 hours a week on shift is a lot and the time can be pretty intense so you attach pretty deeply with some of the old folks. They don’t necessarily attach back so much but you do get the signs that some rapport has been established - longer periods of eye contact, relaxed body language, looking less suprised to see you when you turn up on shift, sometimes more obvious signs of a relationship. I can’t say I won’t ever go back to older age dementia. I’ve definately taken to the work and developed a bit of a passion for the cause. I guess a lot depends on my next placements and on what jobs are available when I finish my training.

Anyway, while I was grafting, Emma was in the garden with the bunnies. As you can see, they have rather a large run. And a couple of plastic tunnels. And a little tent. I think they’re pretty lucky bunnies. And hopefully happy bunnies.