THE SCARIEST MOMENTS FROM THE LAST FIVE YEARS | HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2024

For Halloween 2019, I wrote a blog post titled; Five Scariest Moments of My Life (you can read it here) and I thought that this year, I’d do an updated version. Because I would obviously still rank the moments listed in that original post as the scariest in my life, I thought that I’d just add to them with scary moments that have occurred throughout the previous five years since that post…

EVERYTHING I’VE ACHIEVED SINCE BEING SECTIONED ONE YEAR AGO

On this day (February 18^th) one year ago, it was the beginning of my most recent detention under section 2 of the 1983 Mental Health Act, and so I obviously wanted to create some content to mark the date. I had a huge brainstorm of what angle to take with the blog post, and I was stuck between talking through the complaint I’d put in regarding many different instances through the admission and the polar opposite of looking at all the achievements I’ve made in this past year. Eventually, I decided to do both! But, they’ll be in separate posts because I wanted to post the achievements piece on the actual anniversary of being sectioned so as to really enhance the idea that it’s actually an achievement in itself to have not been sectioned since then too!

HOW I’M GETTING THROUGH A BROKEN WRIST, TIME IN HOSPITAL, & SURGERY

“Scared is what you’re feeling. Brave is what you’re doing.”

Room by Emma Donoghue 

Apologies for the gap between the last post and this, hopefully when you read this you’ll understand why that happened…

MANAGING THE RELUCTANCE TO EVEN GO TO HOSPITAL

You know, when my mental health was at its most poorly – when I was finding myself in hospitals two and three times a week – one key reason for me going there tended be that I had self-harmed (in a way which could have actually cost me my life, but it wasn’t always a suicide attempt) in response to auditory hallucinations. Then, when they were content with my actions and silenced, I didn’t want to die or experience pain in any way, so I would seek medical attention for whatever I had done. 

But, the professionals attitude changed toward me when they couldn’t understand the power of the hallucinations, and in their eyes; I was just wasting their time and resources. From then, I found myself being met with disdain and contempt from the moment I checked in at the A&E reception desk and that – I’d like to think, understandably – led to an intense reluctance to ever set foot in a hospital. It was like every time I entered the building, I could almost hear the eyes of all the hospital staff roll in their sockets, coupled with their overwhelming urge to comment; “it’s her again.”

DBT, PRACTICAL ITEMS, & BRAVERY IN HOSPITAL ADMISSIONS | MY FINAL TENDON SURGERY

So, I was recently admitted to the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) – a hospital under the Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – for a final surgery on my thumb and it made me think and realise all the different elements you need when being admitted to hospital. And that they don’t have in evolve around packing a toothbrush and chargers for your phone!

Why I was admitted…

Unfortunately, I broke my wrist in November 2019, and apparently that injury can lead to what happened with my thumb on Boxing Day (December 26^th) 2019. I was using my thumbs to try to wiggle the cork of a bottle of Prosecco loose when all of a sudden, I couldn’t move my right thumb (you can read my first post about the injury here)!

It wasn’t as though it was sore, and I couldn’t move it because it’d hurt, I just genuinely couldn’t move it. It was so frustrating because I could feel my brain telling my thumb to lift up, but it just hung there, powerless, limp and lifeless. It was definitely one of those things where you don’t appreciate what you’ve got until it’s gone! I really hadn’t recognised just how important my thumb was to my general movement and ability to do things until I couldn’t use it.

WHAT IT’S REALLY LIKE TO BE UNDER THE CARE OF THE CRISIS TEAM

“Never give up on someone with a mental illness. When ‘I’ is replaced with ‘we.’ Illness becomes wellness”

Shannon L Alder

The Crisis Team are definitely an element of mental health which is misunderstood, and the Teams are often the ones who receive the most negative feedback. In this post, and as someone who is currently under the care of the Crisis Team, I hope to promote a better understanding of them and instil hope in others to utilise their local Team for help and support in a mental health crisis.


The first instance

My first memory of an interaction with the Crisis Team is from 2009 when I had attempted suicide through taking an overdose. Somehow my Mum knew I had done it and she tried to convince me to go to hospital for the potentially life-saving antidote treatment. I refused and she asked what she was supposed to do, and I remember telling her “ring the Crisis Team because it sounds like you’re in a crisis!” To be honest, I don’t remember actually speaking to the Crisis Team, but they came to the house and arranged for me to have a Mental Health Act assessment with two Psychiatrists and an AMHP (Approved Mental Health Practitioner). I was detained under Section 2 of the 1983 Act and the Crisis Team opened the door to allow six Police to march in, restrain me, handcuff me, and carry me out to their van.

“YOU’RE JUST GOING TO CUT AGAIN!” | THE IMPORTANCE OF BELIEF & HOPE IN MENTAL HEALTH | MY RECENT SURGERY

For those who are new here or have missed my previous posts on it, in December 2019, I tore my EPL tendon in my thumb while opening a bottle of Prosecco on Boxing Day(!) and had to have emergency surgery. I then accidentally tore the repair and have been set to have a tendon transfer surgery (where they take some of the tendon from my index finger and use it in my thumb) ever since -  you can read about how I’m coping with the prospect of more surgery here.

My second surgery hasn’t just been postponed because of the lockdown though, my Surgeon is of the mindset that they need to get my thumb into as good a condition as possible before operating on it. So, until the surgery, I’ve had to learn how to cope with the pain and until the night of the 7^th (of May), I was managing with painkillers and my physiotherapy exercises. On the Thursday night, though, I got the most incredibly overwhelming pain in my thumb and out of pure desperation, I decided that I literally wanted to just cut it off! Looking back, of course that seems like a… ridiculously stupid idea but at the time, I was just so sick of the pain that I was willing to do whatever it took to make it stop. I’ve been in physical pain before and have never self-harmed because of it, so I just hope that this illustrates just how bad that initial pain was. On the other hand, I’ve self-harmed a lot as a result of psychological and emotional pain so maybe I shouldn’t be all that surprised that I had turned to it as a coping mechanism for this physical pain.

HOW I’M COPING WITH THE PROSPECT OF MORE SURGERY | IN COLLABORATION WITH NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE HOSPITALS NHS FOUNDATION TRUST | AD

http://www.newcastle-hospitals.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/NewcastleHosps

In January I talked about the connection between mental and physical health after needing tendon surgery at the Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI); part of the Newcastle Hospitals Trust. For those who missed that post, on Boxing Day 2019 I was attempting to open a bottle of Prosecco by wiggling the cork out with my thumbs when all of a sudden, I couldn’t move my right thumb anymore! I thought it was dislocated and went to my local Minor Injuries where – after an x-ray – I was told that it was ‘fine’ and to ‘put it in warm water and slowly start moving it.’ 

After a few days that feeling that something was really wrong became intolerable and I took myself to the RVI. When I was being triaged by a Nurse I actually said to him “I feel like such an idiot for coming to A&E because of my thumb” because I honestly thought I’d just be laughed away and told to follow the advice of the Nurse in Minor Injuries but in fact, the exact opposite happened! The Nurse sent me to the RVI’s Minor Injuries and literally as soon as the Nurse there called my name and I stood to follow him to an exam room, he looked at my thumb and said “well, there’s definitely something wrong with that, isn’t there?!” I honestly couldn’t have been more grateful and comforted – which sounds strange that I was comforted by the thought of something being wrong but it was more about the fact that I’d been right the entire time and that I was especially right in coming to A&E. It was actually such a relief.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALTH | MY TENDON SURGERY

There’ll probably be some people who follow me on Twitter who will be surprised that it’s taken me so long to blog about my recent injury and the subsequent surgery. I guess that with me putting the majority of my life on I’m NOT Disordered and social media(!), some people assume that I’ll talk about anything and everything. Whilst it’s true that I probably have less privacy boundaries than most people, you guys don’t know everything and sometimes it’s less about keeping things from you and more about me not being ready to talk about something. And that’s the case here… After meeting with my GP today and having a good cry and talk with her, I finally feel able to talk more about what happened to me on Boxing Day.