Wednesday 14th May 2014

Today has been a horrid day and I can’t wait for it to be over.

After a spotty night’s sleep I was awoken by a phone call telling me that the psychiatrist’s appointment that I have been waiting for these last four weeks (and that was supposed to have been an emergency appointment to try to get access to some of the services that have been withdrawn from me) had been cancelled.  The consultant had phoned in sick, which I don’t have a problem with, but I was offered a slightly earlier appointment with a junior doctor on his team only to have that offer taken away from me within two hours.  The reason given was that the junior doctors aren’t allowed to see patients without a consultant being there which begs the question – why wasn’t there someone of consultant status ready to take over in such an emergency?

I had what I can only describe as an attack which was a mixture of a panic attack and an anxiety attack with a lot of anger thrown in.  I wept uncontrollably as I tried desperately to get an alternative to going to A&E which, in my heightened emotional state, I would have been unable to endure.  My anxiety around people in confined spaces would have been too much to handle in such a crowded environment and the prospect of sitting there for hours followed by God knows how long sitting in the room that they put mental health patients in alone, usually for long periods (based on previous experience), would have done me no favours either as there would be no distraction from my own thoughts.  At times of crisis, being alone with one’s own thoughts can be as distressing as being constantly hounded to tell your story of how you came to be in the crisis in the first place by a constant stream of doctors who fail to read your medical notes.

After a lot of panicked phone calls, getting me even more angry and worked up, I was given an appointment for next Tuesday after I impressed the urgent need to see the psychiatrist following an offer of a date in June (which would have meant that I would have had to wait almost two months for the emergency appointment I asked for during the period leading up to my aborted suicide attempt).

Despite my strained relationship with my parents, I felt compelled to call my mother to ask for her to be with me because I felt unsafe and she and my father arrived about an hour and a half later.  I needed someone to be with me and even my parents would do.

Dad went to the shops to get a jar of coffee after it transpired that there wasn’t any in the flat and, while he was gone, Mum told me that Dad’s nose problem was more serious than they had been letting on.  My Dad’s nose has been bleeding non-stop for about five months and, after two failed attempts at cauterisation, he had an operation to take a biopsy of the growth in his nose.  She didn’t tell me when they got the results but Mum said it has been diagnosed as a cancerous polypus that extends from the top of his nose, down the back and into the soft palate.

I may not have the best relationship with my parents but that news shook me and wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear given my emotional state at the time but listening to Mum relaying the full story, seemingly in real time, took my mind off my own thoughts which is what I needed even if the content of the distraction was upsetting.

Luckily, Dad is being rushed through for an operation in the next couple of weeks so we won’t have long to wait for any news for long.  The cancer hasn’t spread to the brain or the bone so it looks as though, if they can excise the affected growth and some of the surrounding area, he might make a full recovery.

Since they finally took a look at Dad’s nose with a camera, he has been rushed through tests and exploratory operations so quickly his head is still spinning and my parents have both said that the care Dad has received on the NHS has been first class.  I wonder what would have happened if, as the Tories seem to want, there was no healthcare free at the point of delivery in the UK?

I am calmer now but it has taken all day to become so and I’m scared about what will happen between now and next Tuesday as I wait for my postponed appointment.  With life looking so bleak at the moment, it will take a miracle for me to find the strength to carry on.

Monday 12th May 2014 – additional

After a long and ultimately pointless ‘discussion’ with Sue ‘Kitty’ Jones about my diary entry for Saturday 10^th May, she seems to flounced off in a huff for me even mentioning the original debate we had that had me blocked from the Facebook group we were having it in.

She accused me of attacking her in the group and that’s why I was blocked from the supposedly ‘open’ group.  She accused me of singling her out, totally ignoring the fact that she was the one most involved in the debate that raged in the group so it’s a little difficult to bring any other people into the diary entry I wrote.  There was a guy called Glen but, as he merely echoed what Ms Jones was saying and as he barely had any input into the debate other than echoing Ms Jones, it’s hard to say much about him.  She accused me of attacking other group members but there was only one other main contributor to the debate and that was Glen.

During the contretemps on this blog’s diary entry for Saturday 10^th, I even apologised for saying it was her that blocked me on the Facebook group but added the caveat that it wasn’t much of a leap to assume it was her because of the fact that it was during our debate that it happened so it must have been her or someone did it at her behest.

Poor old Ms Jones can’t see what I’m trying to achieve with my new blog – the chance at creating a new political system that might solve society’s problems rather than perpetuate them.  All she can see is someone who seems to be attacking her precious Labour party even though I wasn’t because I am sympathetic to some Socialist ideals, just not to the point that blinds me to their obvious faults.

I hope Ms Jones goes back to her blog and continues to fight the good fight against the current Tory-led Coalition Government because, in her own way, she’s doing a good thing in trying to get rid of them; however, I hope she leaves me and those who want to rid the UK’s political system of tribalism alone because all she will do is damage our attempts to create a better way forward with her ‘Labour is good, Labour is the only way’ attitude.

I have no doubt that she will try to bad mouth me on her blog and she’s welcome to do so because I believe in freedom of speech which is why her comments on the diary entry for Saturday 10^th will remain on the entry as will my replies.  At least I’m not afraid of other people’s views.

Monday 12th May 2014

I took the first dose of my new anti-depressant Saturday night after Diana, my soon-to-be ex-wife, found some extra money to get my prescriptions filled.  As a result I spent most of yesterday in a virtual coma.  When I finally woke up I still felt drowsy and wasn't really able to maintain any kind of focus.

Considering how this medication affects me and the fact that I have another different anti-depressant to take every morning as well I'm not exactly sure how the Government expect me to be able to hold down a job, even with the diminishing effects.  I have never really had the level of diminished effect with increased dosage that the psychiatrist says I should have, not that he believes me.  I get down to about 12 hours of sleep per day but nothing shorter and my sleep pattern is still too irregular, meaning that I can be drowsy most of the day and awake most of the night one day and then vice versa in the next day or two.

It seems as though my medication does have a slight positive effect on my depression, judging by the difference between the period I wasn't able to take my medication and when I'm able to take it; however, when I'm on the medication, I can barely function and when I'm not on medication I can function better but I become so depressed it sometimes dips into suicidal ideation.

My latest anti-depressant also causes me to become light-headed if I stand up too fast and causes my vision to become blurry.  So, I ask you, how the Hell can I hold down a job with regular hours (if I can even find a job in the first place)?

Don't get me wrong - I want a job.  I don't like being on benefits, never have, but the Government have taken away my benefits, leaving me with nothing.  How is that "making work pay"?

The DWP actually agree that my diagnosis has become worse since I was last asked to fill out another monitoring form but they took away my benefits.  My living expenses haven't gone away but they've left me with nothing and I'm expected to have the woman who's divorcing me (we have a court date for early June) to financially support me because we are forced to share a flat because the local authority have given us very little help in re-housing us in separate accommodation.

I know that there are many others who are in the same (or an even worse) position but, after all I've done for other people trying to stand up for them when the welfare 'reforms' weren't affecting me, surely I should be allowed the opportunity to think only of my own situation?  It's not like anyone else is standing up for me now that the full force of the welfare 'reforms' are now bearing down on me, is it?

Saturday 10th May 2014

I was in the middle of having a debate on a Facebook group called “I bet I can find a million people who DON’T want David Cameron as our PM” in a comment stream on a link to my new blog which has a re-blogging of my open letter to the three main political party leaders from this very blog.  The person, Sue ‘Kitty’ Jones (a blogger in her own right and probably with a bigger audience than I have), criticised my piece saying that it would be impossible to get the major parties to work together.  I pointed out that, in post-WW2 Britain, we had a consensus amongst the parties so it proves that it is possible.  The trouble is, even though I tried to point out that all the political ideologies have some good features, she ignored my caveat that I meant the pure ideologies not the partisan versions being used by the political parties of today.

Ms Jones countered my argument that stripping tribalism out of politics because it achieves nothing (as any good one administration does is immediately undone by the other administration when the opposing party takes power).with a barrage of pointless attacks saying ‘human rights abuses’ and such are parts of Tory ideological makeup and how can there be anything good about them.  I pointed out that she was using partisan ideology examples to counter an anti-partisan approach that I was trying to put forward.

I would have continued the conversation but I found myself unable to return to the group page.  I assume that this was orchestrated by Ms Jones herself because she couldn’t grasp the simple difference between what she was talking about and what I was talking about.  You would think, as I had also posted links to two other re-blogged postings from this blog outlining the need for political change and an idea how that might work, that she would have been able to distinguish the difference but she obviously doesn’t like to read any other viewpoint than her own, is a staunch Labour supporter and believes that a vote for Labour is the only way forward (she said as much in our conversation).

How do I know that Ms Jones either blocked me herself or had me blocked from the group?  Let’s just say that I have more than one Facebook account and I got in with that one just fine.  So much for it being an ‘open’ group.

It seems that, with people as blinkered as Ms Jones, my efforts to nurture political change in the UK will be forever stymied because, with her attitude, the status quo is all we’ll ever have here and the UK will be forever doomed to remain in a cycle of swinging between the Left and Right sides of the political spectrum being in power, leading to political stagnation and a reinforcement of the status quo.

I don’t know why I bother.

I suppose the only good thing that came out of it is that, for once, I’m being branded (albeit silently) a Right-winger which should please the critics of my work on Your Thurrock who always branded me a Left-winger.