Awkward and uncomfortable situation NOT avoided...

Dinky wanted to go to school, so she did.

I got home and waited for the mind advocate to drop by with the letter requesting a change in nurses. My phone rang, I forgot to save her number but the first 5 numbers were the same as hers so I picked up.
"hi, is this *****? This is S from CMHT."

Shit! I was so not in the mood to talk to her! I was irritable, and annoyed that she had already spoken to the mind advocate and still decided to contact me.
I think S might have some self esteem issues of her own! She asked me how I was and I said 'fine' and she said I seemed off with her. I wasn't showing that I was annoyed by her in the beginning of her conversation but in that moment I started to get annoyed with her. I just am not 100% at the moment. I said " ok maybe I'm not fine, but I will be." she repeated it and asked if I wanted to talk about it. "no not really" she asked how my Christmas was. I did get a little short with her, "crap, I was in a hostel with my kid." she asked if dinky liked her space toys. This just shows she wasn't bloody listening. Yes dinky is still into space but she already has a ton of space toys and wanted avengers and jake and the Neverland pirate toys. I just said yes. It's easier than explaining that she was wrong. I understand she has lots of people to see and can't remember everyones little bits and pieces but you'd think she would make accurate notes and have them in front of her when making that call. Maybe not! She asked if I wanted to make another appointment with her. I said not right now. This is where it gets awkward and I get bloody annoyed and have to act civilly and hold my tongue.
S: well. It is ok if you don't want to see me anymore, I can discharge you back to your GP. Or I can keep your case one with me and you can make an appointment when you feel ready.

In my head: so those are my only fucking choices? See you or go back to my GP? What about... If you don't want to see me I can get someone else to see you if you feel like you still need the support of CMHT.
While I was thinking there was a small silence

S: it is up to you, I am governed by you, if you don't feel like you are getting anything out of seeing me then I can always make recommendations to your GP maybe get you going back to the short term counselling service. Or I can leave your case open with me. What would you like to do?

Well, if she shut the case then, I wouldn't be able to change nurses, so I had to keep my case open.

Me: can you keep the case open please.

S: keep the case open?

Me: yes please.

it was so hard to sound pleasant)

S: hmm, ok, let me know if you feel like making an appointment to see me.

End of call.

Seriously! She makes out my only option is to see her or go back to my GP. Like changing isn't an option. Sometimes it feels like she just wants me to say 'yeah, just send me back to the GP', that way she wouldn't have to deal with me.
Another thing I didn't pick up on until now... She said I'm 'not mentally strong enough for counselling', yet said she would Make recommendations for me to go back to short term counselling. She contradicts herself so much. Muppet!


When the mind advocate came over I told her about the conversation. Apparently S had tried to coax info out of her too as to why I cancelled the appointment. After I told her about what I thought of the call she said it probably was best I didn't go this morning otherwise her wordings might have sparked a argument, one that I would pay the price for.

So the letter had been sent, I should hear back next week some time about changing nurses. Which will be a step in the right direction.

Why is it always so much hassle?

Mind advocate, changing mental health nurse, and dinky goes to hospital... All in a days work!

Today was one of those days!
So dinky was up at 4.30am courtesy of our noisy neighbour downstairs. She was dressed and breakfasted at 6.30am. Got to school at 8.20, did the phonics and off I went.
I got a phone call from B again telling me what I ought to do while I apply for jobs, so much so my new response to her when she goes off on one "ah huh, yep, good idea, yeah I will look into it" and repeat!
Got home, tidied up and cleaned the floor, waited for the mind advocate to discuss my issues with the mental health nurse. She was really nice and she asked me to go through our appointments chronologically and tell her any little comments or anything that made me uncomfortable and we would discard anything that we agree is not really a big issue. When I told her some of the stuff S had said S was very inappropriate and I had every right to feel aggrieved. I told her how she can be very contradictory in what she says, I gave 3 examples, apparently there is no wonder I get confused by the mixed messages. The advocate asked me about my care plan. My response "what care plan?", according to he the advocate I'm supposed to be involved in my care and treatment. That's a laugh!
She ran through the options. I could:
Talk to her in the appointment for tomorrow at 9.30am but work on bullet points with the advocate
Rearrange the appointment and have the advocate present
Cancel the appointment and try to change mental health nurse without advocates help
Cancel the appointment and try to change mental health nurse with advocates help
Make a formal complaint

I opted for cancel appointment and change mental health nurse with advocates help, without making a formal complaint.

So after the major confusion as to which office S actually answers to out of the two offices she is attached to, we manage to cancel the appointment and ask how to go about changing nurses. I have to write a letter to the manager of the nurse practitioners. So we worked out exactly what to say, the advocate is going to type it up and bring it round for me to sign tomorrow. Normally I'd do it myself, but I have enough to deal with. It's different, to let someone else help, odd and uncomfortable, but it is one less thing for me to have to deal with. The advocate even gave her number to the CMHT. S phoned and left a message on the advocates phone. She is going to fob S off until the paper work goes in to change nurses. Awkward and severely uncomfortable situation avoided!

Went to get dinky from school. On the way home we get some carrots to feed the horse she rode on Sunday and the other horse in the field. I broke the carrots up and dinky fed the horses. All was well until the white horse sniffed dinky's hand and chomped hard. I heard a pop and dinky scream I instantly tried to grab dinky's hand but the horse wouldn't let go. I instinctively tapped it on the nose and shouted "OFF!". The horse let go, dinky was screaming. Her hand was bleeding, and It was swelling. I called a cab. We got to the hospital at 4.10pm. Went to X-ray at 5, got back from X-ray at 6 got seen by the doc at 7. Luckily it wasn't broken,they redressed the wound, gave her antibiotics, and warned of the dangers of getting it wet as the risk of infection given that it was an animal bite that broke the skin.

B called as we left the hospital. Apparently I shouldn't send dinky to school tomorrow, to give her a chance to rest. Seriously does she not think I can make ANY decisions for myself? Honestly! Her kid has a 60% attendance rate and the only reason they are not reviewing the circumstances is because her daughter is not 5, therefore not compulsory school age yet.
Dinky spent the whole time waiting for X-ray and waiting for the doc messing about and causing mayhem. A couple of times she caught her hand on something, and stopped for maybe 10 seconds but was straight back in there. No broken bones, able to play = able to go to school! She has antibiotics, and calpol, she will be fine. If she isn't, she can come home.

I phoned my dad to let him know about dinky's accident. He agreed with me, she'll be ok to go to school and the school will phone if she isn't.


So we will see how she gets on tomorrow!

No appointment tomorrow so all good.... Still waiting on post or phone calls for everything else!

Who is supporting who here?

So this morning was my last appointment before S goes on holiday for 4 weeks.
Somehow I ended up reassuring her that her patients would be fine for a couple of weeks. Reminding her I'm low risk for self harm and suicide, and the other patients will know that there is other help out there if they are in distress, gps, walk in centre, mental health line, Samaritans, the recovery team, duty mental health workers ect.
She even cut me off when I tried to mention my family. And we ended up discussing books she could take on holiday! Not to sound selfish here but surely it isn't right to discuss a holiday reading dilemma with a person who has no home this Christmas and a 4 year old who will spend the holidays in a hostel?
We went back to her worrying about her patients, and me reassuring her again. I'm not the neediest person but it would have been nice to have some reassurance that dispite the circumstances Christmas would not be a major disaster in the hostel for dinky. Guess I will have to reassure myself instead... Sometimes I wonder why I still go...
Oh yeah that's right... I need to get myself straight for dinky, but I wonder if S is actually going to get me there? On the past 6 weeks I doubt it.
However I don't know what to do....

It can wait until after Christmas...

The subject of diagnosis

I know I have blogged once already today but this is bugging me and has done for weeks.
When I was referred to CHMT it was because the short term counsellor had written a summary report of the sessions to the GP and had highlighted possible PTSD. Something another two Counsellors had highlighted but nothing had ever been formally diagnosed.
So why is it bugging me? Well it would be nice to know what is going on in my mind and it doesn't make it any easier for me when housing and housing support workers want to know of any mental health problems, what do I say? Well, nothing formally diagnosed, but I am seeing a community mental health nurse called S who thinks I may or may not have PTSD. Then what... I fall out of the criteria for any assistance or considerations. I must admit partly my fault for having the attention span of a goldfish at times, but S said there could be a personality disorder not dissimilar to bi-polar but they don't like to diagnose them because of the stigma. Now I might have missed something but isn't the point to get a diagnosis so that I can get the right treatment. Although I never asked if I would be entitled to different treatment with a diagnosis. All I know is that I can't live like this much longer. I've done ok, spent 10 years holding it all back but time doesn't heal mental health issues, if anything I'd say it makes it worse. I can't for the life of me work out why she put me on antidepressants back in October, I mean I know why at the time and why I accepted them at the time. I felt really low and thought it was in dinky's best interest if I wasn't around. I stopped taking them for the same reason I said I would only take them if she thought it was an absolute necessity, which is, I am not always depressed or low in mood. And never for long enough for the antidepressants to actually do any work. The longest I have been low in mood or depressed is a couple of months. Then I revert to holding it all in laughing and joking and sometimes I get a little hyper. I mentioned a friend of mine saying I had very similar ups and downs to her bipolar friend even I do my best to conceal it. S said if I was bipolar then I would have been hospitalised by now, but it could be something not too dissimilar then she mumbled rapid cycling.
And there ends the discussion of diagnosis. I'm scared to bring it back up. But now I'm at a loss as to what the appointments are actually for as she won't refer me back to counselling because I'm apparently not mentally strong enough at the present time.
So here I am, a single mum to a challenging but awesome 4 year old, living in a hostel with no home comforts (our room just about fits in 2 single beds, a wardrobe a chest of draws, a sink with 1 metre of work surface and a sink and a fridge freezer), every week brings more stress, I'm up and down more than the detonator ride at Thorpe park, I am having the horrible side to the PTSD symptoms I'm there for in the first place and I'm barely holding myself together.
I think in the last appointment on the 5th before she goes away for a month, I need to ask her some questions. Like what are we actually doing? and where is this leading? Because if nothing is going to come out of it I might aswell call it a day, and let her go on holiday knowing when she gets back that's one patient less on her list to catch up with... Plus if two weeks has lots of crap, I wonder what will happen over a month with Christmas three quarters of the way through?

Should be interesting!

Where we are at...

So this is my first post...

My life is never simple... I said that to S (my mental health nurse) when I first saw her back in September but I think she took it as a depressive statement rather than fact. Everytime I see her there is a huge list of events that suck. 

For example... I saw S on Thursday, in the two weeks before...

I phoned CAMHs to see if they got dinky's referral that was sent in October, they hadn't.

So I phoned the GP practice only to find it was awaiting my signature and for me to fill in my section.

I go down to fill it in and sign it, only to find the referral section filled by the GP was copied and pasted from August, and no relevant info was on there.

So I arrange a GP appointment to go over the referral and hope it can be redone so that dinky can get some support. 

The GP appointment was a nightmare, the GP was condesending, patronising, jumped to conclusions and raised her voice at me. Of course I didn't take it well, I shouted back and walked out. 

I wrote a complaint and saw a practice partner who was also a GP to discuss the referral. While we were there Dinky managed to pull the cover of the scales, get herself stuck under the bed, and pull the cuff off the blood pressure monitor. She was also highly disruptive, kept interrupting and when playing was very loud. So the GP did the referral properly. 

I signed it and it was sent. 

We are on the first floor of the hostel and the woman under us has two kids.. A 2 year old and a 2 month old. The week or so before she had started putting the heating up to 26 degrees celecius. I am not a fan of heat. It makes me very irritable. So we got into this I turn it down, she turns it up, I turn it back down, she turns it back up battle. I asked others if they were hot and each of them said yes, it was too hot in the hostel. So I researched temperatures and babies rooms are supposed to be between 16 and 20 degrees as anything higher could increase the risk of cot death. I wrote a note and stuck it to the thermostat. She came pounding up the stairs. Apparently her 2 month old had a blocked nose and a little cough so it must be flu... I know... Hypochondriac in the house! I told her what the NHS website recommended and she ignored it and began shouting. I was not in the mood so I left it. Over the course of 5 days we had 3 discussions. She let slip that she always had her window open and that she didn't put blankets on him. I felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. I lost my temper a little and said that if she wanted to put her kid at risk because she was too stupid to close the window so be it. Then she said "I feel like I'm being picked on... Is it because of my colour?" I almost hit the roof! I am white, she is Asian. But that never crossed my mind! I told her "I don't care if you are White, Black, Asian or pink with polka dots for that matter... If you wind me up and make me uncomfortable I will say something!" 

Racist? I have never been racist, I always had this saying when confronting racists 'everyone is human, cut us and we all bleed the same colour'. I can't and won't tolerate racism. The same as I can not and will not tolerate being called a racist because I disagree with someone who just happens to be a different colour on the outside. 

Dinky started play therapy at school that week too. And I had parents evening, the teacher was nice, but said Dinky needs to listen more, pay attention, do as she is asked, stop talking constantly, stop using the toilet as an excuse not to do school work, and she can get angry and aggressive so much so the teacher (Mrs N) has learnt not to touch her and to remove herself and other children from dinky when she gets angry. Dinky also is very concerned about the welfare of her friends and is becoming increasingly worried about where I am which is the complete opposite of what should happen as children settle into school. 

Nothing I didn't know but it is still hard to hear. All of these things are on dinkys referral to CAMHS.

So when I told S about the fortnight in between appointments she was slightly taken aback. She conceded that I was right and that things never are simple in my world. I seem to spend the hour every fortnight just going through all the crap from the previous 2 weeks. She could not understand how I laughed about it all and how I seemed happy especially after being down the previous 2 times I saw her. I told her I am used to it. 

I only have one appointment left in two weeks before she goes on holiday for Christmas.