Tag: suicide

Sunday

~ e.v. ~ Leave a comment

First, I have to mention it: I was quite upset by the news of Caroline Flack’s death yesterday, which is surprising since I don’t think I had heard of her before she was arrested in December. I suppose that it’s just because I almost did what she did; I know roughly how she must have felt, and it brings back those memories for me. I think it’s incredibly sad. I also think that from the details that have been revealed so far, the case is a bit of a mess and it’s not at all clear why the Crown Prosecution Service were pushing ahead with prosecution. I hope that an appropriate level of scrutiny will be applied here. It is in the public interest to determine whether the CPS acted responsibly and to ensure they are held to account if they did not.

So… weekend. Storm Dennis followed Storm Ciara, but I was having none of it this weekend. This is England, if you react to a bit of moisture by staying inside then you’re in the wrong country.

Most nearby Parkruns were cancelled due to fears over the weather, but ours was on and saw a good turnout (probably because it was the only one on…). My run was terrible at 22 minutes. I have a half marathon in seven weeks and I feel so unprepared and unfit. But I did about 12k total on Saturday.

I ran another 12k this morning, bringing my weekly mileage to 55km (mixing units, sorry not sorry). The run this morning was actually a lot better, my heart rate stayed low and I kept a comfortable pace pretty easily. Unfortunately, Dennis had brought lots and lots of water, so I ended up getting my feet wet at one point when I happened across a huge lake standing between me and the bridge over the motorway. I tried to edge around it but my feet became submerged. I squelched along for a couple of minutes afterwards before deciding to take my socks off, which improved things marginally. 

I got back into the park and found that it was a little bit wet. I’ve never seen it anywhere near as flooded as this before. Yes that is a bench mostly underwater in the background. Yes you are supposed to be able to sit on it.

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Then I came home and ate a croissant.

My hip felt a bit uncomfortable this afternoon, but some stretching and foam rolling sorted it out. I’ll have to stay diligent about stretching it as I start to get back into serious mileage.

Citalopram day zero

~ e.v. ~ 7 Comments

Trigger warning: suicide, down at the bottom.

LIFE updates!

Phone call with IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapy) was fine and I’m on the CBT waiting list, which is going to be a few months.

Gastroenterology appointment was OK. He was concerned my haemoglobin levels had dipped at my last blood test (March) and had me do another one today. He mentioned the possibility of long term iron supplementation, dependent upon the results. I think they’ll be OK. In the words of David Lee Roth, I don’t feel anaemic.

He (the doctor, not David Lee Roth) is drawing a blank on the cause of the bleeding but suggested that if/when I next have active bleeding I could go to A+E and they might be able to do some kind of immediate test. He called it a ‘scan’, which sounds a lot less mechanically intrusive than jamming a camera down my throat.

I asked him about the SSRIs and he said it would likely be fine.

So I’ve decided to start taking them… tonight. On the way back from the appointment I was coming up with excuses why I shouldn’t, but the fact is that I’m not OK and I need to admit this. For the past couple of weeks I’ve felt dreadful. At the moment I feel light headed, spaced out, my stomach is very unhappy and I had so much nausea this morning when minor things at work stressed me. I feel like I’m actually physically ill when at work, and magically better over the weekends. I’m still worried about side effects, but let’s just rephrase that a moment – I am anxious about side effects. That comes with the territory, doesn’t it?

The hospital itself was a strange experience. Firstly, my mum met me from work and we went over there on the bus, but before getting on the bus I took her on a tour of the graffiti near my workplace. The graffiti is of the extremely talented street-art variety, not just random tags. That was fine. What wasn’t fine was running into Becky. I felt like… I’d left work for the day, I was with my mother, it was personal time. Why you are here, Becky? Your presence is intrusive to my personal life. That’s how I felt when I saw her face on my phone when it notified me she was looking at my social media. Why does it always have to be you? Why is it never James or any other random colleague? It’s always you.

So that was uncomfortable. We just ignored each other, because why would you say hello to someone when you can just stalk their LinkedIn profile instead.

And the hospital itself…

The last time I was at that particular hospital was December. I felt dreadful at the time. I was anaemic, work seemed to be imploding around me, and I had the other issue in the background. I felt absolutely awful that day, everything was getting too much, and the day after, I decided to kill myself (and suddenly felt a lot happier). Obviously, I didn’t do that, but this was how I felt during that period of my life. I remember after the appointment going through the car park feeling that life as I knew it just seemed to be drifting away from me. Wandering through the car park today was a bit of a surreal experience. I didn’t remember it until I was there.