Never have I felt more excited about a bowl of Fruit and Fibre and a glass of orange juice. I’m so looking forward to breakfast it’s ridiculous. I have not gone to bed hungry in weeks and yet last night I did. And this morning I woke up and the scales (really great, high-tech, complex, stand-upon electrical ones) were broken – full of condensation water from the air conditioning and totally defunct!
Oh yeah – but I woke up this morning…after the most luxurious nights’ sleep I have experienced in months. I slept so well, without my evening dose of Oromorph even – but with the space of my own aura and my own room. I’m (blissfully) next to the clinic and the lift – removed from anyone else’s aura and influence whilst the nights touch me. And it’s sensational. I can’t write for long this morning because I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to fathom the shower, the dressing and the routine. I was, after all the hassle, taken along to Chrysalis to be weighed (the children’s ward). However I did contact one of the girls on our way – she came with the night nurse and myself – who’s comment was, “It’s stressful enough being weighed without all this performance.”
What? And she’s one of the downstairs girls – who’s supposedly on the way out. Um…stressful? What? It’s not even as if we get to know what we weigh…umm…there’s something seriously wrong with these people – and not with me. I’m horrified and shocked. It just isn’t my headspace or my life at all – and I had still imagined somewhere it might be. Christ if anything were there to prove me wrong it was this. Anyhow, must shower now and get ready – sense the blogging times etc. will change but I’ll keep you informed as best I can…
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
July 30th - blog 2 - welcome home...not here but to myself...
I’m here guys. And I’m fine. In so many more ways than one. I have been sitting in my little isolation for four years imagining myself to be suffering from an eating disorder. I have been horrified inside my own life to witness the potential that my mental space was capable of restricting or withholding nutrition from itself and from my body. I’m heartbroken that I’ve wasted that space with questioning my sanity because today – in one meal alone – I have witnessed the true demonstration of eating disorders. And it’s horrendous. These women are going through purgatory, through a very strange sort of hell. And the bizarrest thing is that it is nothing like the hell I have experienced over the last four years of illness. My illness has been lostness and confusion. My weakness has been internally inside my head from my doubt, my self-doubt, my worried-ness about whatever any specific thought, action, behaviour or word meant or signified. In such rarefied and isolated environments such as hospitals, Darlington and travelling the worlds with Mum there has been no comparative factors, no comparison applicable except with Mum – who couldn’t give a fuck about food and uses it as how to survive in her life.
That’s not the way I’m supposed to be in my space and I had a most amazing insight in the ambulance. Even if some part of the way I perceived food was still somehow abnormal or not ‘regular’ it was OK…because the way I saw it now guaranteed my survival. And so even if there are certain foods I may want to avoid for the rest of my life then that’s OK. Because any weirdness around food now is experiential memory, not disorder and beyond that I can live with it – because I can literally survive through and despite – and with it.
And then I arrived. And felt totally at ease with putting the doctors and nurses at ease with me. I think I presented the most admirable side of me – honest and totally enthusiastic. Accepting of rules, regulations, willing to play along and go wherever they decided they needed me. It was beautiful, actually, to feel quite comfortable at being quizzed around what I was eating and to feel totally embracing of whatever the dietician wanted to do with me…put me on Standard Menu straight away – eating ‘upstairs’ for now.
I was to find out that this meant with the ‘difficult patients’. These are the people who find eating traumatic and difficult. I sat for 45 minutes with 5 other girls – patients. They range in age from 18 to 31 – most averaging 21-24. They’re all haunted, fucked up and depressed. They never smile. Not once has one of them simply smiled. They’ve laughed hysterically at some unfunny comment but not once has one shown genuine kindness or placidity. (I think that’s my favourite word of today). Nevertheless…the 31 year old concealed salts and peppers which were found and confiscated. It turns out that salt is restricted (along with water, coffee, access to food and fridges etc….but I’ll detail the boring rules later…tomorrow even.)
Tonight I want to explain to you what I’ve just seen. I want to reflect, to reveal and to share my story…the horrendous observation of two nurses tucking into a delicious looking lasagne bake with vegetables followed by strawberries and cream whilst the 31 year-old (Annabel) had a side salad of lettuce and beetroot which took her half an hour to cut up smaller and smaller and then eat before she played with a jacket potato and baked beans – eating one bean with a fork at a time and struggling so hard she didn’t finish it. Then she warmed a Muller Rice in the microwave and played with it with her spoon.
The girl next to me (about 22, name Chantelle) spent 40 minutes playing with a blackcurrant yoghurt then was given one banana Fortisip which she finished. Then another came out of the fridge and she left a few mouthfuls in the bottom which she was told to drink by the nurse. When she refused there was a massive argument, Chantelle tried to storm out…it was horrible.
A Cypriot new arrival had two fish fingers and a pathetically small helping of mashed potato. She hated every mouthful but finished quickly and was excused to go and wave her husband goodbye. Fiona (21) had a ham and lettuce sandwich – stupidly small and cut into triangles. She, head down and with her eyes covered and head in hands permanently, cut the sandwich smaller and smaller and nibbled tiny bites until she had, after 40 minutes, finished it. Then her afters was 2 scoops of Strawberry ice cream and strawberries – the same performance ensued with her head in her hands permanently.
An Irish girl of 18 sitting next to me had two pieces of toast and baked beans and played with that non-stop until her plate was clean. Then we all have to leave for the lounge, write our time on the board of when we finished next to our name and stay in there for an hour to ‘rest’ after eating. This happens every meal – 8.30am breakfast, 45 minutes rest. 10.30am is a 20 minute morning snack, 20 mins rest. Lunch at 12.45, 45 minute meal then 1 hour’s rest. Mid-afternoon snack 3.30pm 20 mins with 20 mins rest. Evening meal at 5.45pm – takes 45 mins then rest for an hour. We’re perpetually resting!!!
Still – they’re investigating a physio three times a week, a bone denseometry test, a pain specialist to identify better ways of treating my pain and then I have to attend mandatory art therapy and group support once a week. Anything else is planned tomorrow with the therapy co-ordinator. I have a delightful room, delightful view, delightful privacy and am really quite happy…I’ll find the way with the meals tomorrow…
Oh yeah – me…I tucked into a bland jacket potato (no butter or marg provided, though I ordered it) with a tin of tuna (separate plate, I think from a large tin but in brine not oil). It was OK, if bland and dressing-less with a side salad of two lettuce leaves, 3 cucumber slices and a tomato…ummm…not calorifically astounding I don’t think. This was followed by 2 scoops of quite tasty vanilla ice cream which I thoroughly enjoyed…and I wolfed it down, no playing, no qualms and no hesitation…
…if ever oh ever I thought I was in any way challenged by food all I have to do is look at these girls and reel back in horror. Whilst physically we may bear a resemblance to one another, inside we are worlds apart. And all I feel is a swiftness of progression necessary to move through dining room eating to being allowed downstairs to eat in the restaurant, allowed outside alone and be freed from 10 minute observations and daily watching – with 2 walks and lots of rest built in – to more freedom, more trust, more recognition and belief. And hopefully I’ll gain weight soon and be building up to building a life out of here. For now, guys, I’m safe and fine – and I’ll let you know more tomorrow when I know more myself.
That’s not the way I’m supposed to be in my space and I had a most amazing insight in the ambulance. Even if some part of the way I perceived food was still somehow abnormal or not ‘regular’ it was OK…because the way I saw it now guaranteed my survival. And so even if there are certain foods I may want to avoid for the rest of my life then that’s OK. Because any weirdness around food now is experiential memory, not disorder and beyond that I can live with it – because I can literally survive through and despite – and with it.
And then I arrived. And felt totally at ease with putting the doctors and nurses at ease with me. I think I presented the most admirable side of me – honest and totally enthusiastic. Accepting of rules, regulations, willing to play along and go wherever they decided they needed me. It was beautiful, actually, to feel quite comfortable at being quizzed around what I was eating and to feel totally embracing of whatever the dietician wanted to do with me…put me on Standard Menu straight away – eating ‘upstairs’ for now.
I was to find out that this meant with the ‘difficult patients’. These are the people who find eating traumatic and difficult. I sat for 45 minutes with 5 other girls – patients. They range in age from 18 to 31 – most averaging 21-24. They’re all haunted, fucked up and depressed. They never smile. Not once has one of them simply smiled. They’ve laughed hysterically at some unfunny comment but not once has one shown genuine kindness or placidity. (I think that’s my favourite word of today). Nevertheless…the 31 year old concealed salts and peppers which were found and confiscated. It turns out that salt is restricted (along with water, coffee, access to food and fridges etc….but I’ll detail the boring rules later…tomorrow even.)
Tonight I want to explain to you what I’ve just seen. I want to reflect, to reveal and to share my story…the horrendous observation of two nurses tucking into a delicious looking lasagne bake with vegetables followed by strawberries and cream whilst the 31 year-old (Annabel) had a side salad of lettuce and beetroot which took her half an hour to cut up smaller and smaller and then eat before she played with a jacket potato and baked beans – eating one bean with a fork at a time and struggling so hard she didn’t finish it. Then she warmed a Muller Rice in the microwave and played with it with her spoon.
The girl next to me (about 22, name Chantelle) spent 40 minutes playing with a blackcurrant yoghurt then was given one banana Fortisip which she finished. Then another came out of the fridge and she left a few mouthfuls in the bottom which she was told to drink by the nurse. When she refused there was a massive argument, Chantelle tried to storm out…it was horrible.
A Cypriot new arrival had two fish fingers and a pathetically small helping of mashed potato. She hated every mouthful but finished quickly and was excused to go and wave her husband goodbye. Fiona (21) had a ham and lettuce sandwich – stupidly small and cut into triangles. She, head down and with her eyes covered and head in hands permanently, cut the sandwich smaller and smaller and nibbled tiny bites until she had, after 40 minutes, finished it. Then her afters was 2 scoops of Strawberry ice cream and strawberries – the same performance ensued with her head in her hands permanently.
An Irish girl of 18 sitting next to me had two pieces of toast and baked beans and played with that non-stop until her plate was clean. Then we all have to leave for the lounge, write our time on the board of when we finished next to our name and stay in there for an hour to ‘rest’ after eating. This happens every meal – 8.30am breakfast, 45 minutes rest. 10.30am is a 20 minute morning snack, 20 mins rest. Lunch at 12.45, 45 minute meal then 1 hour’s rest. Mid-afternoon snack 3.30pm 20 mins with 20 mins rest. Evening meal at 5.45pm – takes 45 mins then rest for an hour. We’re perpetually resting!!!
Still – they’re investigating a physio three times a week, a bone denseometry test, a pain specialist to identify better ways of treating my pain and then I have to attend mandatory art therapy and group support once a week. Anything else is planned tomorrow with the therapy co-ordinator. I have a delightful room, delightful view, delightful privacy and am really quite happy…I’ll find the way with the meals tomorrow…
Oh yeah – me…I tucked into a bland jacket potato (no butter or marg provided, though I ordered it) with a tin of tuna (separate plate, I think from a large tin but in brine not oil). It was OK, if bland and dressing-less with a side salad of two lettuce leaves, 3 cucumber slices and a tomato…ummm…not calorifically astounding I don’t think. This was followed by 2 scoops of quite tasty vanilla ice cream which I thoroughly enjoyed…and I wolfed it down, no playing, no qualms and no hesitation…
…if ever oh ever I thought I was in any way challenged by food all I have to do is look at these girls and reel back in horror. Whilst physically we may bear a resemblance to one another, inside we are worlds apart. And all I feel is a swiftness of progression necessary to move through dining room eating to being allowed downstairs to eat in the restaurant, allowed outside alone and be freed from 10 minute observations and daily watching – with 2 walks and lots of rest built in – to more freedom, more trust, more recognition and belief. And hopefully I’ll gain weight soon and be building up to building a life out of here. For now, guys, I’m safe and fine – and I’ll let you know more tomorrow when I know more myself.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
July 30th - blog 1 - the end of hospital and into my life...
I am very much in practical mode this morning and in the phase of preparations to leave this place. It’s funny because I’ve been leaving since Saturday really, when I knew that Dr Sinha was either not going to ask the relevant questions of the relevant people or that we were undoubtedly going to get the response that there was not enough specialist help. It was a pathetic performance really where the answers depended upon the questions that were asked and the decisions depended entirely upon the judgement of how much specialism was required. They couldn’t have come back with any other answer than to go to Hayes Grove, even if (and I strongly doubt) conversations were had in the first place.
I also doubt that the physiotherapists have ever been consulted – I don’t actually have one since Janey left – I have been left in the hands of physio techs who are neither qualified nor recognised enough to give official verdicts apparently, but I know for a fact that they have not been asked.
Anyway – after a whole rigmarole yesterday where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was going to be transport problems (and indeed there are…surprise, surprise, thanks Dr Gordon for your exceedingly excellent co-ordination once again…!) I am in preparations to go. I am taking my own medications to last me at least for the first week or so, have my bowel stuff prescribed so it’s official and have asked that Claudia speak to Hayes Grove and express the need for physio, ask questions about pressure mattresses etc. etc….it’s all sort of in place.
The only thing that remains is to get there – and yes I am nervous today. I am anxious largely about the mental un-known-ness of it all, the space that they are going to force me into (and that’s what came to me to write, not something I’ve been thinking) and the practicalities of how the routines will take shape there on a daily basis – that is what concerns me right now. Beyond that, the assessments etc. are unavoidable and necessary and just par for the course. What they make of me and their judgements I have long since learnt are largely their issue or perspective and not mine. All that is required from me in those circumstances is navigation and placidity. I hope that that is what I will bring.
In terms of the day-to-day structure, the dietary intake and the food/meals and the restrictions that I am going to be under I know it will take a while to get used to the system but once that has happened then I will work within it to the best of my ability. I will always, because of the kind of person that I am, feel the need to flout some rule, somewhere…but I hope this will only be a minor one and I hope beyond anything that nothing I do, no action I perform or behaviour I exhibit in innocence will be misinterpreted and over-analysed into seeming to portray something that was not there. That has been the problem here. Perpetually fighting the diagnosis lends itself to being perpetually under examination and hyper-monitoring for it, ‘just in case’. The denial leads to extra wariness where everything – innocent or not – is seen through questioning, examining eyes. Perhaps going to a place where they are expecting and already imagining me to have difficulty they will approach it differently – attempt to ‘help’ with anything seen as subterfuge instead of use it as evidence. As such, I may surprise them. Or I may surprise myself.
I was speaking yesterday and the problem I have left with food is that it’s still around. It’s the 24/7 ness of focussing on putting on weight in a hospitalised medicalised environment where I have been largely on my own that has leant itself to forming a small obsession with trying to calorie control my life. Food went from something I didn’t have to something I had in measured controlled and judged quantities etc. Now I want to relax and allow it to do its job whilst giving me a little bit of a life…of course it is a focus but it doesn’t need to be the only one.
And mostly I want the whole background of others’ doubts to disappear within my life. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, or fight anyone, or assert my sanity or accuracy, my past, my beliefs etc. in order to do that – I just have to get beyond the point where their help may be perceived necessary. And I hope that that will happen soon. I was weighed today – after a glass of lemonade as per usual – as 34.65 kilos. I do not know the accuracy of all of this – my imagination would lead me to believe I am somewhere around 34.5 kilos…but 34.65 is a bloody good thing to show when I get there – and I knew it was there inside me…I couldn’t believe I had not put on weight…
Nevertheless, working on 34.65, this sends me there at a BMI of 13.5 and is (in English!) 5 stone 6 lbs, 6 ounces. (5 and a half stone). This is good. This is shit…what am I doing at 5 stone something? Christ almighty – still. Only 2 and half to go, and perhaps only some of those at Hayes Grove.
Anyway – must go and be practical now. There was more but I cannot quite get my head and self in gear enough to write it all down. It’s to do with not being anything perfected about going there – no anger, no vulnerability, no gracious acceptance is there in a perfected entirety. It is all there somewhere and it is an allowance of myself to feel disconcerted and de-constructed throughout it all that facilitates me feeling better adult and better self than ever. I’m not cultivating one or other side, one or other feeling, one or other behaviour as ‘desirable’. I’m all of them and none of them – and everything in between and that’s fine.
I also doubt that the physiotherapists have ever been consulted – I don’t actually have one since Janey left – I have been left in the hands of physio techs who are neither qualified nor recognised enough to give official verdicts apparently, but I know for a fact that they have not been asked.
Anyway – after a whole rigmarole yesterday where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was going to be transport problems (and indeed there are…surprise, surprise, thanks Dr Gordon for your exceedingly excellent co-ordination once again…!) I am in preparations to go. I am taking my own medications to last me at least for the first week or so, have my bowel stuff prescribed so it’s official and have asked that Claudia speak to Hayes Grove and express the need for physio, ask questions about pressure mattresses etc. etc….it’s all sort of in place.
The only thing that remains is to get there – and yes I am nervous today. I am anxious largely about the mental un-known-ness of it all, the space that they are going to force me into (and that’s what came to me to write, not something I’ve been thinking) and the practicalities of how the routines will take shape there on a daily basis – that is what concerns me right now. Beyond that, the assessments etc. are unavoidable and necessary and just par for the course. What they make of me and their judgements I have long since learnt are largely their issue or perspective and not mine. All that is required from me in those circumstances is navigation and placidity. I hope that that is what I will bring.
In terms of the day-to-day structure, the dietary intake and the food/meals and the restrictions that I am going to be under I know it will take a while to get used to the system but once that has happened then I will work within it to the best of my ability. I will always, because of the kind of person that I am, feel the need to flout some rule, somewhere…but I hope this will only be a minor one and I hope beyond anything that nothing I do, no action I perform or behaviour I exhibit in innocence will be misinterpreted and over-analysed into seeming to portray something that was not there. That has been the problem here. Perpetually fighting the diagnosis lends itself to being perpetually under examination and hyper-monitoring for it, ‘just in case’. The denial leads to extra wariness where everything – innocent or not – is seen through questioning, examining eyes. Perhaps going to a place where they are expecting and already imagining me to have difficulty they will approach it differently – attempt to ‘help’ with anything seen as subterfuge instead of use it as evidence. As such, I may surprise them. Or I may surprise myself.
I was speaking yesterday and the problem I have left with food is that it’s still around. It’s the 24/7 ness of focussing on putting on weight in a hospitalised medicalised environment where I have been largely on my own that has leant itself to forming a small obsession with trying to calorie control my life. Food went from something I didn’t have to something I had in measured controlled and judged quantities etc. Now I want to relax and allow it to do its job whilst giving me a little bit of a life…of course it is a focus but it doesn’t need to be the only one.
And mostly I want the whole background of others’ doubts to disappear within my life. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone, or fight anyone, or assert my sanity or accuracy, my past, my beliefs etc. in order to do that – I just have to get beyond the point where their help may be perceived necessary. And I hope that that will happen soon. I was weighed today – after a glass of lemonade as per usual – as 34.65 kilos. I do not know the accuracy of all of this – my imagination would lead me to believe I am somewhere around 34.5 kilos…but 34.65 is a bloody good thing to show when I get there – and I knew it was there inside me…I couldn’t believe I had not put on weight…
Nevertheless, working on 34.65, this sends me there at a BMI of 13.5 and is (in English!) 5 stone 6 lbs, 6 ounces. (5 and a half stone). This is good. This is shit…what am I doing at 5 stone something? Christ almighty – still. Only 2 and half to go, and perhaps only some of those at Hayes Grove.
Anyway – must go and be practical now. There was more but I cannot quite get my head and self in gear enough to write it all down. It’s to do with not being anything perfected about going there – no anger, no vulnerability, no gracious acceptance is there in a perfected entirety. It is all there somewhere and it is an allowance of myself to feel disconcerted and de-constructed throughout it all that facilitates me feeling better adult and better self than ever. I’m not cultivating one or other side, one or other feeling, one or other behaviour as ‘desirable’. I’m all of them and none of them – and everything in between and that’s fine.
July 29th - no weight, but serious progress (see end)...
I’m sort of tired of rehearsing things to say and personas to adopt when I arrive at Hayes Grove. There is an awareness not that I can’t be ‘me’ but that I am simply not going to be the recognisable me who objects openly to the diagnosis of ‘eating disorder’ because of my beliefs over where, when and how my illness developed. The sense that I am not going to be able to maintain the strength of belief that I fought so hard to find is not daunting – what is affecting me is the searching for the behaviour and the personality traits/mental stances which are going to replace it. I know I can never know them until I get there but sometimes it helps me to feel I have an ‘in’, an ‘approach’ in mind which will ease my passage through the time I spend there.
And I’ve been meaning to write since yesterday about a comment from one of the nurses about her life in an Arab country where she moved with her husband and stayed years ago. She was remarking that there was the potential of a coup at any time and the first to be thrown into camps or murdered were going to be white Europeans. Determined for it not to be her she was under constant strain to watch what she said, what she did and be perpetually aware of how it may be perceived or interpreted. There was immense stress that she was placed under and it made her ill and very underweight (along with an active, unhappy lifestyle). I suddenly knew that my next blog would have to contain the phrase:
“I’ve been living in another country.”
I don’t quite know whether ‘another country’ was pre-hospital – although it was because it feels like for four years, the duration of my illnesses, that I have had to constantly observe my actions to guarantee they elicited the ‘right’ response and the ‘best’ out of the situation and those others within it. Constantly not trying to rock any boats or be disbelieved I have made it a 24/7 occupation to watch and observe just in case I was though of or judged in a certain way. I don’t know if it was different when I came into hospital – probably it just magnified the whole dilemma and focussed attention from everyone on the physicality and the ‘obvious’ problem of eating which must go along with it. Psychologically, there is no resistance to eating whatever. I know that but nobody else has any guarantees. If the guarantee is to continue eating then that I can do – and I also hope I can do weight gain although upsettingly I cannot trumpet from the rooftops today and I am actually heartbroken at having not put on any weight. I remain 34.25kilos
That is upsetting, and I can justify it in many ways, explain it in many ways and attempt to understand it in many ways. Essentially what I was doing before has ceased to work – whether that is because I am heavier and now need even more to gain weight, whether the stress of the last few days has taken it’s toll not on the amount I have eaten but with what the body has had to do with it in order to keep itself together and OK…and I genuinely haven’t lessened the amount I’ve put in. In actual fact according to my calculations if anything I’ve done a little more. But it hasn’t been relaxed and responsive – I’ve been anxious and simply couldn’t fit it all in…it’s been a difficult time trying to mentalise the food intake. Which in some ways makes it an enormous relief that I can forget about engineering my meals now and simply go to a dining room and let them give me options and I’ll take a choice. I can guarantee I won’t always like it but it’ll be a damn sight better than this hospital food and I’ll be a damn site more aware of what I like/don’t, can cope with best and do not want to touch…it truly will be in response there and fingers crossed that response will be to continued and increasing weight gain.
On the positive side my weekly weight gain is 0.7 kilos – only 100 under the target. This means I need to up things slightly – but then fuck slightly – I need to up things even more than slightly and that’s totally OK with me…and I mean that…
And I need to remark for you all how different that is. Usually I put ‘slightly’ and ‘slowly’ and ‘gradually’ in sentences simply to give myself a breathing space I sense I am going to need. My body is very attuned to its willingness, readiness and preparedness to do what is being asked of it and in the past I have been aware of moments when I am saying the right words (that 24/7 ensuring I am not persecuted or judged) but not feeling totally on board with some element of what was being asked of me – usually the time scales and the pressure they imply. Somewhere in the previous paragraph I computed all the minutiae of grams and logically could see that I ‘only’ needed to up it 100 grams worth of calories over a week – that’s about 75-100 calories more per day. Easily do-able actually and probably something I would have appreciated from a calculated point of view. But in actual fact observing that ‘only 100grams’ would be ‘what is required’ I felt a genuine surge of resentment from deep within at sticking to that limitation. Yes I could do an extra glass of milk/juice – a bigger dollop of mayonnaise at both meals, more salsa, more something…somewhere…at each individual intake of food…but it is a focussed restriction. If the goal is simply weight gain – without a limit of 2000 calories per day, 0.8 kilos per week and a focus on amounts to meet and obtain (therefore structures which limit and bind) perhaps (and I sense this is the case) I will over-come that, overdo things…up things and supersede the ‘requirements’ in a total embrace of the larger picture, not the refined, restrictive and limited goals…
And this morning that not only felt possible, but positive, desirable and dare I say the point. This hospital has been a limitation – a foreign country where they’ve spoken a foreign language and hated me for being here and through not understanding what right I had to be here…
And in turn I’ve hated their limited perspective, their rules, their limits, the fact that I have had to respect their quantitive, qualitative mentalities. I am already seeing Hayes Grove as a semi-liberation. Perhaps I can lose the ‘2000 calories, 800 grams’ thing there and overcome it, transcend it and ensure that I am both responding (and therefore eating more than they may prescribe) but responding and eating as much as I need to put on the weight in the timescale that my body wants. In previous ‘countries’ that’s always been slower than they may have prescribed. Now I sense, I know, I can feel within that it may just – given a menu, a liberated place and perhaps a liberated and less tired, stressed me – be a little bit quicker, faster and more easily done.
And I’ve been meaning to write since yesterday about a comment from one of the nurses about her life in an Arab country where she moved with her husband and stayed years ago. She was remarking that there was the potential of a coup at any time and the first to be thrown into camps or murdered were going to be white Europeans. Determined for it not to be her she was under constant strain to watch what she said, what she did and be perpetually aware of how it may be perceived or interpreted. There was immense stress that she was placed under and it made her ill and very underweight (along with an active, unhappy lifestyle). I suddenly knew that my next blog would have to contain the phrase:
“I’ve been living in another country.”
I don’t quite know whether ‘another country’ was pre-hospital – although it was because it feels like for four years, the duration of my illnesses, that I have had to constantly observe my actions to guarantee they elicited the ‘right’ response and the ‘best’ out of the situation and those others within it. Constantly not trying to rock any boats or be disbelieved I have made it a 24/7 occupation to watch and observe just in case I was though of or judged in a certain way. I don’t know if it was different when I came into hospital – probably it just magnified the whole dilemma and focussed attention from everyone on the physicality and the ‘obvious’ problem of eating which must go along with it. Psychologically, there is no resistance to eating whatever. I know that but nobody else has any guarantees. If the guarantee is to continue eating then that I can do – and I also hope I can do weight gain although upsettingly I cannot trumpet from the rooftops today and I am actually heartbroken at having not put on any weight. I remain 34.25kilos
That is upsetting, and I can justify it in many ways, explain it in many ways and attempt to understand it in many ways. Essentially what I was doing before has ceased to work – whether that is because I am heavier and now need even more to gain weight, whether the stress of the last few days has taken it’s toll not on the amount I have eaten but with what the body has had to do with it in order to keep itself together and OK…and I genuinely haven’t lessened the amount I’ve put in. In actual fact according to my calculations if anything I’ve done a little more. But it hasn’t been relaxed and responsive – I’ve been anxious and simply couldn’t fit it all in…it’s been a difficult time trying to mentalise the food intake. Which in some ways makes it an enormous relief that I can forget about engineering my meals now and simply go to a dining room and let them give me options and I’ll take a choice. I can guarantee I won’t always like it but it’ll be a damn sight better than this hospital food and I’ll be a damn site more aware of what I like/don’t, can cope with best and do not want to touch…it truly will be in response there and fingers crossed that response will be to continued and increasing weight gain.
On the positive side my weekly weight gain is 0.7 kilos – only 100 under the target. This means I need to up things slightly – but then fuck slightly – I need to up things even more than slightly and that’s totally OK with me…and I mean that…
And I need to remark for you all how different that is. Usually I put ‘slightly’ and ‘slowly’ and ‘gradually’ in sentences simply to give myself a breathing space I sense I am going to need. My body is very attuned to its willingness, readiness and preparedness to do what is being asked of it and in the past I have been aware of moments when I am saying the right words (that 24/7 ensuring I am not persecuted or judged) but not feeling totally on board with some element of what was being asked of me – usually the time scales and the pressure they imply. Somewhere in the previous paragraph I computed all the minutiae of grams and logically could see that I ‘only’ needed to up it 100 grams worth of calories over a week – that’s about 75-100 calories more per day. Easily do-able actually and probably something I would have appreciated from a calculated point of view. But in actual fact observing that ‘only 100grams’ would be ‘what is required’ I felt a genuine surge of resentment from deep within at sticking to that limitation. Yes I could do an extra glass of milk/juice – a bigger dollop of mayonnaise at both meals, more salsa, more something…somewhere…at each individual intake of food…but it is a focussed restriction. If the goal is simply weight gain – without a limit of 2000 calories per day, 0.8 kilos per week and a focus on amounts to meet and obtain (therefore structures which limit and bind) perhaps (and I sense this is the case) I will over-come that, overdo things…up things and supersede the ‘requirements’ in a total embrace of the larger picture, not the refined, restrictive and limited goals…
And this morning that not only felt possible, but positive, desirable and dare I say the point. This hospital has been a limitation – a foreign country where they’ve spoken a foreign language and hated me for being here and through not understanding what right I had to be here…
And in turn I’ve hated their limited perspective, their rules, their limits, the fact that I have had to respect their quantitive, qualitative mentalities. I am already seeing Hayes Grove as a semi-liberation. Perhaps I can lose the ‘2000 calories, 800 grams’ thing there and overcome it, transcend it and ensure that I am both responding (and therefore eating more than they may prescribe) but responding and eating as much as I need to put on the weight in the timescale that my body wants. In previous ‘countries’ that’s always been slower than they may have prescribed. Now I sense, I know, I can feel within that it may just – given a menu, a liberated place and perhaps a liberated and less tired, stressed me – be a little bit quicker, faster and more easily done.
Sunday, 27 July 2008
July 28th - blog 1 - my concerns and my conclusions...my openness arrives
Oh my God what an atrocious night…
It was an unsettled evening actually which turned out to be the precursor to an horrific night where it was so, so loud. Two patients were having a full blown conversation at maximum volume for about ½ hour at 4am. I woke up hundreds of times needing the toilet, Albert (a wandering, confused, insane patient) was wailing and screaming for a large part of the night. Doctors visited somebody opposite me and it’s not something that ever occurs subtly, quietly or with compassion for any sleeping patients.
At 2.30am I was making lists and on the internet researching this. But nothing major. As I was so tired (having not slept very well for the last couple of nights) I kept dropping off…it made waking up harder and harder every time and staying awake became nearly impossible so it turned into a vicious and repetitive cycle of sleeping and not. And it’s unusual for me to be so aware of not sleeping correctly. Often I am just aware that I wasn’t rested utterly and truly restored. Tonight (this morning) I can distinctly remember awakening only an hour after I’d gone to sleep and feeling as if this was going to be a long one.
Beyond my sleeplessness I have an anxiety which came to me yesterday about Hayes Grove Priory. I can feel myself rehearsing the ‘silent acceptance’ stuff with the nurses here each time I am asked whether I am OK about going, or how I feel about my transfer. In explanations of the reasons behind transferral I am tempted to lie and say that they want to move me to a play that can keep a closer eye on the diet alone so that they can consistently guarantee continued weight gain and dietary benefit. This would not be true though, and when questioned yesterday by Adele and Sammy (the male night nurse who has worked a couple of times and knows me a bit) for the reasons behind the sending me away it is hard not to comment that in their perspective there was the view that I would benefit from being in a location where there was specialist help on hand to deal with any fall-out or potential relapse that may occur as I continue to put on weight. It was impossible for me to say this without adding that I did not feel 100% on board with the necessity of moving. Whilst I appreciated openly their concerns I very much stated how I had no qualms with going there to demonstrate in their terms what wellness meant and proving to them that there would be no fallout whatever.
And bless Adele…Mum left in the middle of my dinner in a moment when Adele had to leave in response to a crash bell. I apologised and said I didn’t want her to think that she had left so I could be alone and start playing silly buggers with the meal. And she looked at me quizzically and said she would never ever think that. She then said, “Victoria…?” and beckoned me closer with her hand so she could whisper her following comment, “look…you’re eating fine to me. I’d get on with my obs and leave you to it but if I get caught it’s my job on the line and me that gets criticised. As far as I’m concerned though you’re fine.”
That was a beautiful endorsement, from the youngest member of staff who’s opinion counts for nothing and who would never have the confidence to say it to anyone that matters. It was an endorsement for me from someone who has watched me often, been with me regularly and knows me more thoroughly than most people. She would not presume to a) judge whether I had a psychological problem or not, or b) criticise any Doctoral recommendations etc. And yet although it was taking me a while to eat my dinner last night because it was quite heavy, in the moments I was alone there was no temptation to begin avoiding mouthfuls or parts of it…which made me see that there is no fears of foods when they’re correct for me. Under pressure to create the illusion that I’m doing it in here I’ve added in stuff to build things up which I don’t always get on with – pitta breads to bulk out a Splendip and Babybel to build up the calories of a meal with Brunchetta. Whilst these work, they’re the bits I long to play with and avoid – I see now that that’s because they’re the bits that I don’t get on with well and only have out of necessity, not desire. I am looking forward to being in a place where there are just meals, whole entities that must be eaten. Then even if it’s not nice its just a battle once, it’s not a ‘played with’ food…if you see what I mean…
…but there is an anxiety, both around my capacity to remain silent about my sense that I do not require the help and therapeutic assistance of the Priory and also about the place itself. It is very easy to present a rosy picture to the patients’ parents about the flexibility and the relaxed nature of anywhere. It is also very easy to portray a picture of a place when you are part of the team in charge of it which may bear no resemblance whatever to what it is like to experience the life underneath those teams and within the structures enforced by them…
There are elements that will be easier – a dietician’s assistance with familiarity with the foods available will help me eat considerable amounts of calories without the need to have ‘extras’(the snacks that I have at supper time, the munching in between, the sweets etc.) and without leaving me feeling as if I want to play with bits that I’ve added because I’m only having them when I have to calorie wise and not because they are a pleasure to eat. It’ll help me feel comfortable consistently that I am sensibly consuming the correct amount of calories and not feel, instead, consistently aware that I must keep conscientiously consuming a little more than I would naturally choose/respond to/desire.
But there are elements that will be uncomfortable – the precise nature of what we eat may be one of them. But I am more focussed on the enforced communality and interaction. I am hoping we get the opportunity for response in this interaction and can be committed and contributory and silent, removed and isolated in equal measure as and when it is applicable to ourselves. There are also the question marks over the ‘therapy’ and whilst the grounds, the approach, the attitude, the care and the observation may all come from a place of care and helpfulness I am slightly disconcerted and jangled around and about the way this will take shape and the slap-dash assessment, presumptions and judgements that will come with my attendance there.
And perhaps that’s it. There are so many ‘2 plus 2 must equal’ equations that can occur when anyone hears that I am going to a psychiatric hospital on the recommendation of doctors. It is assumed that there are eating disorder reasons for me being there and that is what I have resisted all along. And so my turning up in a place where everyone is there because they believe, have been told and want help with the fact that they have an eating disorder will be disconcerting. I cannot and will not and must not turn up there believing and asserting that I don’t. And I’m getting out the last dregs of asserting that in these last few days here. I almost have to volunteer to analysis – plead almost ignorance and willingness to discover as opposed to presenting my fait accompli, as they did theirs.
And now you have to read what I wrote last night:
This woman in the end bed used to weigh 40 stone. She now weighs 36 stone – and blames her mother’s controlling attitude for her depression which caused her over-eating…she can now walk 150 yards without sticks, of which she is mighty proud. She is also on a healthy diet to lose weight so she can have a tummy tuck operation in order to remove her skin and decrease her appetite. She apparently eats ‘really healthily’ at home but in here is forced to eat biscuit because her sugars are going crazy and dropping shockingly. Um…I cannot believe the depravity of some people, the naivety and blindness with which they sit in denial. She constantly references the vulgarity of her weight with a disparaging attitude – and it is this that causes it to perpetuate within her life. That she cannot see that her own lack of self respect is the reason for he lack of health is depressing in and of itself. But you cannot say anything when she is so convinced of her own wellness/illness and its place.
This worries me for me. Am I so ‘certain’ that it is to my detriment and to my blindness? I hope to God it’s not…
And now I laugh. Despite my disturbed sleep I obviously processed something. It is not about my ‘truth’ being a ‘deceit’ or a ‘self-delusion’. Nor is it that it plays the same role in my life as the above woman’s assertion that it is her inactivity, not her diet and her mother, not her own lack of self-respect that is responsible for her overweight-ness. But there is a fundamental lesson I have absorbed and can now appreciate. Presenting a certainty will only invite someone picking holes in it. Within my certainty this is all to easy when there is lack of records to support my words and oodles of them to support the judgement of me and my situation along the line. If Dr McKlusky is as keen as she says to start from her ‘blank slate’ of assessment then I have to try not ‘knowing’ anything. I am prepared to go there presenting the fact that I don’t know and will be led by their better judgement, then say as little as possible, prove amenable and not ever counter their perspective that I am there because I need to be. I need to be for dietary build-up, it’s going to save me a fortune in M&S, a lot of stressing about how to get the calories in and a lot of anxiety about being judged for the way in which I do that.
I hope it will diminish the need to prat, I pray it will diminish the need to keep topping up late at night and I hope it will diminish the need to stay strong. Perhaps I have never been truly open to assessment and have always gone trying to hold my truth in order to demonstrate it and, I have hoped, be treated accordingly. Perhaps it is time to surrender my truth, even I superficially, and let everyone there think I am there under the same auspices as everyone else – to heal what could be a problem eating. If I volunteer that I do not know whether they will find anything, as opposed to continue to bang my head up against a brick wall by maintaining that they won’t…perhaps that will smoothen the ride for me and us all. Because if I continue to say there is nothing wrong, I am there to prove them wrong, prove to them that I was right…that’s just inviting trouble, portraying anger and begging a diagnosis of denial. I want to be, instead, meeker and more humbled by their ‘seniority’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘expertise’ and let them, if they wish, find an issue. I am so practised at issue-dealing with that any issue they find I can ‘do’, ‘sort’ and ‘handle’ almost immediately. And whether the issue itself is real or not there will always be the illusion of having been helped by them, being amenable and willing to listen to them and not so opposing and objectionable to their perspective and diagnosis. Essentially I am not there to prove them wrong, I am there to answer the questions and once and for all, regardless of the starting point, leave there without an issue in anyone’s eyes.
It was an unsettled evening actually which turned out to be the precursor to an horrific night where it was so, so loud. Two patients were having a full blown conversation at maximum volume for about ½ hour at 4am. I woke up hundreds of times needing the toilet, Albert (a wandering, confused, insane patient) was wailing and screaming for a large part of the night. Doctors visited somebody opposite me and it’s not something that ever occurs subtly, quietly or with compassion for any sleeping patients.
At 2.30am I was making lists and on the internet researching this. But nothing major. As I was so tired (having not slept very well for the last couple of nights) I kept dropping off…it made waking up harder and harder every time and staying awake became nearly impossible so it turned into a vicious and repetitive cycle of sleeping and not. And it’s unusual for me to be so aware of not sleeping correctly. Often I am just aware that I wasn’t rested utterly and truly restored. Tonight (this morning) I can distinctly remember awakening only an hour after I’d gone to sleep and feeling as if this was going to be a long one.
Beyond my sleeplessness I have an anxiety which came to me yesterday about Hayes Grove Priory. I can feel myself rehearsing the ‘silent acceptance’ stuff with the nurses here each time I am asked whether I am OK about going, or how I feel about my transfer. In explanations of the reasons behind transferral I am tempted to lie and say that they want to move me to a play that can keep a closer eye on the diet alone so that they can consistently guarantee continued weight gain and dietary benefit. This would not be true though, and when questioned yesterday by Adele and Sammy (the male night nurse who has worked a couple of times and knows me a bit) for the reasons behind the sending me away it is hard not to comment that in their perspective there was the view that I would benefit from being in a location where there was specialist help on hand to deal with any fall-out or potential relapse that may occur as I continue to put on weight. It was impossible for me to say this without adding that I did not feel 100% on board with the necessity of moving. Whilst I appreciated openly their concerns I very much stated how I had no qualms with going there to demonstrate in their terms what wellness meant and proving to them that there would be no fallout whatever.
And bless Adele…Mum left in the middle of my dinner in a moment when Adele had to leave in response to a crash bell. I apologised and said I didn’t want her to think that she had left so I could be alone and start playing silly buggers with the meal. And she looked at me quizzically and said she would never ever think that. She then said, “Victoria…?” and beckoned me closer with her hand so she could whisper her following comment, “look…you’re eating fine to me. I’d get on with my obs and leave you to it but if I get caught it’s my job on the line and me that gets criticised. As far as I’m concerned though you’re fine.”
That was a beautiful endorsement, from the youngest member of staff who’s opinion counts for nothing and who would never have the confidence to say it to anyone that matters. It was an endorsement for me from someone who has watched me often, been with me regularly and knows me more thoroughly than most people. She would not presume to a) judge whether I had a psychological problem or not, or b) criticise any Doctoral recommendations etc. And yet although it was taking me a while to eat my dinner last night because it was quite heavy, in the moments I was alone there was no temptation to begin avoiding mouthfuls or parts of it…which made me see that there is no fears of foods when they’re correct for me. Under pressure to create the illusion that I’m doing it in here I’ve added in stuff to build things up which I don’t always get on with – pitta breads to bulk out a Splendip and Babybel to build up the calories of a meal with Brunchetta. Whilst these work, they’re the bits I long to play with and avoid – I see now that that’s because they’re the bits that I don’t get on with well and only have out of necessity, not desire. I am looking forward to being in a place where there are just meals, whole entities that must be eaten. Then even if it’s not nice its just a battle once, it’s not a ‘played with’ food…if you see what I mean…
…but there is an anxiety, both around my capacity to remain silent about my sense that I do not require the help and therapeutic assistance of the Priory and also about the place itself. It is very easy to present a rosy picture to the patients’ parents about the flexibility and the relaxed nature of anywhere. It is also very easy to portray a picture of a place when you are part of the team in charge of it which may bear no resemblance whatever to what it is like to experience the life underneath those teams and within the structures enforced by them…
There are elements that will be easier – a dietician’s assistance with familiarity with the foods available will help me eat considerable amounts of calories without the need to have ‘extras’(the snacks that I have at supper time, the munching in between, the sweets etc.) and without leaving me feeling as if I want to play with bits that I’ve added because I’m only having them when I have to calorie wise and not because they are a pleasure to eat. It’ll help me feel comfortable consistently that I am sensibly consuming the correct amount of calories and not feel, instead, consistently aware that I must keep conscientiously consuming a little more than I would naturally choose/respond to/desire.
But there are elements that will be uncomfortable – the precise nature of what we eat may be one of them. But I am more focussed on the enforced communality and interaction. I am hoping we get the opportunity for response in this interaction and can be committed and contributory and silent, removed and isolated in equal measure as and when it is applicable to ourselves. There are also the question marks over the ‘therapy’ and whilst the grounds, the approach, the attitude, the care and the observation may all come from a place of care and helpfulness I am slightly disconcerted and jangled around and about the way this will take shape and the slap-dash assessment, presumptions and judgements that will come with my attendance there.
And perhaps that’s it. There are so many ‘2 plus 2 must equal’ equations that can occur when anyone hears that I am going to a psychiatric hospital on the recommendation of doctors. It is assumed that there are eating disorder reasons for me being there and that is what I have resisted all along. And so my turning up in a place where everyone is there because they believe, have been told and want help with the fact that they have an eating disorder will be disconcerting. I cannot and will not and must not turn up there believing and asserting that I don’t. And I’m getting out the last dregs of asserting that in these last few days here. I almost have to volunteer to analysis – plead almost ignorance and willingness to discover as opposed to presenting my fait accompli, as they did theirs.
And now you have to read what I wrote last night:
This woman in the end bed used to weigh 40 stone. She now weighs 36 stone – and blames her mother’s controlling attitude for her depression which caused her over-eating…she can now walk 150 yards without sticks, of which she is mighty proud. She is also on a healthy diet to lose weight so she can have a tummy tuck operation in order to remove her skin and decrease her appetite. She apparently eats ‘really healthily’ at home but in here is forced to eat biscuit because her sugars are going crazy and dropping shockingly. Um…I cannot believe the depravity of some people, the naivety and blindness with which they sit in denial. She constantly references the vulgarity of her weight with a disparaging attitude – and it is this that causes it to perpetuate within her life. That she cannot see that her own lack of self respect is the reason for he lack of health is depressing in and of itself. But you cannot say anything when she is so convinced of her own wellness/illness and its place.
This worries me for me. Am I so ‘certain’ that it is to my detriment and to my blindness? I hope to God it’s not…
And now I laugh. Despite my disturbed sleep I obviously processed something. It is not about my ‘truth’ being a ‘deceit’ or a ‘self-delusion’. Nor is it that it plays the same role in my life as the above woman’s assertion that it is her inactivity, not her diet and her mother, not her own lack of self-respect that is responsible for her overweight-ness. But there is a fundamental lesson I have absorbed and can now appreciate. Presenting a certainty will only invite someone picking holes in it. Within my certainty this is all to easy when there is lack of records to support my words and oodles of them to support the judgement of me and my situation along the line. If Dr McKlusky is as keen as she says to start from her ‘blank slate’ of assessment then I have to try not ‘knowing’ anything. I am prepared to go there presenting the fact that I don’t know and will be led by their better judgement, then say as little as possible, prove amenable and not ever counter their perspective that I am there because I need to be. I need to be for dietary build-up, it’s going to save me a fortune in M&S, a lot of stressing about how to get the calories in and a lot of anxiety about being judged for the way in which I do that.
I hope it will diminish the need to prat, I pray it will diminish the need to keep topping up late at night and I hope it will diminish the need to stay strong. Perhaps I have never been truly open to assessment and have always gone trying to hold my truth in order to demonstrate it and, I have hoped, be treated accordingly. Perhaps it is time to surrender my truth, even I superficially, and let everyone there think I am there under the same auspices as everyone else – to heal what could be a problem eating. If I volunteer that I do not know whether they will find anything, as opposed to continue to bang my head up against a brick wall by maintaining that they won’t…perhaps that will smoothen the ride for me and us all. Because if I continue to say there is nothing wrong, I am there to prove them wrong, prove to them that I was right…that’s just inviting trouble, portraying anger and begging a diagnosis of denial. I want to be, instead, meeker and more humbled by their ‘seniority’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘expertise’ and let them, if they wish, find an issue. I am so practised at issue-dealing with that any issue they find I can ‘do’, ‘sort’ and ‘handle’ almost immediately. And whether the issue itself is real or not there will always be the illusion of having been helped by them, being amenable and willing to listen to them and not so opposing and objectionable to their perspective and diagnosis. Essentially I am not there to prove them wrong, I am there to answer the questions and once and for all, regardless of the starting point, leave there without an issue in anyone’s eyes.
Saturday, 26 July 2008
July 27th - blog 1 - hayes grove may just be OK
I am delighted to say I was perfectly wrong. I can not only have my laptop and mobile phone at Hayes Grove but in actual fact it seems that there will be a good deal more ‘freedom’ than within the hospital there. Whilst I am under no illusion that this will be anything other than artificial ‘freedom’, immensely structured around routines which are largely focussed on mealtimes, I actually feel that perhaps this place will lend itself to the very behaviour I was aspiring to yesterday. This would feel incredibly beneficial. I am being careful not to become too over-excited by the liberation chances that are seemingly in place for my potential there – the rescinding of the sectioning will be possible at any time by Dr McKlusky, I will have a private room and shower overlooking the garden and meals will be in an ‘a la carte restaurant’ (whatever that means). Most important for me will be the reliability of the scheduling and the structured days which are largely down to others. Within these I may not feel entirely comfortable with all of the experiences all of the time but I learnt yesterday that a lack of comfort does not have to beckon rejection. Instead it can require silence and active non-comment as its response.
It is strange how I feel that the making of the me I have found within and along this journey has been the precise person which now I am forsaking or sacrificing. However, it does not feel that arbitrary, judgemental or harsh at all. In fact, it in itself feels like a liberation. I can always be and maintain me, but don’t always have to press me on a situation. It’s fascinating how in order to find a person worth preserving and fighting for I had to lose all of my strength and level of health. Then I found a person worth fighting for and standing up for and began to really assert that beauty within my life. Opposing forces and things that didn’t fit had no place within my aura and within my life. I had to specify what I wanted in order to establish my own identity and lack of willingness to compromise that, or its truth and the truth of its history, for anyone.
Now…well now the individuality is there. It is strongly there, beautifully there and wisely there. I don’t need to move other forces away in order to retain it, nor do I need to openly object when things are wrong in order to have made a point, presented my case or expressed my ‘self’. I really will hope that I choose silence and, like a duck, let the bits that are not preferable merely glance off me as I walk through life (and the grounds of Hayes Grove Priory). And, despite Mum’s conversation with Emmy (the Mental Health Administrator there) I am not naïve enough to believe that I will feel totally comfortable or amenable to this place. There will be teething troubles, starting difficulties and moments of stickiness along the way – the first lunch is threatening me at the moment because I do not know what will be expected of me and what will be demanded of me…which feels a bit destabilising and worrying. I do know there will be assessments, questions, medicals, and organisations etc. the moment I get there and that is fine. I will be shown around, shown my room I suppose and made to feel as ‘welcome’ as possible. And then, I imagine, told how things work. And I’m sure they work well – but I don’t think these places are without their strictures and their limitations and limiting factors…I just don’t know how I am going to feel within them.
And so there is a part of me that today that can enter genuinely into the wholehearted excitement of my own bedroom and bathroom, flexibility and alone-time, freedom to walk and read, explore and be and flexibility to choose from three (albeit hot) meals at each sitting. I will have the opportunity to re-align my needs with a dietician, discover my ‘therapies’, establish my medications and continue my physio to a degree there. And I would be a fool not to see the dramatic benefits of there vs. being under section in this ward – a place where I doubt there would be any chance of either rescinding, lifting, challenging or appealing the decision to section me…and the strict treatment and dramatic lack of empathy will continue through the ignorance of those that see salad and assume that’s all I’m eating because there’s something wrong with me.
It occurs to me now that the woman that made that judgement was someone overweight, addicted to both baking and eating cakes and whose husband is a diabetic. Hearing her meal plans I am not surprised that with her view of normal portions and foods there was a dramatic disparity in what she eats and what I chose. No wonder her opinion was of over-health. But then when you are over-unhealthy what else is there left to perceive my diet as?
Perhaps there I’ll try different things, lose the twice daily 100 calorie yoghurt requirement and feel happier within it. To a great degree I don’t care provided I’m comfortably gaining weight continually without stressing me head about the food I’m eating. And perhaps there there will be the facility not just to rescind the section but also challenge and object to the placement in the first instance, a time to amass evidence of Dr Gordon’s negligence and incompetence and perhaps challenge her treatment of patients and have her struck off…? Usually it is Mum who opposes so strongly and vituperatively to the behaviour of others. This is entirely from me, however. Whilst we will actually use her practical errors and erroneous non-consultation with me, non-assessment of me, non-revising visions of me to attack her and her levels of power within this organisation, it is actually her attitude and vibration that I detest most. It is the practical things she has done wrong which is our weaponry for objection and our case for dismissal – of both her and the sectioning based on her recommendation. However, the reason I would pursue any kind of focussed attack on her role of power and her status etc. would be the lack of listening that she is capable of and the danger that that places on everyone under her remit of responsibility and care. Her tone is inappropriate, her style disastrous and her manner incredibly patronising and neither beneficial, responsive or pleasant. For these reasons I object very strongly to her aura – but she has done enough practically ‘wrong’ and without appropriate professional and legal conduct that there is enough to challenge her professional opinions and expertise – and thus challenge the auspices under which I became initially sectioned…
…but this is all a long, long way in the future. Perhaps I am going to a place which will facilitate my exposure to the correct influences that will help me challenge the records of the past, perhaps I am going somewhere to learn that such challenges are unnecessary because the auras of my past will be no longer an impact upon me and I could just forget about them. But I am certainly going to a place where there will be sufficient liberalness combined with structure that will allow me to feel healthy, get healthier and prove that – for their terms – I am healthy too. Group therapy, I can do. One on one sessions may be hard and challenging but I can do. Eating may be different and strange but I can do it – and I’ll perhaps and possibly thrive in my opportunity to experience and express this non-vocal, non-confrontational and simply serene side of myself. And it is all about identifying the right influences for this peacefulness to emerge. They are undoubtedly better placed there than here…
It is strange how I feel that the making of the me I have found within and along this journey has been the precise person which now I am forsaking or sacrificing. However, it does not feel that arbitrary, judgemental or harsh at all. In fact, it in itself feels like a liberation. I can always be and maintain me, but don’t always have to press me on a situation. It’s fascinating how in order to find a person worth preserving and fighting for I had to lose all of my strength and level of health. Then I found a person worth fighting for and standing up for and began to really assert that beauty within my life. Opposing forces and things that didn’t fit had no place within my aura and within my life. I had to specify what I wanted in order to establish my own identity and lack of willingness to compromise that, or its truth and the truth of its history, for anyone.
Now…well now the individuality is there. It is strongly there, beautifully there and wisely there. I don’t need to move other forces away in order to retain it, nor do I need to openly object when things are wrong in order to have made a point, presented my case or expressed my ‘self’. I really will hope that I choose silence and, like a duck, let the bits that are not preferable merely glance off me as I walk through life (and the grounds of Hayes Grove Priory). And, despite Mum’s conversation with Emmy (the Mental Health Administrator there) I am not naïve enough to believe that I will feel totally comfortable or amenable to this place. There will be teething troubles, starting difficulties and moments of stickiness along the way – the first lunch is threatening me at the moment because I do not know what will be expected of me and what will be demanded of me…which feels a bit destabilising and worrying. I do know there will be assessments, questions, medicals, and organisations etc. the moment I get there and that is fine. I will be shown around, shown my room I suppose and made to feel as ‘welcome’ as possible. And then, I imagine, told how things work. And I’m sure they work well – but I don’t think these places are without their strictures and their limitations and limiting factors…I just don’t know how I am going to feel within them.
And so there is a part of me that today that can enter genuinely into the wholehearted excitement of my own bedroom and bathroom, flexibility and alone-time, freedom to walk and read, explore and be and flexibility to choose from three (albeit hot) meals at each sitting. I will have the opportunity to re-align my needs with a dietician, discover my ‘therapies’, establish my medications and continue my physio to a degree there. And I would be a fool not to see the dramatic benefits of there vs. being under section in this ward – a place where I doubt there would be any chance of either rescinding, lifting, challenging or appealing the decision to section me…and the strict treatment and dramatic lack of empathy will continue through the ignorance of those that see salad and assume that’s all I’m eating because there’s something wrong with me.
It occurs to me now that the woman that made that judgement was someone overweight, addicted to both baking and eating cakes and whose husband is a diabetic. Hearing her meal plans I am not surprised that with her view of normal portions and foods there was a dramatic disparity in what she eats and what I chose. No wonder her opinion was of over-health. But then when you are over-unhealthy what else is there left to perceive my diet as?
Perhaps there I’ll try different things, lose the twice daily 100 calorie yoghurt requirement and feel happier within it. To a great degree I don’t care provided I’m comfortably gaining weight continually without stressing me head about the food I’m eating. And perhaps there there will be the facility not just to rescind the section but also challenge and object to the placement in the first instance, a time to amass evidence of Dr Gordon’s negligence and incompetence and perhaps challenge her treatment of patients and have her struck off…? Usually it is Mum who opposes so strongly and vituperatively to the behaviour of others. This is entirely from me, however. Whilst we will actually use her practical errors and erroneous non-consultation with me, non-assessment of me, non-revising visions of me to attack her and her levels of power within this organisation, it is actually her attitude and vibration that I detest most. It is the practical things she has done wrong which is our weaponry for objection and our case for dismissal – of both her and the sectioning based on her recommendation. However, the reason I would pursue any kind of focussed attack on her role of power and her status etc. would be the lack of listening that she is capable of and the danger that that places on everyone under her remit of responsibility and care. Her tone is inappropriate, her style disastrous and her manner incredibly patronising and neither beneficial, responsive or pleasant. For these reasons I object very strongly to her aura – but she has done enough practically ‘wrong’ and without appropriate professional and legal conduct that there is enough to challenge her professional opinions and expertise – and thus challenge the auspices under which I became initially sectioned…
…but this is all a long, long way in the future. Perhaps I am going to a place which will facilitate my exposure to the correct influences that will help me challenge the records of the past, perhaps I am going somewhere to learn that such challenges are unnecessary because the auras of my past will be no longer an impact upon me and I could just forget about them. But I am certainly going to a place where there will be sufficient liberalness combined with structure that will allow me to feel healthy, get healthier and prove that – for their terms – I am healthy too. Group therapy, I can do. One on one sessions may be hard and challenging but I can do. Eating may be different and strange but I can do it – and I’ll perhaps and possibly thrive in my opportunity to experience and express this non-vocal, non-confrontational and simply serene side of myself. And it is all about identifying the right influences for this peacefulness to emerge. They are undoubtedly better placed there than here…
July 26th - blog 2 - more...well...stuff...
Apologies for this morning everyone. There was a minor crisis with running out of airtime credit on my mobile internet dongle. Unfortunately there was no way I could charge up any more until Mum had got a new voucher. This actually spun me into such a whirlwind of crisis that it illuminated something very, very important about my transferral to Hayes Grove...although I think it highly unlikely that I will be allowed internet access, I have to recognise that it is going to impact on me greatly. I genuinely have no expectation that I will be allowed either my laptop or my dongle. I just sense it somehow, and have to prepare myself for that eventuality. Although it was a major struggle this morning that was largely due to the inability to practically organise anything, email anyone or update anyone. It the routine here to wake up un-Godly early, write blog, post it, check emails and then email Mum her daily list. Luckily the daily list won't be so necessary, but the early rising writing-ness will be taken away from me. There is a reason beyond safety that I have asked to buy notepads etc. and I suspect it's because I am going to begin diarising/morning writing by hand as opposed to blogging. When I know more I promise I will inform you about the precise way in which news will be got to you all...
...but I wanted to write because I have just realised something humongous. I have been always post-meal having the odd regurgitation. Sometimes its larger, longer and more pronounced than others but it got to the stage where I perhaps didn't even notice. Until this lunchtime. I suddenly realised that this habitual operation of my insides has to stop - I cannot go to an eating disorder unit and have a burping thing. It is, I know, a physical hangover from my past and I also realised it's precise unnecessariness today. It is only a lack of training. So my beautiful inner self has simply decided to work on stopping it. I have four days to train myself out of such reflexes. There is a muscular training and change of process occurring within my stomach. I must have shifted something immensely psychologically and emotionally. This is phenomenal, and I'm sorry to have to go a little backwards to leap and bound forwards and grow within their environment...
...I think it's got something to do with the peace of the morning and in that space feeling totally accepting of the perspective with which I am going to be looked at. I can't sort of remember how I was in that moment but I was perfectly comfortable with allowing their opinion and simply satisfying them whilst already having been satisfied myself. It's the acceptance and allowance of the other whilst serenely holding my own space, but holding my tongue and my patience simultaneously. It is that holding which has to happen internally in my stomach muscles - not so reactive but responsive instead, allowing myself to be a body whilst allowing food to need to be melded to become cells...
...And by stopping the habits. It's simple. I feel as if I am giving myself up unto greater powers - and allowing them themselves whilst not submerging my own self in interaction with that. And it is entirely to do with the softness, the placid lake which does not go outwards but just takes things in, silently and without judgement. I can know what is relevant for me and/or not - but take everything in equally regardless and let it be within me regardless. I didn't realise until these moments that opposition and it not gelling/fitting within myself does not automatically have to beg rejection. It can just beg silence, and an acceptance, and then a moving through...
and that has so, so much to do with the digestion of food. It can all move through now, whether it totally gels with me or not. And this will make it even easier to eat someone else's dietary plans...
...but I wanted to write because I have just realised something humongous. I have been always post-meal having the odd regurgitation. Sometimes its larger, longer and more pronounced than others but it got to the stage where I perhaps didn't even notice. Until this lunchtime. I suddenly realised that this habitual operation of my insides has to stop - I cannot go to an eating disorder unit and have a burping thing. It is, I know, a physical hangover from my past and I also realised it's precise unnecessariness today. It is only a lack of training. So my beautiful inner self has simply decided to work on stopping it. I have four days to train myself out of such reflexes. There is a muscular training and change of process occurring within my stomach. I must have shifted something immensely psychologically and emotionally. This is phenomenal, and I'm sorry to have to go a little backwards to leap and bound forwards and grow within their environment...
...I think it's got something to do with the peace of the morning and in that space feeling totally accepting of the perspective with which I am going to be looked at. I can't sort of remember how I was in that moment but I was perfectly comfortable with allowing their opinion and simply satisfying them whilst already having been satisfied myself. It's the acceptance and allowance of the other whilst serenely holding my own space, but holding my tongue and my patience simultaneously. It is that holding which has to happen internally in my stomach muscles - not so reactive but responsive instead, allowing myself to be a body whilst allowing food to need to be melded to become cells...
...And by stopping the habits. It's simple. I feel as if I am giving myself up unto greater powers - and allowing them themselves whilst not submerging my own self in interaction with that. And it is entirely to do with the softness, the placid lake which does not go outwards but just takes things in, silently and without judgement. I can know what is relevant for me and/or not - but take everything in equally regardless and let it be within me regardless. I didn't realise until these moments that opposition and it not gelling/fitting within myself does not automatically have to beg rejection. It can just beg silence, and an acceptance, and then a moving through...
and that has so, so much to do with the digestion of food. It can all move through now, whether it totally gels with me or not. And this will make it even easier to eat someone else's dietary plans...
July 26th - a late one from Victoria, written early - delayed posting...
You will all know by now that they are sending me away. It wasn’t the most damaging knowledge of yesterday though. Instead that was the opinion of the nursing staff given to me by one of them who told me that in both behaviour and evidential ‘proof’ they believe I had a problem with food. Her reasons? Because everything I ate had hardly any calories, it’s full of salads and not enough calorific stuff. I’m heartbroken that eating well (vegetables, salad and wholefoods stuff followed by calori-controlled yoghurts and oat biscuits instead of chocolate ones etc.) can lead to the impression that I don’t care for my body. I would have thought that it would belie a sense of total respect. That is why I do it – because these are the foods I respond to well. Rices, pulses, lentils and white meat and fish suit me far, far better than red meats and sugars. It is not that I avoid sugars, just that they are not the first thing I feel myself reaching for. For my conclusions I would assume that this is because they are the things that my body will struggle with most – perhaps through lack of exposure and lack of habitual consumption of such products.
Nevertheless I was shown last night how it doesn’t matter what I do, what I say, how much weight I put on. This is not a decision based on anything current. It is based on my assertions that I did not have an eating disorder whilst in HDU. Such resistance to diagnoses when you’re not eating anything and are critically ill because your body could not cope with its level of food intake – it’s hard not to interpret that as disorder. And so now anything that I choose to do is perceived through the lens of that initial objection – I am resistant to treatment, to diagnosis, to labelling etc. and therefore must be even more crazy than anyone else.
I could complain endlessly about the way things have been handled, organised and executed. But there would be no point. We do not have to fight the decision – just make it bearable in whichever ways we can. And observe how great their influence. My feeling at the moment is to approach it with strength:
“I feel like I’m doing amazingly. It has meant the world to me to be able to demonstrate that the calories at every meal which I select can be enough and more than enough to guarantee me putting on weight. My choices and decisions as far as food is concerned have been worthy of praise, congratulations and respect. If they believe that such choices have been in any way flawed, non-beneficial or incorrect that is their prerogative and I am wiling to play by their rules, regulations etc.
And I feel like at the moment life without Mum would break me. But I’d survive that, it might even be the making of me. I might start to get some sleep (I began this blog at 2am, recommenced writing at 5am, have just napped for half an hour because I conked out and will finish writing now). All I know is that attempts to get it right have started to look obsessive. If this is an obsession that gets interpreted incorrectly then I will have to totally give up control and let them ‘fix me’ in a way they feel represents true fixedness – if that means eating someone else’s controlled and prescribed intake…there is no problem with that. Absolutely none. Which surprises me. And I can see me wandering grounds, reading novels, researching and hopefully experiencing some peace and quiet in a secluded surrounding. I feel desperation and sorrow that there is the perception that this is felt necessary. But I cannot prove my fixedness any other way – and have responded on a great level to fixing myself. This began long before these people were involved and my bid to be healthy will continue long into my future. It is a lifelong self-love which means I am alive now and a life0=-long respect for the physicality and limitations of form and bodies that I have absorbed and learnt throughout this journey.
And I’m horrified that my ultimate discovery along this path has been the joy it is to feel physically connected to my form. Once upon a time I wasn’t. Maybe I should present my near-death experience as more transformative than I actually feel it was. In my eyes my healing began nearly 4 years ago – when I became ill on holiday in Majorca. Though I seem to have made a decision of some kind in HDU which guaranteed my continued progression towards health, in my eyes it was only the acceptance to keep going – the will to pursue something that had long been the fight. In my eyes this moment was simply the toss up between coping with this and continuing forth, or giving up. It was not a turning point but a question of whether I wanted to continue with the process given the route it appeared to be taking.
However now the truth needs to merge with a perfect fiction – not a big one but a one couched in ways they will appreciate. A loss of contact with my physicality can easily have been gained during the pain of the last few months – and they feel this dis-respect is still evident and I’m here to prove them otherwise. Nancy, you assert that putting on the weight will prove this. I’m more than willing to give that a shot – it’s what I want for myself, let alone to prove something. I just hope that psychiatrically I can clear my name too. If they need a re-connection awakening, I’ll give them it. But I cannot identify with the labels and judgements they are making of me. Which means that I should be a quiet me there, submissive but a perfect role model of unique-ness which maintains it’s individuality whilst merging and appearing to honour the will of others. If the world is the illusion it is purported to be then I need to start painting my role in it a little clearer and more dominantly. If in order to do that I need to go through assessment and the illusion thinks I need to ‘heal’ I will stay silent till I have the all-clear from the authorities that appear to matter and then get on with my life. With clearance and sanction. I have been through more than this. You see – there is no work to do there that they are thinking there is. This makes going there for therapy a non-threatening experience because there is no fear they are going to uncover anything untoward or malevolent or seemingly holding me back. They are about to remove my choice? Fine – it relieves the pressure, guarantees my calorific intake, may be uncomfortable for a few months but will (has to be!) only a temporary measure on the way to total health.
It really didn’t matter what I did here. It may matter what I do there. I will not tell them I do not need to be there. I will make it obvious my objections were locational and the method of the approach to my transfer from parties other than them – not the assistance of the unit itself. But we have just been joined on the ward by a woman who is larger than life – she has a special commode, is immobile, is absolutely horrendously and grossly overweight. And she is in a hospital receiving assistance and help. I am in hospital receiving the damning judgement that I do not care enough for my body. Wherein is the truth? The only thing I know is that interpretations based on ½ hour challenging confrontations will surely be diminished by 24 hour contact with me in which I can be soft Victoria. Coming into my 22nd year there must be some softness within me useable, somewhere. And there is certainly a respect for the lowest requirement of my survival – my body. But if they cannot see that because all they see is salad, perhaps they have a point that I could be doing it differently. Because I have chosen to do it my way their judgements are ‘allowed’. If I choose to let them do it their way they can have no choice but to accept what they find. They’ll find amenability, acceptance, adaptability and a beautiful woman in love with the gifts she can bring a world she longs to interact with. They’ll see someone so in love with her body that she gives it what it needs in the way she wanted to – if they differ in approach she can also modify hers to accommodate and absorb that. They will a spirit aflame and a light shining bright for life. And hopefully we will all see weight gain. But this is not about taking an opposing stand and proving them wrong whilst there. It is about letting them think they’re right and treat me how they would like to and gaining final all-clears (hopefully swiftly) that there is nothing there to do in order to demonstrate wellness and life.
And all I pray is that I still have internet connection, computer access and mobile phone contact with those that I love. It will help enormously in my isolation, but also I must present that it will help enormously in my ‘therapy’. And we’ll cross the bridge of what they make of my lack of communication with David when we come to it. And I pray beyond all of this that it is the Universe’s will that I bite my tongue and hold my peace and be the most serene, tranquil and relaxed I can be – without oversharing, overcomplicating or over-reacting to any given suggestion, treatment or plan…please, please, please…I can go there and heal and ‘heal’ and ‘be healed’. More importantly I can have a nicer view whilst I get health (implying my own idea of healthy – heavier). But please don’t let me make things worse by antagonising or opposing. I do not need to feel resistant or it will be harder. I want to feel calmer – maybe this is what this is about, practicing that element of my being which contains that peace, serenity, maturity and wisdom to hold my tongue. Knowing my truth does not mean I have to speak it. Silence is as important part of expression, rests are as important part of music and quietude is completely different to glum mute-ness. It is an inner peace with the volume and frequency of ones outward commitments. I wish to see mine tempered, modified, held back…move still, speak little and when I do, speak through flowers.
I love you all. V xx
Nevertheless I was shown last night how it doesn’t matter what I do, what I say, how much weight I put on. This is not a decision based on anything current. It is based on my assertions that I did not have an eating disorder whilst in HDU. Such resistance to diagnoses when you’re not eating anything and are critically ill because your body could not cope with its level of food intake – it’s hard not to interpret that as disorder. And so now anything that I choose to do is perceived through the lens of that initial objection – I am resistant to treatment, to diagnosis, to labelling etc. and therefore must be even more crazy than anyone else.
I could complain endlessly about the way things have been handled, organised and executed. But there would be no point. We do not have to fight the decision – just make it bearable in whichever ways we can. And observe how great their influence. My feeling at the moment is to approach it with strength:
“I feel like I’m doing amazingly. It has meant the world to me to be able to demonstrate that the calories at every meal which I select can be enough and more than enough to guarantee me putting on weight. My choices and decisions as far as food is concerned have been worthy of praise, congratulations and respect. If they believe that such choices have been in any way flawed, non-beneficial or incorrect that is their prerogative and I am wiling to play by their rules, regulations etc.
And I feel like at the moment life without Mum would break me. But I’d survive that, it might even be the making of me. I might start to get some sleep (I began this blog at 2am, recommenced writing at 5am, have just napped for half an hour because I conked out and will finish writing now). All I know is that attempts to get it right have started to look obsessive. If this is an obsession that gets interpreted incorrectly then I will have to totally give up control and let them ‘fix me’ in a way they feel represents true fixedness – if that means eating someone else’s controlled and prescribed intake…there is no problem with that. Absolutely none. Which surprises me. And I can see me wandering grounds, reading novels, researching and hopefully experiencing some peace and quiet in a secluded surrounding. I feel desperation and sorrow that there is the perception that this is felt necessary. But I cannot prove my fixedness any other way – and have responded on a great level to fixing myself. This began long before these people were involved and my bid to be healthy will continue long into my future. It is a lifelong self-love which means I am alive now and a life0=-long respect for the physicality and limitations of form and bodies that I have absorbed and learnt throughout this journey.
And I’m horrified that my ultimate discovery along this path has been the joy it is to feel physically connected to my form. Once upon a time I wasn’t. Maybe I should present my near-death experience as more transformative than I actually feel it was. In my eyes my healing began nearly 4 years ago – when I became ill on holiday in Majorca. Though I seem to have made a decision of some kind in HDU which guaranteed my continued progression towards health, in my eyes it was only the acceptance to keep going – the will to pursue something that had long been the fight. In my eyes this moment was simply the toss up between coping with this and continuing forth, or giving up. It was not a turning point but a question of whether I wanted to continue with the process given the route it appeared to be taking.
However now the truth needs to merge with a perfect fiction – not a big one but a one couched in ways they will appreciate. A loss of contact with my physicality can easily have been gained during the pain of the last few months – and they feel this dis-respect is still evident and I’m here to prove them otherwise. Nancy, you assert that putting on the weight will prove this. I’m more than willing to give that a shot – it’s what I want for myself, let alone to prove something. I just hope that psychiatrically I can clear my name too. If they need a re-connection awakening, I’ll give them it. But I cannot identify with the labels and judgements they are making of me. Which means that I should be a quiet me there, submissive but a perfect role model of unique-ness which maintains it’s individuality whilst merging and appearing to honour the will of others. If the world is the illusion it is purported to be then I need to start painting my role in it a little clearer and more dominantly. If in order to do that I need to go through assessment and the illusion thinks I need to ‘heal’ I will stay silent till I have the all-clear from the authorities that appear to matter and then get on with my life. With clearance and sanction. I have been through more than this. You see – there is no work to do there that they are thinking there is. This makes going there for therapy a non-threatening experience because there is no fear they are going to uncover anything untoward or malevolent or seemingly holding me back. They are about to remove my choice? Fine – it relieves the pressure, guarantees my calorific intake, may be uncomfortable for a few months but will (has to be!) only a temporary measure on the way to total health.
It really didn’t matter what I did here. It may matter what I do there. I will not tell them I do not need to be there. I will make it obvious my objections were locational and the method of the approach to my transfer from parties other than them – not the assistance of the unit itself. But we have just been joined on the ward by a woman who is larger than life – she has a special commode, is immobile, is absolutely horrendously and grossly overweight. And she is in a hospital receiving assistance and help. I am in hospital receiving the damning judgement that I do not care enough for my body. Wherein is the truth? The only thing I know is that interpretations based on ½ hour challenging confrontations will surely be diminished by 24 hour contact with me in which I can be soft Victoria. Coming into my 22nd year there must be some softness within me useable, somewhere. And there is certainly a respect for the lowest requirement of my survival – my body. But if they cannot see that because all they see is salad, perhaps they have a point that I could be doing it differently. Because I have chosen to do it my way their judgements are ‘allowed’. If I choose to let them do it their way they can have no choice but to accept what they find. They’ll find amenability, acceptance, adaptability and a beautiful woman in love with the gifts she can bring a world she longs to interact with. They’ll see someone so in love with her body that she gives it what it needs in the way she wanted to – if they differ in approach she can also modify hers to accommodate and absorb that. They will a spirit aflame and a light shining bright for life. And hopefully we will all see weight gain. But this is not about taking an opposing stand and proving them wrong whilst there. It is about letting them think they’re right and treat me how they would like to and gaining final all-clears (hopefully swiftly) that there is nothing there to do in order to demonstrate wellness and life.
And all I pray is that I still have internet connection, computer access and mobile phone contact with those that I love. It will help enormously in my isolation, but also I must present that it will help enormously in my ‘therapy’. And we’ll cross the bridge of what they make of my lack of communication with David when we come to it. And I pray beyond all of this that it is the Universe’s will that I bite my tongue and hold my peace and be the most serene, tranquil and relaxed I can be – without oversharing, overcomplicating or over-reacting to any given suggestion, treatment or plan…please, please, please…I can go there and heal and ‘heal’ and ‘be healed’. More importantly I can have a nicer view whilst I get health (implying my own idea of healthy – heavier). But please don’t let me make things worse by antagonising or opposing. I do not need to feel resistant or it will be harder. I want to feel calmer – maybe this is what this is about, practicing that element of my being which contains that peace, serenity, maturity and wisdom to hold my tongue. Knowing my truth does not mean I have to speak it. Silence is as important part of expression, rests are as important part of music and quietude is completely different to glum mute-ness. It is an inner peace with the volume and frequency of ones outward commitments. I wish to see mine tempered, modified, held back…move still, speak little and when I do, speak through flowers.
I love you all. V xx
Thursday, 24 July 2008
July 25th - a very important blog - practically. And just a little magic, please...
Just a little magic. It’s not what I deserve but what I desire. Just one person who matters to take my story and believe me and trust that I’m true to my word. I just would want one person who believes me…not you guys. You guys (and in fairness a large majority of some people I speak to within the hospital wards who are patients) just trust me – a trust it took me a long time to deserve. And now I feel I warrant trust and belief – I’m telling the God’s honest 100% truth, the desire, the passion…Christ some snacks give me uncertainty. I’m obsessed by calories – yes – I’ve just been researching the calories in a Chupa Chups lolly…because it might be something I want and I’d need to know…or just because it’s habitual. But my obsession is because I WANT the calories. In principle, in practice – and if they think they know best and theirs is the only way then they are wrong. There are many pathways to the same place and right in this instance I feel I want someone to invest in me. I want someone to put their faith in me because I’d prove to them that their faith was well placed. And it doesn’t take a miracle. It doesn’t take a huge leap…
And I’m petrified because it’s weigh day. I’m starting this the night preceding it and then I’ll add more in the morning. And I feel like I’ve done it these few days. It’s just something that I sense this time – and I desperately don’t want to be proved wrong by getting on the scales tomorrow. I know I’ll sleep though – I sense that Drs will be round tomorrow and I worked out the other day how much clearer things became in the night without me thinking about it. My body’s way of preparing itself for any encounter and anything threatening is to restore and rejuvenate, recover and retreat into itself in order to find peace and relaxation. It’s almost like in my coma my body plays Tetris and slots all the pieces in the right order so that when I wake I just read the script. Mum works differently – she processes her stuff during awakeness (sometimes in the middle of the night). Health for her lies not in rest and relaxation – sleep – but alertness and preparation which must very much strategically be followed through, approached – begun – pursued – concluded. The whole thought process must be gone through before she is prepared and this must be done consciously. Neither is better – just different. So I know I’ll sleep so I’m ready – I hope Mum’s ready enough already not to need to stay awake and prepare. And God I hope beyond hope that I have a little bit of evidential back-up in my weight tomorrow morning…I’m bizarrely hopeful but nothing is predictable when I sit on those silly electric scales which are flimsy and liable to fluctuations of anything. Fingers crossed…
…this morning. Pam and Mel – who’s going to weigh me? Do I pre-empt it? I wrote that sentence last night. Now, this morning at 5:18am I’m feeling like I want to walk out there and ask to be weighed now. I know that that’s too early, however and that they probably won’t agree to do anything about it. I don’t know what to do though because at the end of the day I have no basis from which to work, to base my arguments and to structure my approach without news of the figure of weight gain that I have been able to achieve. I have never, not once, put on 0.8 per week and would dearly love to have done so this time. I would have to have gone some to put on 0.4 in three days when I’ve had three arduous physio sessions and an immense amount of stress arising from the concept of being transferred to Hayes Grove. And the weight I would have to have reached would be 33.95, and I just have no idea whether that was even feasible let alone whether I have achieved it.
And beyond that I cannot really think. I’m just moving through and trying to cope as best I can with the logistic of navigating the path which appears to be forever determined to throw down the gauntlet at any given time and shock and horrify me.
And are you ready for the horrifying shock of this morning. Good…
… 34.25 kilos…
…shit. I’m really doing this – and that’s because I’m building muscle mass with my Gym work, not just putting on fat through eating. Everything I consume is helping convert what I’ve already got to muscle, not put on added fats – that’s why I still look fairly thin. But hang on – 34.25 kilos = a BMI of 13.4! It also means I’ve put on 700 grams in 3 days. That’s fucking amazing and makes it 1.1 kilos in a week. (It’s, for normal language, 75.51 lbs (or 75lbs 8.13 ounces). This is 5 stone 5 lbs and 8 ounces. Nearly 5 and a half stone!!!
And the stupid thing is that it may not make a blind bit of difference to where I end up and what they want to do with me. But it does make a difference to me. I’m doing enough. Somehow, somewhere I’m succeeding and that makes me overjoyed. But it speeds up my progression to a healthy BMI which dictates discharge. I should be delighted but as I’m so uncertain about what the future holds with regard to location there is no pleasure there in bringing discharge closer. Bringing total health closer – there is total joy at. And yesterday in the gym I began to remember what having actual strength was like – pre-weight loss, pre all of this when I used to dance and run and have muscular mass which performed activities rather than tendons and jerky body limbs which I managed (just about) to move. I began to feel actual muscles – and that felt familiar but also illuminated how far away true strength is. And yet the weight this morning encourages me that this is a perfect environment, with the perfect facilities, in which to perform the task I am undertaking (have been given, whatever you want to say). It can only help my case to demonstrate how obviously and materially it is ‘working’ with all the things set up and in place here. And it won’t take me long here – and then I’ll be off their backs, their caseloads and they can chalk me up as a recovery on their tables…oh gosh I still pray for that magical one person (Dr Sinha/Dr McKlusky) to give me a chance, a shot and the benefit of the doubt…because it's now only their doubt, not mine.
And I’m petrified because it’s weigh day. I’m starting this the night preceding it and then I’ll add more in the morning. And I feel like I’ve done it these few days. It’s just something that I sense this time – and I desperately don’t want to be proved wrong by getting on the scales tomorrow. I know I’ll sleep though – I sense that Drs will be round tomorrow and I worked out the other day how much clearer things became in the night without me thinking about it. My body’s way of preparing itself for any encounter and anything threatening is to restore and rejuvenate, recover and retreat into itself in order to find peace and relaxation. It’s almost like in my coma my body plays Tetris and slots all the pieces in the right order so that when I wake I just read the script. Mum works differently – she processes her stuff during awakeness (sometimes in the middle of the night). Health for her lies not in rest and relaxation – sleep – but alertness and preparation which must very much strategically be followed through, approached – begun – pursued – concluded. The whole thought process must be gone through before she is prepared and this must be done consciously. Neither is better – just different. So I know I’ll sleep so I’m ready – I hope Mum’s ready enough already not to need to stay awake and prepare. And God I hope beyond hope that I have a little bit of evidential back-up in my weight tomorrow morning…I’m bizarrely hopeful but nothing is predictable when I sit on those silly electric scales which are flimsy and liable to fluctuations of anything. Fingers crossed…
…this morning. Pam and Mel – who’s going to weigh me? Do I pre-empt it? I wrote that sentence last night. Now, this morning at 5:18am I’m feeling like I want to walk out there and ask to be weighed now. I know that that’s too early, however and that they probably won’t agree to do anything about it. I don’t know what to do though because at the end of the day I have no basis from which to work, to base my arguments and to structure my approach without news of the figure of weight gain that I have been able to achieve. I have never, not once, put on 0.8 per week and would dearly love to have done so this time. I would have to have gone some to put on 0.4 in three days when I’ve had three arduous physio sessions and an immense amount of stress arising from the concept of being transferred to Hayes Grove. And the weight I would have to have reached would be 33.95, and I just have no idea whether that was even feasible let alone whether I have achieved it.
And beyond that I cannot really think. I’m just moving through and trying to cope as best I can with the logistic of navigating the path which appears to be forever determined to throw down the gauntlet at any given time and shock and horrify me.
And are you ready for the horrifying shock of this morning. Good…
… 34.25 kilos…
…shit. I’m really doing this – and that’s because I’m building muscle mass with my Gym work, not just putting on fat through eating. Everything I consume is helping convert what I’ve already got to muscle, not put on added fats – that’s why I still look fairly thin. But hang on – 34.25 kilos = a BMI of 13.4! It also means I’ve put on 700 grams in 3 days. That’s fucking amazing and makes it 1.1 kilos in a week. (It’s, for normal language, 75.51 lbs (or 75lbs 8.13 ounces). This is 5 stone 5 lbs and 8 ounces. Nearly 5 and a half stone!!!
And the stupid thing is that it may not make a blind bit of difference to where I end up and what they want to do with me. But it does make a difference to me. I’m doing enough. Somehow, somewhere I’m succeeding and that makes me overjoyed. But it speeds up my progression to a healthy BMI which dictates discharge. I should be delighted but as I’m so uncertain about what the future holds with regard to location there is no pleasure there in bringing discharge closer. Bringing total health closer – there is total joy at. And yesterday in the gym I began to remember what having actual strength was like – pre-weight loss, pre all of this when I used to dance and run and have muscular mass which performed activities rather than tendons and jerky body limbs which I managed (just about) to move. I began to feel actual muscles – and that felt familiar but also illuminated how far away true strength is. And yet the weight this morning encourages me that this is a perfect environment, with the perfect facilities, in which to perform the task I am undertaking (have been given, whatever you want to say). It can only help my case to demonstrate how obviously and materially it is ‘working’ with all the things set up and in place here. And it won’t take me long here – and then I’ll be off their backs, their caseloads and they can chalk me up as a recovery on their tables…oh gosh I still pray for that magical one person (Dr Sinha/Dr McKlusky) to give me a chance, a shot and the benefit of the doubt…because it's now only their doubt, not mine.
Wednesday, 23 July 2008
July 24th - blog 1 - a really important blog...not practically, but for me...
I’m about to do a bit of waffle today which is going to help me psychologically, emotionally, mentally and then physically around my future. Practically – nothing happened yesterday except a conversation with Mydhili which basically illuminated her lack of influence ultimately but her presence on ‘my side’. I did manage to express quite a bit of what I needed to about my inner feelings and also the fact that I was in no way resistant to treatment, assistance, help and care – but it was the location and the incarceration which I had a problem with. This seemed to tick a buzz-word box for her – it seemed to be something I have been required to say to guarantee a certain course of treatment. Much like in Family Fortunes I seem to have picked up on a necessary word which I needed to hit so they could chalk up a little mark somewhere as testament to my will and intention. Ironically I had not realised it was something that I was leaving out of my assertions to them…
Nevertheless, the conclusion was the decision of necessity to discuss with Dr Sinha. However I was left fairly distraught because although I felt I expressed myself it did feel as if Mydhili’s lack of control was influencing her representation of my future progression which gave the impression that onward transferral to the Priory was almost a fait accompli – a done deal. I spent the afternoon caught in mind-spin but came up with some things which I want to write and work through. There is also wisdom gained in the next few pages about myself, the way I live, the way I see life, the way I feel about things – and more importantly there are kernels of understanding the nub of what it is to live inside my convictions and my principles. I was trying to explain to Adele last night why I didn’t feel the need to contact my father…I was actually trying to remember for myself why I stopped talking to him. I remembered – and somewhere in the next few paragraphs is why:
There would be some benefit to going to Hayes Grove Priory. It would be an admission to a place which would then officialise my discharge from mental health services and then that ‘clean slate’ and ‘official verdict of health’ would be placed on my records as evidence of having both dealt with and healed what is now written on record as severe eating problems. If the proof for people is not in the eating it will be found in the professional opinion of so-called experts who witness my demeanour and honour that it is no longer troubled by food consumption. If society requires such evidential proof then perhaps that would be the gift in going to a unit somewhere.
Why I cannot do this in the community and be officially discharged, monitored, observed and assessed regularly by community psychotherapists, psychiatrists and ‘professionals’ to achieve the same on-record dismissal, I do not know. There is no way I can know, actually. And whether my files would look better or worse may be the entire reason the Universe would have behind sending me away and keeping me here. I feel utterly powerless and more specifically I feel flabbergasted, dumbfounded and bamboozled into things by powers in this real world which seem to have no respect for other human beings. I find that incredibly difficult to swallow. It is remarkably difficult for me to be disbelieved so utterly that I can officially be sent anywhere, anything can happen to me and that my word is now irrelevant – in law. That rules exist which can make someone in charge of another human being to such a degree both horrifies and astounds me. I find such deplorable lack of respect very difficult to stomach and particularly when the arbitrary people who weald the power have they themselves demonstrated more incompetence and inefficiency than should be allowed in those with the capacity to orchestrate such damning and hurtful, life-changing events.
I’ve just been to the website to have a look at the location and nature of the place. It looks like a perfectly delightful, beautiful rambling house with extended greenery in the grounds. All patients have en-suite bedrooms, lounge access and I suppose a lot more pleasant surroundings than people would imagine this place to be. It is, however, a specialist unit for addictions with 45 beds. A section is devoted to youth eating disorders and a separate section with kitchens and dining rooms for adult eating problems. It’s horrific. How can a place of such apparent beauty fill me with such horror? Mentally, you know, it doesn’t. Mentally I can come to terms with anything and accept anything because there is the potential to think about things in any way possible to make them more appealing and make oneself more amenable to them. I seriously have learnt the gift over the years of ensuring that the thought processes I have around any life experience can feel harmonious and accepting in a thoroughly genuine way about whatever is happening. There are definite reasons, benefits and logical ways of understanding and computing admission to Hayes Grove Priory. One thing is definite – it looks the most pleasant of all the potentials offered so far.
And yet the physical response is quite, quite different. It throws me into vulnerability and loss each time I envisage myself within the situation where I leave here and go there. I suffer immensely when I think of it – become a crying, shaking, quivering wreck who feels threatened by the very thought of being made to leave familiarity and leave Mum, leave the access to the sea and the routine of this hospital. Perhaps this is a physical aversion to change, but something about the whole nature of being moved from here to somewhere so distant, so inaccessible and so focussed on mental health, acute psychiatry and addictions feels alienating. I can actually mentally quite embrace the walking into a communal dining room with many lunatics and everything I can imagine can seem quite pleasant and innocuous. There is still an anti-ness in my reaction from my body, however. And perhaps it knows more than I do about the depth of the ordeal that attendance at this place would mean…of which my illusions can have no possibility of knowing. I don’t need to go…and boy do I not want to. It’s just a case of picking the right argument and presenting the right case which can hopefully – through understanding and logic – recognise that this course of action would not be a beneficial one for my situation.
And surely when thinking of the official records – the potentials of so many units where I was then not accepted, or if it not deemed necessary for attendance by medical professionals will be as equally evidential and testament to my status as anything else. I will be where I’m meant to be ultimately. I just hope beyond hope that people would observe the detrimental impact of sending me away and treating me like a piece of inconsequential rubbish who they can dictate to. If eating problems are supposedly about self-esteem issues they are not doing a hell of a lot to garner such self-love, self-respect and positivity within those who they treat. In fact I have never been treated with less respect for my own capacities than in these moments when I am being dictated to about my treatment. It’s horrific…perhaps that’s the sole reason for my horror and not the practical Priory location/placement/therapy itself. Perhaps the reason behind the physical rejection of their suggestions is because it completely removes any sense of self that I have. By telling someone where they are going – without choice, without option and without the power to object – there is a gross injustice put into practice. It is a damning indictment, by implication and suggestion, that their intelligence and decisions are not good enough for their well being.
Although I advocate choicelessness as the way things are – there is a compromise within this. Whilst life is choice-less we are not without the illusion of choice. Life is only choice-less because there are greater things than us controlling our choices – that is the tenet of what I believe. That there are others who wish to and have the power to remove one’s choices in life is not true surrender and choice-less-ness. It is dictation, dis-empowerment and quite frankly it is rude.
And I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot of a vent today where I’ve seen a lot. It is fundamental to me and my basis of beliefs to comprehend that personal respect means the world and it is difficult for me to ‘stomach’, handle and cope with a lack of respect. This is key to the acceptance of food at the end of the day. It has also been important for me to see the level of mental acceptance I am capable of – but also the lack of relevance of this if my body is rejecting something from another level. I hope that this is not the case with any mental understandings and thought processes I have gained so far about my history and that I have physically assuaged any demons that have emerged through my life experience as well as mentally come to terms with them. But I suppose that as the human mind and body work in tandem there would not be the facility to mentally accept and understand something without the physical backup and chemical operation which allows that understanding to emerge. That’s great. That I know this and honour this – that I love. The way I understand the world, I love…I now just have to trust my placement within it, and that can be the hardest thing it ever asks me to do.
Nevertheless, the conclusion was the decision of necessity to discuss with Dr Sinha. However I was left fairly distraught because although I felt I expressed myself it did feel as if Mydhili’s lack of control was influencing her representation of my future progression which gave the impression that onward transferral to the Priory was almost a fait accompli – a done deal. I spent the afternoon caught in mind-spin but came up with some things which I want to write and work through. There is also wisdom gained in the next few pages about myself, the way I live, the way I see life, the way I feel about things – and more importantly there are kernels of understanding the nub of what it is to live inside my convictions and my principles. I was trying to explain to Adele last night why I didn’t feel the need to contact my father…I was actually trying to remember for myself why I stopped talking to him. I remembered – and somewhere in the next few paragraphs is why:
There would be some benefit to going to Hayes Grove Priory. It would be an admission to a place which would then officialise my discharge from mental health services and then that ‘clean slate’ and ‘official verdict of health’ would be placed on my records as evidence of having both dealt with and healed what is now written on record as severe eating problems. If the proof for people is not in the eating it will be found in the professional opinion of so-called experts who witness my demeanour and honour that it is no longer troubled by food consumption. If society requires such evidential proof then perhaps that would be the gift in going to a unit somewhere.
Why I cannot do this in the community and be officially discharged, monitored, observed and assessed regularly by community psychotherapists, psychiatrists and ‘professionals’ to achieve the same on-record dismissal, I do not know. There is no way I can know, actually. And whether my files would look better or worse may be the entire reason the Universe would have behind sending me away and keeping me here. I feel utterly powerless and more specifically I feel flabbergasted, dumbfounded and bamboozled into things by powers in this real world which seem to have no respect for other human beings. I find that incredibly difficult to swallow. It is remarkably difficult for me to be disbelieved so utterly that I can officially be sent anywhere, anything can happen to me and that my word is now irrelevant – in law. That rules exist which can make someone in charge of another human being to such a degree both horrifies and astounds me. I find such deplorable lack of respect very difficult to stomach and particularly when the arbitrary people who weald the power have they themselves demonstrated more incompetence and inefficiency than should be allowed in those with the capacity to orchestrate such damning and hurtful, life-changing events.
I’ve just been to the website to have a look at the location and nature of the place. It looks like a perfectly delightful, beautiful rambling house with extended greenery in the grounds. All patients have en-suite bedrooms, lounge access and I suppose a lot more pleasant surroundings than people would imagine this place to be. It is, however, a specialist unit for addictions with 45 beds. A section is devoted to youth eating disorders and a separate section with kitchens and dining rooms for adult eating problems. It’s horrific. How can a place of such apparent beauty fill me with such horror? Mentally, you know, it doesn’t. Mentally I can come to terms with anything and accept anything because there is the potential to think about things in any way possible to make them more appealing and make oneself more amenable to them. I seriously have learnt the gift over the years of ensuring that the thought processes I have around any life experience can feel harmonious and accepting in a thoroughly genuine way about whatever is happening. There are definite reasons, benefits and logical ways of understanding and computing admission to Hayes Grove Priory. One thing is definite – it looks the most pleasant of all the potentials offered so far.
And yet the physical response is quite, quite different. It throws me into vulnerability and loss each time I envisage myself within the situation where I leave here and go there. I suffer immensely when I think of it – become a crying, shaking, quivering wreck who feels threatened by the very thought of being made to leave familiarity and leave Mum, leave the access to the sea and the routine of this hospital. Perhaps this is a physical aversion to change, but something about the whole nature of being moved from here to somewhere so distant, so inaccessible and so focussed on mental health, acute psychiatry and addictions feels alienating. I can actually mentally quite embrace the walking into a communal dining room with many lunatics and everything I can imagine can seem quite pleasant and innocuous. There is still an anti-ness in my reaction from my body, however. And perhaps it knows more than I do about the depth of the ordeal that attendance at this place would mean…of which my illusions can have no possibility of knowing. I don’t need to go…and boy do I not want to. It’s just a case of picking the right argument and presenting the right case which can hopefully – through understanding and logic – recognise that this course of action would not be a beneficial one for my situation.
And surely when thinking of the official records – the potentials of so many units where I was then not accepted, or if it not deemed necessary for attendance by medical professionals will be as equally evidential and testament to my status as anything else. I will be where I’m meant to be ultimately. I just hope beyond hope that people would observe the detrimental impact of sending me away and treating me like a piece of inconsequential rubbish who they can dictate to. If eating problems are supposedly about self-esteem issues they are not doing a hell of a lot to garner such self-love, self-respect and positivity within those who they treat. In fact I have never been treated with less respect for my own capacities than in these moments when I am being dictated to about my treatment. It’s horrific…perhaps that’s the sole reason for my horror and not the practical Priory location/placement/therapy itself. Perhaps the reason behind the physical rejection of their suggestions is because it completely removes any sense of self that I have. By telling someone where they are going – without choice, without option and without the power to object – there is a gross injustice put into practice. It is a damning indictment, by implication and suggestion, that their intelligence and decisions are not good enough for their well being.
Although I advocate choicelessness as the way things are – there is a compromise within this. Whilst life is choice-less we are not without the illusion of choice. Life is only choice-less because there are greater things than us controlling our choices – that is the tenet of what I believe. That there are others who wish to and have the power to remove one’s choices in life is not true surrender and choice-less-ness. It is dictation, dis-empowerment and quite frankly it is rude.
And I’m sorry, I’ve had a lot of a vent today where I’ve seen a lot. It is fundamental to me and my basis of beliefs to comprehend that personal respect means the world and it is difficult for me to ‘stomach’, handle and cope with a lack of respect. This is key to the acceptance of food at the end of the day. It has also been important for me to see the level of mental acceptance I am capable of – but also the lack of relevance of this if my body is rejecting something from another level. I hope that this is not the case with any mental understandings and thought processes I have gained so far about my history and that I have physically assuaged any demons that have emerged through my life experience as well as mentally come to terms with them. But I suppose that as the human mind and body work in tandem there would not be the facility to mentally accept and understand something without the physical backup and chemical operation which allows that understanding to emerge. That’s great. That I know this and honour this – that I love. The way I understand the world, I love…I now just have to trust my placement within it, and that can be the hardest thing it ever asks me to do.
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
July 23rd - Officer Crupkee...I mean...Dr McKlusky...you'll never believe it...
I don’t really know how to describe to you all what happened yesterday. I cannot even remember whether I’d told you of Dr Gordon’s shifty but perfectly plausible mutterings last Thursday (in the meeting with the dieticians) about the change of funding approval which shifted my ‘catchment area’ for the mental health assessment from St Georges to the Priory. At the time she did not even know which Priory but assumed ‘big Priory at Roehampton’ from where a ‘Dr McKlusky’ would be consulting with Dr Zadeh and then having the follow-up appointment that I would have had in Tooting, here.
You can tell what’s coming next, I’m sure. Yesterday afternoon with no prior warning whatsoever Dr McKlusky arrived. After introduction she made it perfectly clear that this was nothing like a re-assessment but a first and initial assessment based on a recommendation by Dr Gordon that I be treated by the care of their unit – which actually transpires to be the country sister of Roehampton’s Priory somewhere between Croydon and Bromley…Hayes’s Grove Priory.
I was speechless, yet again. Dr Gordon had lied twice – firstly about the fact that I would be told when this assessment was to take place, secondly with regard to the discussion that would form a pre-cursor to it between Dr Zadeh and Dr McKlusky. She then lied in telling us that she had notified the ward. She had done nothing of the sort: had the ward been notified I would not have been allowed to the gym and Dawn (Ward Clerk) would not have been dispatched to find me and return me to the ward in such a mad, un-pre-empted panic. Regardless of the subterfuge which led to the consultation itself Dr Gordon at least had the courtesy to leave and let the meeting be conducted without her presence. And yet I noticed in observing the paperwork that was being flicked through that she has put together an undoubtedly distorted PowerPoint presentation which will have been the ‘history that goes before me’ – as Dr McKlusky so eloquently put it.
Unfortunately it seems once again that it is not my history that goes before me but it actually seems to be a completely slanted version of events and stories since my voluntary admission to Worthing Hospital nearly 4 months ago. We are all horrified, me especially, at the length of time it has taken to begin even thinking of putting on weight. I imagined it would be immediate, I did not anticipate bedsores, disastrous transfers to places where I genuinely hoped I would find assistance, serious illness and admittances to HDU. I had no idea that health would not be immediate and am the one most shocked that nearly four months later I am only just starting to establish eating regimes which I’m comfortable within and that put on the weight I desire in a decent time frame and consistently. I have no idea what the ‘history’ presented in the PowerPoint actually says but undoubtedly it will list the moments of weakness, the catalogue of errors and the distorted and emotionally exhausted responses that will have been noted at the times when I have understandably overreacted to some things over the course of my stay.
I doubt anyone would be capable of staying mellow and placid in such a state of frailty and that there are times during my stay when a barbed comment towards a nurse has been made I am hardly surprised about, apologetic for and amazed that I discover those to be the predominant aspect when relaying the details of the course of my stay here. That my BMI is only now rising demonstrates not a lack of willingness but a lack of feasibility and possibility before now to actually achieve this. Until just over a month ago I was not even on a weight-building program of 2000 calories. Just four weeks ago I had Diarrhoea and Vomiting since which I have consistently built to an eating regime of 2000 calories per day – without batting an eyelid (something which even I suspected would never be so effortless) and without losing any weight but on every weigh-in since I began eating have actually gained weight.
And my history is peppered with opinions and opinionated-ness, not least of all from me. I have my truth which is only a version of events like any other. That I lived it and felt every day of the story I am forced to relive during every re-assessment I believe makes me the most qualified to relay how I feel and what I believe it was all about. That professionals beg to differ (and did continually throughout my illnesses) is their prerogative and until now has not had that much of an impact on me being able to hold both myself and my truth throughout whilst actively seeking a way to remedy it. After placing me under section just over a week ago there is a grave danger that others’ slanted, subjective and pejorative opinionated viewpoints could actually take me and dictate to me both the actions and the locations of any onward care. This frightens me because there is no self-ness any more within others’ say-so. There is only dictation and recommendation based on potted histories and inadequate story-telling from sources largely different than myself.
And this woman wishes to take me to her unit. After mistaking many details about my family history: I was 24, my father was dead and my brother was still at University, a 45 minute discussion was had about my past. During this I was over-irritated, largely due to the shock, the discomfort and the fact that this was done under the auspices of suitability for transfer when I had been led to believe by someone that I trusted – Dr Sinha – that there would be adequate consultation, discussion and views expressed (not least of all by me) before anything was either put in place or done. I have no idea what impression Dr McKlusky gained from me except that her conclusion was that their atypical unit would be appropriate for me. I asked her why, to which she responded that I had come into hospital and nearly died from starvation.
I did. I am horrified at that every moment of my life, but never once did I feel it was voluntary starvation. I also do not feel that it is in any danger of happening again. I am eating now with a passion I have never known. It is a genuine love of flavour and taste which is accompanied by a hard-headed equation-like mentality which calculates and guarantees that the calorific intake is adequate but the food is things I like to eat. I eat beans, rice, salad and veg –sure. But I damn well make sure all salads have mayonnaise, coleslaw and olives to accompany them. I have no aversion to calories, nor to I have difficulty both consuming and computing them – the only error moments I have is when I contemplate the best, most nutritious and enjoyable way of getting them in.
So sure – I came into hospital nearly dying of starvation. But I’m not now. Whether, my BMI is far away or not is almost immaterial because of the trend. And more important almost than the trend of weight gain is the trend of eating which becomes more embraced each day. Whilst in the past there may have been space and a time for my admission to an eating disorder unit to be entirely appropriate for the further healthcare of my situation, I landed here. I am in a general ward, I am being treated medically and with a cold, hard, factual and unequivocal approach which I value immensely. I like being thought of as an equation of balancing in and out calories. It really helps to be blunt and teaches more about how to eat what I need to eat than anything else in the world. And I do not feel that it would be appropriate in my current position to be transferred to somewhere which may have played important roles on my way towards the starvation level but I find difficult to see a role for now.
It is hard to know what, if anything, I could have said in either yesterday’s or my sectioning meeting. I doubt anything. I seriously doubt I made a difference whatever. There is no concept that perhaps in the development of my present situation I am actually on the way up – and I welcome it. Whatever anyone’s opinion of what combined to create the situation in which I arrived at hospital there is only, in my perspective, now. I could spend (and have spent) hours upon hours questioning whether I really can do this now – and then I tuck into a meal and look forward to eating something and trying something else and I’m ecstatic because I know I can do it now. Whatever prevented me before has disappeared. If a psychiatrist wants to believe that was a mental or emotional problem – fine. I will never agree that there was no physical pre-cursor to every experience but even I don’t need to bash on about it…
…what about now? Whatever blocked me has gone. It’s not there. The only thing there is a gap where I almost imagine it will be there…and then it’s not and in the space of the gap is a laugh in the depths of my soul which just absorbs and welcomes the food intake, the calorie build-up and the weight gain which comes as a result…
And for me, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go a unit because they would be dictating the meals that I ate etc. etc. Even I imagined my resistance to units was because I feared their treatment plans food-wise. I don’t. I found that out yesterday when I was facing admission with impending speed. I put myself in that position and there was nothing there…no fear, just despondency. I do not like the element of suggested patronisation that I can’t do it and the implication that I’m not doing it alone. And despondency and disappointment is exactly the right emotion. Disheartened by my incarceration somewhere isolated and alone being dictated to by another raft of strangers and having to build relationships, explain histories and relive events and pasts hundreds more times all in a strange environment where I cannot have regular physiotherapy which only yesterday was giving me amazing amounts by stretching the muscles which still contain much weakness from weeks and weeks of immobility.
And saddened by my treatment. Saddened by the fact that somehow I cannot seem to, regardless of behaviour or words, express myself adequately enough to meet receptivity and belief. And most importantly I never find trust. There is a phrase bandied about which is ‘because we care’ and it does not seem to represent caring that there is no faith in my capacity and competency to do this – regardless of their observation and monitoring. Perhaps they feel that without being watched I would not do the same things, eat the same quantities. Perhaps I should ask for a week of unobserved eating and see if I can prove myself then – that I’ll still put in the calories, if not more once liberated from having to find someone every time I want to munch on a grape. You see I know, but they do not seem to accept, believe or trust, that I would be doing this regardless of observation because it is what I want. I would do it here, at home – and even in some disenfranchised unit somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The issue is over where is more appropriate. And here I feel I am more suited, more used, more loved and more comfortable. It actually makes me safe to feel in the best place for my body and its frailty whilst being close to home and to my family and just about with a view of the sea. To start over in the middle of nowhere…I don’t know what effect that will have in all honesty. It won’t ever diminish my vigorous passionate drive for health but I don’t know what it would do emotionally and psychologically in the short-term with the isolation from familiarity, routine and from Mum.
I don’t want to go. But not because I am frightened or resistant to nutrition, weight or health: because I don’t believe it is the location in which I will find the true representation of what nutrition, weight and health really mean for me in this life. I have found my embrace of nutrition here, I am gaining weight here and it is my bid, pledge, promise, desire and goal to become healthy…here.
You can tell what’s coming next, I’m sure. Yesterday afternoon with no prior warning whatsoever Dr McKlusky arrived. After introduction she made it perfectly clear that this was nothing like a re-assessment but a first and initial assessment based on a recommendation by Dr Gordon that I be treated by the care of their unit – which actually transpires to be the country sister of Roehampton’s Priory somewhere between Croydon and Bromley…Hayes’s Grove Priory.
I was speechless, yet again. Dr Gordon had lied twice – firstly about the fact that I would be told when this assessment was to take place, secondly with regard to the discussion that would form a pre-cursor to it between Dr Zadeh and Dr McKlusky. She then lied in telling us that she had notified the ward. She had done nothing of the sort: had the ward been notified I would not have been allowed to the gym and Dawn (Ward Clerk) would not have been dispatched to find me and return me to the ward in such a mad, un-pre-empted panic. Regardless of the subterfuge which led to the consultation itself Dr Gordon at least had the courtesy to leave and let the meeting be conducted without her presence. And yet I noticed in observing the paperwork that was being flicked through that she has put together an undoubtedly distorted PowerPoint presentation which will have been the ‘history that goes before me’ – as Dr McKlusky so eloquently put it.
Unfortunately it seems once again that it is not my history that goes before me but it actually seems to be a completely slanted version of events and stories since my voluntary admission to Worthing Hospital nearly 4 months ago. We are all horrified, me especially, at the length of time it has taken to begin even thinking of putting on weight. I imagined it would be immediate, I did not anticipate bedsores, disastrous transfers to places where I genuinely hoped I would find assistance, serious illness and admittances to HDU. I had no idea that health would not be immediate and am the one most shocked that nearly four months later I am only just starting to establish eating regimes which I’m comfortable within and that put on the weight I desire in a decent time frame and consistently. I have no idea what the ‘history’ presented in the PowerPoint actually says but undoubtedly it will list the moments of weakness, the catalogue of errors and the distorted and emotionally exhausted responses that will have been noted at the times when I have understandably overreacted to some things over the course of my stay.
I doubt anyone would be capable of staying mellow and placid in such a state of frailty and that there are times during my stay when a barbed comment towards a nurse has been made I am hardly surprised about, apologetic for and amazed that I discover those to be the predominant aspect when relaying the details of the course of my stay here. That my BMI is only now rising demonstrates not a lack of willingness but a lack of feasibility and possibility before now to actually achieve this. Until just over a month ago I was not even on a weight-building program of 2000 calories. Just four weeks ago I had Diarrhoea and Vomiting since which I have consistently built to an eating regime of 2000 calories per day – without batting an eyelid (something which even I suspected would never be so effortless) and without losing any weight but on every weigh-in since I began eating have actually gained weight.
And my history is peppered with opinions and opinionated-ness, not least of all from me. I have my truth which is only a version of events like any other. That I lived it and felt every day of the story I am forced to relive during every re-assessment I believe makes me the most qualified to relay how I feel and what I believe it was all about. That professionals beg to differ (and did continually throughout my illnesses) is their prerogative and until now has not had that much of an impact on me being able to hold both myself and my truth throughout whilst actively seeking a way to remedy it. After placing me under section just over a week ago there is a grave danger that others’ slanted, subjective and pejorative opinionated viewpoints could actually take me and dictate to me both the actions and the locations of any onward care. This frightens me because there is no self-ness any more within others’ say-so. There is only dictation and recommendation based on potted histories and inadequate story-telling from sources largely different than myself.
And this woman wishes to take me to her unit. After mistaking many details about my family history: I was 24, my father was dead and my brother was still at University, a 45 minute discussion was had about my past. During this I was over-irritated, largely due to the shock, the discomfort and the fact that this was done under the auspices of suitability for transfer when I had been led to believe by someone that I trusted – Dr Sinha – that there would be adequate consultation, discussion and views expressed (not least of all by me) before anything was either put in place or done. I have no idea what impression Dr McKlusky gained from me except that her conclusion was that their atypical unit would be appropriate for me. I asked her why, to which she responded that I had come into hospital and nearly died from starvation.
I did. I am horrified at that every moment of my life, but never once did I feel it was voluntary starvation. I also do not feel that it is in any danger of happening again. I am eating now with a passion I have never known. It is a genuine love of flavour and taste which is accompanied by a hard-headed equation-like mentality which calculates and guarantees that the calorific intake is adequate but the food is things I like to eat. I eat beans, rice, salad and veg –sure. But I damn well make sure all salads have mayonnaise, coleslaw and olives to accompany them. I have no aversion to calories, nor to I have difficulty both consuming and computing them – the only error moments I have is when I contemplate the best, most nutritious and enjoyable way of getting them in.
So sure – I came into hospital nearly dying of starvation. But I’m not now. Whether, my BMI is far away or not is almost immaterial because of the trend. And more important almost than the trend of weight gain is the trend of eating which becomes more embraced each day. Whilst in the past there may have been space and a time for my admission to an eating disorder unit to be entirely appropriate for the further healthcare of my situation, I landed here. I am in a general ward, I am being treated medically and with a cold, hard, factual and unequivocal approach which I value immensely. I like being thought of as an equation of balancing in and out calories. It really helps to be blunt and teaches more about how to eat what I need to eat than anything else in the world. And I do not feel that it would be appropriate in my current position to be transferred to somewhere which may have played important roles on my way towards the starvation level but I find difficult to see a role for now.
It is hard to know what, if anything, I could have said in either yesterday’s or my sectioning meeting. I doubt anything. I seriously doubt I made a difference whatever. There is no concept that perhaps in the development of my present situation I am actually on the way up – and I welcome it. Whatever anyone’s opinion of what combined to create the situation in which I arrived at hospital there is only, in my perspective, now. I could spend (and have spent) hours upon hours questioning whether I really can do this now – and then I tuck into a meal and look forward to eating something and trying something else and I’m ecstatic because I know I can do it now. Whatever prevented me before has disappeared. If a psychiatrist wants to believe that was a mental or emotional problem – fine. I will never agree that there was no physical pre-cursor to every experience but even I don’t need to bash on about it…
…what about now? Whatever blocked me has gone. It’s not there. The only thing there is a gap where I almost imagine it will be there…and then it’s not and in the space of the gap is a laugh in the depths of my soul which just absorbs and welcomes the food intake, the calorie build-up and the weight gain which comes as a result…
And for me, I thought that I wouldn’t be able to go a unit because they would be dictating the meals that I ate etc. etc. Even I imagined my resistance to units was because I feared their treatment plans food-wise. I don’t. I found that out yesterday when I was facing admission with impending speed. I put myself in that position and there was nothing there…no fear, just despondency. I do not like the element of suggested patronisation that I can’t do it and the implication that I’m not doing it alone. And despondency and disappointment is exactly the right emotion. Disheartened by my incarceration somewhere isolated and alone being dictated to by another raft of strangers and having to build relationships, explain histories and relive events and pasts hundreds more times all in a strange environment where I cannot have regular physiotherapy which only yesterday was giving me amazing amounts by stretching the muscles which still contain much weakness from weeks and weeks of immobility.
And saddened by my treatment. Saddened by the fact that somehow I cannot seem to, regardless of behaviour or words, express myself adequately enough to meet receptivity and belief. And most importantly I never find trust. There is a phrase bandied about which is ‘because we care’ and it does not seem to represent caring that there is no faith in my capacity and competency to do this – regardless of their observation and monitoring. Perhaps they feel that without being watched I would not do the same things, eat the same quantities. Perhaps I should ask for a week of unobserved eating and see if I can prove myself then – that I’ll still put in the calories, if not more once liberated from having to find someone every time I want to munch on a grape. You see I know, but they do not seem to accept, believe or trust, that I would be doing this regardless of observation because it is what I want. I would do it here, at home – and even in some disenfranchised unit somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The issue is over where is more appropriate. And here I feel I am more suited, more used, more loved and more comfortable. It actually makes me safe to feel in the best place for my body and its frailty whilst being close to home and to my family and just about with a view of the sea. To start over in the middle of nowhere…I don’t know what effect that will have in all honesty. It won’t ever diminish my vigorous passionate drive for health but I don’t know what it would do emotionally and psychologically in the short-term with the isolation from familiarity, routine and from Mum.
I don’t want to go. But not because I am frightened or resistant to nutrition, weight or health: because I don’t believe it is the location in which I will find the true representation of what nutrition, weight and health really mean for me in this life. I have found my embrace of nutrition here, I am gaining weight here and it is my bid, pledge, promise, desire and goal to become healthy…here.
Monday, 21 July 2008
July 22nd - an update...
Petrified again. It’s weigh-day. So is it any wonder? And Priscilla is just outside my curtain and will probably invite me out any moment – she’s doing blood sugars at the moment. I may even pre-empt things by asking her, it at least facilitates me getting out the way.
Well – that was quick! Maud refused to have a drink until she’d been weighed – and she had to have a drink to help her blood sugar because it’s ridiculously low. So on insisting weight before Lucozade milk it meant that Priscilla (back working a night shift just 1 day after leaving the ward for a Gynaecological job on a different ward) asked me if I wanted to be weighed first. Out I go to the scales…
All of this negates the awake-ness I’ve had this morning which, whilst not quite being from 4am has been pretty similar. Awake at 4.45am and in the bathroom I came back and had another mini-doze until about 5.30am. I’ve been awake since but refused to switch on my computer. I read the entire paper from yesterday (we say read but actually mean flicked, skimmed and read very little of because there was a) no news and b) nothing interesting in there). I didn’t want to be writing pages and pages of worry. There really was only a niggle there but when it is predominantly in the forefront of your mind I would imagine it could come across as overwhelming, all-consuming and as if I think of nothing else and have an obsession with it. Whilst this is not true, I can imagine on mornings like this it would be read in this way and I didn’t want to give airspace to my mental worries about something over which I know I have no control, certainly could do nothing about at that stage and also feel as if I’ve been criticised for having in the past. It sometimes takes accepting that there are going to be mental anxieties and uncertainties regardless of the logical processes and patterns we take as safety measures and precautions against them.
And I suppose I’ve always been desperate to try and present the right impression to those that would and will judge me on my thought processes. That has come from both friends and connections from an ‘alternative world’ or ‘complementary medicine’ as well as those from the not-self medical world which I now inhabit and both have the tendency to be just as judgemental about what I seem to be allowed to think. The ‘thought police’ from outside, my life pre-hospital, were very much about the beneficent thought-processes which were somehow more admirable and desirable than any opinions, feelings or emotions that we would morally perceive as ‘wrong’ or ‘hateful’ or ‘antagonistic’ or ‘detrimental’ to another. There is also a great criticism from such societies about when something complaining is expressed – regardless of the knowledge behind the complaint which could understand that in complaint there is absolutely nothing whatever to be done, there would be nothing gained from complaining but in order to feel something properly a complaint must be expressed. There have been so many ‘shoulds’ applied to modern day existence. The should of this morning is that for the world within here I must not obsess too much about the weight thing – I cannot dwell too much in fear for fear of how they might interpret that. I have learnt a great lesson about this world over the last few weeks and that is that whilst complete honesty and openness would always be my policy in a truthful world, when you are met with the limited perspective with which I am confronted in here there is absolutely nothing to be done which can explain the depths of any statement or behaviour which emerges on the surface. Whilst I accept and see everything I do and am as a moment in time there is no comprehension from those observing me of this reality. And because I am less powerful and less ‘in control’ than those that observe me currently I am left to their judgements and powers of observation in the handling of my care and onward treatment progression.
This puts me in that horrible position of having to say very little, do very little that may be perceived as antagonistic, negative or in any way mentally unstable…I have to learn to live my truth without constantly asserting, conversing or being openly it. And it’s actually going really well. It’s going brilliantly in fact – I have not a lot to oppose in the life in here except the circumstances which could be different but in a bizarre way are comfortable. They are comfortable because I am here correctly and because I am meant to be here for now. How can anything in destiny feel uncomfortable, really? And though there are things I resent, dislike and would happily be without – none of them impact me remarkably because that would be taking them personally. In here there is nothing personal at all – only balance sheets, figures, and people moving through…and moving on.
And then there’s Dr Gordon…who for some obscure reason has her own, hidden agenda. She is not in control ultimately, however, Dr Sinha and her take joint responsibility and in a conversation with Mydhili yesterday (Dr Sinha’s Junior) I was more reassured that Dr Sinha was impressed with my conversation with him and my persona on the Monday meeting in which we met properly for the first time since my illness. Far from being convinced of Dr Gordon’s assessments of me I think I managed to impart in brief a little of the feeling I am singularly incapable of impressing on Dr Gordon. And yet I know that the medical team are far more interested in the figures. Dr Sinha is a man of science and as such will take everything I say as secondary to the figures; the calorie intake but ultimately, as proof that the first figure is adequate – the weight gain numbers. And then they play equations.
Well – here’s an equation for them to play with…33.55 kilos. That’s a BMI of 13.1 (sod you Dr Gordon) and is equivalent to 73.965 lbs or 73 lb 15.44oz – which is 5 stone 3 lbs (and 15.44 ounces!). And its 400 grams more than the last weight…
And more importantly than that – yesterday I cried in front of Mydhili about my fear of the impression that the weight gives. This was necessary for my preparedness because I hate the implication that if the weight is not going on then it is me and my aspirations, my mentality and my approach that is at fault. Though I may not always, always hit 2000 calories this is only through response and lack of making it to that figure each day – and there is a continual looking and attempt to guarantee that that transpires…
…more importantly…I’ve proven it now consistently. This is the two and a half week point – wherein I have consistently put on about 100grams per day since that fateful Friday…and I’m chuffed. But it was more important for me last night to wade through a pile of unappetising noodles and not bat an eyelid. They may have been empty, revolting and stodgy – and demonstrate to me why I don’t enjoy eating the pasta meals (and thereby assuaging the doubts and fears I may have had about my avoidance of those things) but also encourage me to return to what is more comfortable – with the endorsement that beans do put on weight! And enough of it not only to silence my nay-sayers but also to feel incredibly proud of myself – and what I am achieving in here. Ploughing through shite is proving to me more than my weight going up that I am doing it…I’m doing it mentally – which is the way I’ve always wanted to do it. Sod the fact that that’s Dr Gordon’s criteria – it’s mine too. And it’s a lot harder to assess and quantify, is a lot more subjective and a lot more reliant on personalities and opinions of those who are looking and judging on what they see.
But my biggest confession of all is that I don’t really give a stuff about the weight. It is not the precursor to me – it is the secondary effect. If my chemistry is right then the weight will go on…because there will be the will inside for that to happen. Though historically the will has never been there the most important way I’ve seen this has been mentally – a mental aversion and fear to food has been my predominant and loudest signal that something far deeper and far more physical was wrong. And so my delight at the moment comes from the total health – and most importantly the silence and the peace in my brain which doesn’t have to have anxiety about food intake any more and can, without resisting, get through a mountain of stuff it doesn’t like…whilst knowing it was a totally bum choice and physically feeling not very satisfied by it – we both (body and mind) did it which represents the higher goal…weight gain…!
And so most precious to me (because it is the way life appears to me) are the experiences I am now allowed whilst the physical strength and health is being established. My mind (that loud, predominant part of what it is to be a human being) now has freedom within itself because of the chemical operation it is now given now that chemically there is nothing wrong with me. Paranoia is no longer physically present so my mind no longer has to dwell there and can breathe. As can my body – and its reward is that the chemistry it has fought so hard to obtain can also put on weight…!!! And I’m chuffed…
Well – that was quick! Maud refused to have a drink until she’d been weighed – and she had to have a drink to help her blood sugar because it’s ridiculously low. So on insisting weight before Lucozade milk it meant that Priscilla (back working a night shift just 1 day after leaving the ward for a Gynaecological job on a different ward) asked me if I wanted to be weighed first. Out I go to the scales…
All of this negates the awake-ness I’ve had this morning which, whilst not quite being from 4am has been pretty similar. Awake at 4.45am and in the bathroom I came back and had another mini-doze until about 5.30am. I’ve been awake since but refused to switch on my computer. I read the entire paper from yesterday (we say read but actually mean flicked, skimmed and read very little of because there was a) no news and b) nothing interesting in there). I didn’t want to be writing pages and pages of worry. There really was only a niggle there but when it is predominantly in the forefront of your mind I would imagine it could come across as overwhelming, all-consuming and as if I think of nothing else and have an obsession with it. Whilst this is not true, I can imagine on mornings like this it would be read in this way and I didn’t want to give airspace to my mental worries about something over which I know I have no control, certainly could do nothing about at that stage and also feel as if I’ve been criticised for having in the past. It sometimes takes accepting that there are going to be mental anxieties and uncertainties regardless of the logical processes and patterns we take as safety measures and precautions against them.
And I suppose I’ve always been desperate to try and present the right impression to those that would and will judge me on my thought processes. That has come from both friends and connections from an ‘alternative world’ or ‘complementary medicine’ as well as those from the not-self medical world which I now inhabit and both have the tendency to be just as judgemental about what I seem to be allowed to think. The ‘thought police’ from outside, my life pre-hospital, were very much about the beneficent thought-processes which were somehow more admirable and desirable than any opinions, feelings or emotions that we would morally perceive as ‘wrong’ or ‘hateful’ or ‘antagonistic’ or ‘detrimental’ to another. There is also a great criticism from such societies about when something complaining is expressed – regardless of the knowledge behind the complaint which could understand that in complaint there is absolutely nothing whatever to be done, there would be nothing gained from complaining but in order to feel something properly a complaint must be expressed. There have been so many ‘shoulds’ applied to modern day existence. The should of this morning is that for the world within here I must not obsess too much about the weight thing – I cannot dwell too much in fear for fear of how they might interpret that. I have learnt a great lesson about this world over the last few weeks and that is that whilst complete honesty and openness would always be my policy in a truthful world, when you are met with the limited perspective with which I am confronted in here there is absolutely nothing to be done which can explain the depths of any statement or behaviour which emerges on the surface. Whilst I accept and see everything I do and am as a moment in time there is no comprehension from those observing me of this reality. And because I am less powerful and less ‘in control’ than those that observe me currently I am left to their judgements and powers of observation in the handling of my care and onward treatment progression.
This puts me in that horrible position of having to say very little, do very little that may be perceived as antagonistic, negative or in any way mentally unstable…I have to learn to live my truth without constantly asserting, conversing or being openly it. And it’s actually going really well. It’s going brilliantly in fact – I have not a lot to oppose in the life in here except the circumstances which could be different but in a bizarre way are comfortable. They are comfortable because I am here correctly and because I am meant to be here for now. How can anything in destiny feel uncomfortable, really? And though there are things I resent, dislike and would happily be without – none of them impact me remarkably because that would be taking them personally. In here there is nothing personal at all – only balance sheets, figures, and people moving through…and moving on.
And then there’s Dr Gordon…who for some obscure reason has her own, hidden agenda. She is not in control ultimately, however, Dr Sinha and her take joint responsibility and in a conversation with Mydhili yesterday (Dr Sinha’s Junior) I was more reassured that Dr Sinha was impressed with my conversation with him and my persona on the Monday meeting in which we met properly for the first time since my illness. Far from being convinced of Dr Gordon’s assessments of me I think I managed to impart in brief a little of the feeling I am singularly incapable of impressing on Dr Gordon. And yet I know that the medical team are far more interested in the figures. Dr Sinha is a man of science and as such will take everything I say as secondary to the figures; the calorie intake but ultimately, as proof that the first figure is adequate – the weight gain numbers. And then they play equations.
Well – here’s an equation for them to play with…33.55 kilos. That’s a BMI of 13.1 (sod you Dr Gordon) and is equivalent to 73.965 lbs or 73 lb 15.44oz – which is 5 stone 3 lbs (and 15.44 ounces!). And its 400 grams more than the last weight…
And more importantly than that – yesterday I cried in front of Mydhili about my fear of the impression that the weight gives. This was necessary for my preparedness because I hate the implication that if the weight is not going on then it is me and my aspirations, my mentality and my approach that is at fault. Though I may not always, always hit 2000 calories this is only through response and lack of making it to that figure each day – and there is a continual looking and attempt to guarantee that that transpires…
…more importantly…I’ve proven it now consistently. This is the two and a half week point – wherein I have consistently put on about 100grams per day since that fateful Friday…and I’m chuffed. But it was more important for me last night to wade through a pile of unappetising noodles and not bat an eyelid. They may have been empty, revolting and stodgy – and demonstrate to me why I don’t enjoy eating the pasta meals (and thereby assuaging the doubts and fears I may have had about my avoidance of those things) but also encourage me to return to what is more comfortable – with the endorsement that beans do put on weight! And enough of it not only to silence my nay-sayers but also to feel incredibly proud of myself – and what I am achieving in here. Ploughing through shite is proving to me more than my weight going up that I am doing it…I’m doing it mentally – which is the way I’ve always wanted to do it. Sod the fact that that’s Dr Gordon’s criteria – it’s mine too. And it’s a lot harder to assess and quantify, is a lot more subjective and a lot more reliant on personalities and opinions of those who are looking and judging on what they see.
But my biggest confession of all is that I don’t really give a stuff about the weight. It is not the precursor to me – it is the secondary effect. If my chemistry is right then the weight will go on…because there will be the will inside for that to happen. Though historically the will has never been there the most important way I’ve seen this has been mentally – a mental aversion and fear to food has been my predominant and loudest signal that something far deeper and far more physical was wrong. And so my delight at the moment comes from the total health – and most importantly the silence and the peace in my brain which doesn’t have to have anxiety about food intake any more and can, without resisting, get through a mountain of stuff it doesn’t like…whilst knowing it was a totally bum choice and physically feeling not very satisfied by it – we both (body and mind) did it which represents the higher goal…weight gain…!
And so most precious to me (because it is the way life appears to me) are the experiences I am now allowed whilst the physical strength and health is being established. My mind (that loud, predominant part of what it is to be a human being) now has freedom within itself because of the chemical operation it is now given now that chemically there is nothing wrong with me. Paranoia is no longer physically present so my mind no longer has to dwell there and can breathe. As can my body – and its reward is that the chemistry it has fought so hard to obtain can also put on weight…!!! And I’m chuffed…
Sunday, 20 July 2008
July 21st - blog 1 - my settling and my senses...
I am more than a little convinced that something is going to happen to me today with regard to the psychiatric teams in charge of my care. It would not surprise me if Sue Lovell (the Registered Medical Officer and Social Worker) recovered from her ‘illness’ (which prevented her attendance at last weeks’ dietician meeting and prevented her from doing what she promised over a week ago) and put in an appearance today, probably this morning, with Dr Gordon in tow. For a week I have felt fairly removed from the change in my situation that has occurred since last Friday. I sense today I am going to be brought back into contact with the ‘reality’ of it.
I need to explain that because I feel that there has been a change within me over the way I appreciate the whole situation now. There is a vision of understanding which came to me yesterday which does not make the sectioning feel that much better, but does put things in their place a little more to make it easier to understand and therefore live with.
And it is all a question of perspective, from what I can tell. There are labels and some people are given enough power in their jobs to actually begin applying these labels to other people. As someone who believes in uniqueness this is precisely the wrong place to discover that – it is a location which covets labels because it is the label alone which dictates the role of those who are designated to care for it. Nurses, doctors and patients all require a label; it defines the doctors’ challenge, the nurses’ job and the patients’ mentality around themselves. Without a label in hospital you are a pointless floater and that can be very destabilising.
Whether they had a label or not when it came to me, I know not. One thing was for certain: it wasn’t sticking well enough. So all this sectioning is is super-glue or wallpaper paste to guarantee the adhesion of something that doesn’t really sit well and fit but at least will secure me for now until they can think of something better. The difference has occurred in my perception where I can see this label as something that someone else has thought up for me. Despite my comprehension that the inner world reflects the outer world this does not mean that I feel the label that the ‘real world’ has now given me in any way demonstrates or dictates the truth of my situation. Far from it. I grasped fully yesterday how much this is just the opinion of people who could not understand me and as such isn’t accurate, nor should I let it be believed etc. And the inner situation which it is reflecting is the paranoia I spoke of yesterday: wherein my body itself is keeping me safe and sane by guaranteeing a level of anxiety which always wants to ensure that there is no need to worry about insufficient calories. That’s what the sectioning is – to guarantee that there is no need to worry about insufficient calories.
But I seriously expect to see someone today. And on top of my anxiety around that – which I have to admit feels dramatically different now I don’t see the label they have given me as some sort of castigation because I appreciate its lack of truth – there is also my anxiety around my weighing tomorrow. Whether necessary or unfounded I do not know whether I will have gained weight, and certainly not to the degree I did last time…it’s just so hard to know or tell. My sense would be that there will be weight gain, but perhaps not at the rate of 0.8kilos. If this is the case the next step is simple…and I have no fear about it or doubt that I’ll make it. However, I do worry about the impact of any weigh-in on the mentality, perception and treatment of me by those in charge of my ‘care’. Still, at least if they arrive today – and I’d imagine they’ll come in the morning so as to get me on my own – they’ll not make time for me again tomorrow…!
And the main reason I suspect I’ll see them today, over and above my a) readiness to see them now and b) the inkling given by the settling into the whole labelling thing, is that I have been awake since 4am. I haven’t been worried, just not asleep. I’ve been using the time to research things – a change to my breakfasts after the porridge and toast dreams of yesterday has resulted in me finding some muesli – really dense Dorset Cereals stuff – which I can have a bowl of with full-fat milk and a dollop of yoghurt and extra fruit. I’ve even moved beyond needing mini-packs and decided to get Mum to weigh out portion-sized bags of it!!! I have also decided to have a Fruit Corner Yoghurt thing after a Prawn and Snow-Crab lunch next week – you know…just little differences which will keep the variety and ensure that I am continuing to achieve my aims. I also want some Oreo cookies…do not ask me why, I don’t think I’ve ever even tried one…but I woke up this morning thinking of them and so they’ve gone on the list…!!! I’ve also discovered some slightly different juices etc.
All of these things I can actually not only draw strength from but also tell anyone who visits me – that I am still changing things, improving things continually, eliminating doubts and checking in with the continued progress and process of guaranteeing my weight gain and my health. But further than this I have nothing to give them. I have learnt that they literally pull sentences apart and quote tiny snippets of them within the bulk of their own psychobabble paragraphs when they do write-ups of sessions. This means that I am pleased I feel in a very silent, quiet, reserved and removed space wherein I do not wish to be drawn into expression of anything that could be used later in a segmented way to distort the written portrayal of my character and my health.
So I await the day, without fear…just a weariness of the hoops that the fates make jump through or avoid. It’s a constant job to live in this world where there seems to be so little reality and yet the futures and/or not of millions of people each month are decided…
I need to explain that because I feel that there has been a change within me over the way I appreciate the whole situation now. There is a vision of understanding which came to me yesterday which does not make the sectioning feel that much better, but does put things in their place a little more to make it easier to understand and therefore live with.
And it is all a question of perspective, from what I can tell. There are labels and some people are given enough power in their jobs to actually begin applying these labels to other people. As someone who believes in uniqueness this is precisely the wrong place to discover that – it is a location which covets labels because it is the label alone which dictates the role of those who are designated to care for it. Nurses, doctors and patients all require a label; it defines the doctors’ challenge, the nurses’ job and the patients’ mentality around themselves. Without a label in hospital you are a pointless floater and that can be very destabilising.
Whether they had a label or not when it came to me, I know not. One thing was for certain: it wasn’t sticking well enough. So all this sectioning is is super-glue or wallpaper paste to guarantee the adhesion of something that doesn’t really sit well and fit but at least will secure me for now until they can think of something better. The difference has occurred in my perception where I can see this label as something that someone else has thought up for me. Despite my comprehension that the inner world reflects the outer world this does not mean that I feel the label that the ‘real world’ has now given me in any way demonstrates or dictates the truth of my situation. Far from it. I grasped fully yesterday how much this is just the opinion of people who could not understand me and as such isn’t accurate, nor should I let it be believed etc. And the inner situation which it is reflecting is the paranoia I spoke of yesterday: wherein my body itself is keeping me safe and sane by guaranteeing a level of anxiety which always wants to ensure that there is no need to worry about insufficient calories. That’s what the sectioning is – to guarantee that there is no need to worry about insufficient calories.
But I seriously expect to see someone today. And on top of my anxiety around that – which I have to admit feels dramatically different now I don’t see the label they have given me as some sort of castigation because I appreciate its lack of truth – there is also my anxiety around my weighing tomorrow. Whether necessary or unfounded I do not know whether I will have gained weight, and certainly not to the degree I did last time…it’s just so hard to know or tell. My sense would be that there will be weight gain, but perhaps not at the rate of 0.8kilos. If this is the case the next step is simple…and I have no fear about it or doubt that I’ll make it. However, I do worry about the impact of any weigh-in on the mentality, perception and treatment of me by those in charge of my ‘care’. Still, at least if they arrive today – and I’d imagine they’ll come in the morning so as to get me on my own – they’ll not make time for me again tomorrow…!
And the main reason I suspect I’ll see them today, over and above my a) readiness to see them now and b) the inkling given by the settling into the whole labelling thing, is that I have been awake since 4am. I haven’t been worried, just not asleep. I’ve been using the time to research things – a change to my breakfasts after the porridge and toast dreams of yesterday has resulted in me finding some muesli – really dense Dorset Cereals stuff – which I can have a bowl of with full-fat milk and a dollop of yoghurt and extra fruit. I’ve even moved beyond needing mini-packs and decided to get Mum to weigh out portion-sized bags of it!!! I have also decided to have a Fruit Corner Yoghurt thing after a Prawn and Snow-Crab lunch next week – you know…just little differences which will keep the variety and ensure that I am continuing to achieve my aims. I also want some Oreo cookies…do not ask me why, I don’t think I’ve ever even tried one…but I woke up this morning thinking of them and so they’ve gone on the list…!!! I’ve also discovered some slightly different juices etc.
All of these things I can actually not only draw strength from but also tell anyone who visits me – that I am still changing things, improving things continually, eliminating doubts and checking in with the continued progress and process of guaranteeing my weight gain and my health. But further than this I have nothing to give them. I have learnt that they literally pull sentences apart and quote tiny snippets of them within the bulk of their own psychobabble paragraphs when they do write-ups of sessions. This means that I am pleased I feel in a very silent, quiet, reserved and removed space wherein I do not wish to be drawn into expression of anything that could be used later in a segmented way to distort the written portrayal of my character and my health.
So I await the day, without fear…just a weariness of the hoops that the fates make jump through or avoid. It’s a constant job to live in this world where there seems to be so little reality and yet the futures and/or not of millions of people each month are decided…
Saturday, 19 July 2008
July 20th - blog 2 - continuation of thoughts of the day...
I’m beginning to realise that there is a lot of time between Friday and Tuesday when we work it this way round. I would half like to be weighed today just to make sure I’m still on track…I’d also like to just briefly return to something I think I kept losing in fogginess this morning:
My loosening up around intake. To establish the framework and groundwork has been phenomenal. It’s not that I’m totally 100% about the meals all the time, the snacks all the time and certainly not the calories etc. – it’s a lot of guesswork on my part as to how much Jam/butter/milk/mayonnaise I’m having. But the intent is there, and I’m also putting so much protein in and the physio is focussing on muscles building up – which automatically weigh more than fat. Strengthening my core rests on my constant pulling in of my tummy muscles – a permanent and consistent workout attempting to not only give me tone and strength and ability, but also to help me weigh more by not necessarily adding cells at this stage but converting the ones I do have to denser material in order to help me function more seamlessly.
I can always do more, however. Last night I began putting fruit in in addition to the snacks I demonstrated as opposed to in the demonstrated snacks themselves. I also felt that I could actually just relax a little…and relax around the amount of what I was eating and the worries I have at being perhaps 50-100 calories short in a day sometimes. According to rough calculations…and I suppose there are different criteria for success.
The one thing I know now is my assessment of myself. Though sometimes I am constricted in miasms of doubts around the precise method and amount of that which I am actually doing and achieving, there is something really rather beautiful I have discovered that I possess. Far from ability what I have identified is a genuine will. In its strong connection to my health and wellbeing, my will and desire have all along dictated the progression of my illness. The need to uncover the truth and rectify it and then heal and develop wisdom through the catastrophic events which span off from the experiences then offered to me by life itself has been guided by and limited by the strength of my desire and will. Intention is not a pre-meditated thing – I think for everyone. I will only speak for me, however. I cannot and will not mess around with ‘good intentions’ from a mental perspective – it is a pointless waste of energy when it comes without the strength of the will and the ego behind it. For me, I discover my intentions as a witness to their emergence. Always knowing my intention was health I have never discovered until long afterwards the twisted way in which this was going to play out within my life.
Yet to witness recently the intent from within me bubbling up inside. And it was, for the first time, not ‘health before nourishment’ but ‘nourishment as health’. The limitations of my body were no longer a stepping stone before full health could arise within me. I have moved beyond that necessity to the only thing remaining for my health being the vitality inherent in nourishment, nurturing and mass itself. The spleen is clean – now it can grow, if you like. And there is still a limitation from my mind…a chemistry internally which is there as memory and therefore protection. Whereas before the situation transpired that limited chemistry developed a limited perspective and capacity and want when it came to intake, this time the limitation is merely that of paranoia. Instead of hampering desire and therefore intake quantity, it hampers my intake only in the precise nature of what goes in (picking as opposed to jumping!) but never hampers the amount. The only limitation from my chemistry now is the one that makes my mind wary about failure – constantly alert to anything that may indicate a lack of health and a reverse step. This is keeping me safe at the moment and I imagine will lessen with time. I have witnessed the inner intention change. Mentally I have always been intent on health, but physically I have never been intent on health this directly before – so that the behaviours that emerge are direct assaults on calories and direct consumptions of meals of nearly 400 calories followed by deserts – always, even if I do not desire one for my appetite. And this has bubbled up inside of me, making my responses different. The only wariness I possess is a constant eye on any potential regression because I am so new within this. My first ready meal was less than a week ago…!
And so the loosening up is that of the watchful eye. A week is still early days, but there is increasing faith that I want and desire the calories from a very physical perspective (i.e. more yoghurt than I would ‘mentally’ give myself, more sweets than I would ‘mentally’ think I would want etc. because my body is asking for them). M&S yesterday showed me that once again – as does my behaviour throughout the day…
…so perhaps my watchful memory can relax a little, make the intent flow a little better, and make health a lot quicker to come…?
My loosening up around intake. To establish the framework and groundwork has been phenomenal. It’s not that I’m totally 100% about the meals all the time, the snacks all the time and certainly not the calories etc. – it’s a lot of guesswork on my part as to how much Jam/butter/milk/mayonnaise I’m having. But the intent is there, and I’m also putting so much protein in and the physio is focussing on muscles building up – which automatically weigh more than fat. Strengthening my core rests on my constant pulling in of my tummy muscles – a permanent and consistent workout attempting to not only give me tone and strength and ability, but also to help me weigh more by not necessarily adding cells at this stage but converting the ones I do have to denser material in order to help me function more seamlessly.
I can always do more, however. Last night I began putting fruit in in addition to the snacks I demonstrated as opposed to in the demonstrated snacks themselves. I also felt that I could actually just relax a little…and relax around the amount of what I was eating and the worries I have at being perhaps 50-100 calories short in a day sometimes. According to rough calculations…and I suppose there are different criteria for success.
The one thing I know now is my assessment of myself. Though sometimes I am constricted in miasms of doubts around the precise method and amount of that which I am actually doing and achieving, there is something really rather beautiful I have discovered that I possess. Far from ability what I have identified is a genuine will. In its strong connection to my health and wellbeing, my will and desire have all along dictated the progression of my illness. The need to uncover the truth and rectify it and then heal and develop wisdom through the catastrophic events which span off from the experiences then offered to me by life itself has been guided by and limited by the strength of my desire and will. Intention is not a pre-meditated thing – I think for everyone. I will only speak for me, however. I cannot and will not mess around with ‘good intentions’ from a mental perspective – it is a pointless waste of energy when it comes without the strength of the will and the ego behind it. For me, I discover my intentions as a witness to their emergence. Always knowing my intention was health I have never discovered until long afterwards the twisted way in which this was going to play out within my life.
Yet to witness recently the intent from within me bubbling up inside. And it was, for the first time, not ‘health before nourishment’ but ‘nourishment as health’. The limitations of my body were no longer a stepping stone before full health could arise within me. I have moved beyond that necessity to the only thing remaining for my health being the vitality inherent in nourishment, nurturing and mass itself. The spleen is clean – now it can grow, if you like. And there is still a limitation from my mind…a chemistry internally which is there as memory and therefore protection. Whereas before the situation transpired that limited chemistry developed a limited perspective and capacity and want when it came to intake, this time the limitation is merely that of paranoia. Instead of hampering desire and therefore intake quantity, it hampers my intake only in the precise nature of what goes in (picking as opposed to jumping!) but never hampers the amount. The only limitation from my chemistry now is the one that makes my mind wary about failure – constantly alert to anything that may indicate a lack of health and a reverse step. This is keeping me safe at the moment and I imagine will lessen with time. I have witnessed the inner intention change. Mentally I have always been intent on health, but physically I have never been intent on health this directly before – so that the behaviours that emerge are direct assaults on calories and direct consumptions of meals of nearly 400 calories followed by deserts – always, even if I do not desire one for my appetite. And this has bubbled up inside of me, making my responses different. The only wariness I possess is a constant eye on any potential regression because I am so new within this. My first ready meal was less than a week ago…!
And so the loosening up is that of the watchful eye. A week is still early days, but there is increasing faith that I want and desire the calories from a very physical perspective (i.e. more yoghurt than I would ‘mentally’ give myself, more sweets than I would ‘mentally’ think I would want etc. because my body is asking for them). M&S yesterday showed me that once again – as does my behaviour throughout the day…
…so perhaps my watchful memory can relax a little, make the intent flow a little better, and make health a lot quicker to come…?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)