Clarification (by sarah)

Ok from some of the reactions I got from the previous post about depression I thought I just needed to make it clear that there are mulitiple pains that I suffer - some of which have known cuases like the pain from the scar tissue/inflammation in my shoulders and the disc in my lower back that likes to squeeze its way out.

However, around the time I came down with the impedigo ie a few weeks before the strip of red rash I begain to get other pains - in the joints like flu and burning skin and stabby pains that suddenly bubbly burned (if that makes any sense).

These have continued even though the possible shingles rash has gone.

Previous to this bought of illness I had the localised pain of my shoulders (a worsoning condition I've had since a teenager), lower back and pelvis (which still clicks if I do too much). Plus the arthritic wrist joint and all the associated refered pain from them. Now where the refered pain sits in the medical world is complecated along with secondary problems of if I stress my muscles clamp down and go into spasm. I know about most of this and have been doing my pain management stuff for them but these new pains have just added ontop.

Increasingly in the last few months I have also been even more tired than normal for me. Last time I was tired all the time they said it was becuase a muscle had gone into spasm and just hadn't come out - resulting in the upper half of my back being ridged and therefore not flexing properlly. I have also been waking up with pins and needles in my hands and feet resulting in stumbling first thing in the morning. I have also been falling over lots. My joints have always been weak especially just after I had Jean so I have alwasy stumbled more than most poeple. The pins and needles have been there since the pregnancy and they say they'll follow it up and they decide there's no point as I'm managing.

Depression is a complecated subject and what is cuase and effect can always be argued but people with chronic pain end up depressed becuase they are in pain lots especially around flare ups. IBS also has this as I assume any chronic illness does to be quiet honest.

In the past I have also lost the use of my hands for extended periods of time and obviously there was the wheel chair stuff after the pregnancy. Dealing with this sort of thing is an all to common occurance for me.

I was taken into the hospital the other week becuase I was dehydrated the other week - I felt I wasn't sick enough to go even to the Drs but when a Dr says you need to be on a drip and is offering you an ambulance - you go to the hospital. I had an infection that was acting up the IBS and if I wasn't so scared of drs and hospitals I would have gone and seen him sooner. I hate Drs and hospitals so only tend to go when Alaric forces the issue this last lot started with the impetigo thing and I only went - becuase I couldn't actually open my mouth to eat.

Now I don't know what is cuasing the skin sensitivity but the back pain is not cuased by depression - but chronic pain can be made worse by stress becuase your muscles clamp down and there is more strain on you body. If you are stressed you don't relax properlly etc...

Stress is also a known trigger for IBS. Now I am the sort of person who gets stressed so I have to be careful about how I manage things - now there are different types of depression so sometimes it can be there with stress and be mixed up with the stress and sometimes not.

I also got myself run down and exhorsted which didn't help - and I didn't notice it happening until the Dr said.

Anyway the point of this is that the pain (at least the old pain) is not cuased by depression but can be made less managable and more server by stress, some with the IBS. The dr was very admimant that I've been doing too much. He also said this was not something that could be solved over night. So to minimise my very physically symptoms I am supposed to be avoiding stress at the moment, now how mind works over matter is a very intracote subject and there are shelves and shelves of books on the subject.

So I don't propose to go into that in depth becuase its really not going to help my situation.

A Depressing Outcome (by sarah)

I went to the drs yesturday to get the results of my blood test - they decided not to run them as apparently I've had them done in the last year - don't know when :/ maybe at the hospital. And becuase there was no need as I'm depressed according to the questionaire.

Now one of the heavey scorers on there is sleep problems and tiredness - well yes - thats the problem I am tired all the time :/

Another was feeling like your failing - erm well I am failing at stuff aren't I becuase I'm sick and tired all the time.

And yes I probably am depressed - the dr said its Life Situation depression which can't be solved with drugs and that I have been under too much stress and things for the last few years.

He said it was only a matter of time before I broke - I've got two chronic conditions - chronic pain and IBS both of which have depression as 'side effects' (along with chronic fatigue). And then there are the stomach ulcers.

I still haven't gotten around to telling him about the pins and needles and had to sort of force the issue that the brown blotches on my skin are getting worse not better. I have yet another cream for them a topical steroid - anti-inflamitory and anti-fungal called Daktacort hydrocortisone cream. So I am hoping that will get rid of it - as its even on my neck now and I'm petrified it will get onto my face.

The Dr also can not back date the note for college to when I started to feel really bad - ie just before the suspected shingles rash appeared as... I didn't go to the Drs with it! But I did - I went to the Drs and had a prescription - but its not there in my notes - only the impetigo which was mild - but I actaully went to the drs that time becuase I couldn't open or close my mouth due to a swollen gland in me neck and the skin issue was an aside.

I've been going to the drs on and off for months now feeling feeling bad and its not there in the notes! This is when I start to feel I'm imagining it all.

Imagining the pain thats crippling me - pain management people never sorted out the stuff they said they would. Imagining the pins and needles and the amount I'm falling over, to tiredness - the fact that one of my back muscles has been in spasm for two years (what the physios tell me never corrosponds with what the Dr then tells me).

The way I feel at the moment is that I didn't need to go into hospital for the diarreia stuff and that my course has been screwed up for no reason what so ever now - if its only depression then why couldn't I go and do my presingtation?

I actually feel far more what I think of as depressed since seeing the dr - I feel I've just screwed everything up for no reason now and I'm in so much pain and so tired all the time and have an upset tummy all the time. I now feel like a complete flake and that everything I do is tainted - but wasn't feeling like this until he said I was depressed which is in its self stupid.

I feel like a complete and utter failure.

So yeah I suppose that means I'm depressed - I'm signed off for a month and have to see him agian in three weeks time to assess things - he suggested I think hard about taking on the potential client I also saw yesturday and about college. He did say i could have a cover letter thing for college but I would have to pay so he suggested I see if they will pay for it.

I'm feeling like the rugs been pulled out from under me.

The other thing is they say there's no sign of inflamation - so why do my joints hurt? None of it makes any sense. I wish they hadn't lost my notes from before I moved here - all the stuff for the pain clinic - all the tests I went through and some of them where quiet painfull.

Last time I asked about this they said I'd been coping so long with it that there was no point in doing anything other than pain management. So I'm left wondering is there really nothing that can be done - am I really going to feel like this for the rest of my life?

Becuase if that's the case how can you actually be anything other than depressed? Especially as the back stuff gets worse with time and I have to be so careful. I don't want to end up being scared of going out -I saw the state of some of the older people on my pain management course and I don't want to end up like that.

To be fair he did ask me what diagnosis I wanted and I said I didn't care as long as it was something that could be sorted and thats true - I just want to be able to do stuff again.

Cranham Village Bares All – Cranham Moonwalk 09 (by sarah)

Bras in the nights - these bras festooned the woods near the house on Saturday which I had to explain to the Wiggalls earlier in the day. They marked the path of the Cranham Moon Walk 09.

This is the second of these events to pass through here and it is in aid of raising money for breast cancer research.

I think about 30 women turned up in various states of undress, with flashing bits and bobs - some of which was decidedly 'male' looking.

The decended on the wine and biccies like a plague of locust, signed the guest books, gave Jean a huge bunch of Cranham Moon Walk 09 pink balloons and left ruccously up the drive.

Again their were no men! Men should be encouraged to take part and have to do the walk in a bra but it does seem to be a very female only event in the village and I'm not sure some of the women would actually go on it if men where there. I was in disgrace yet again for not having a bra visible and they all loved the fact that Alaric rushed out to hand out the buscuits but didn't know where to look and blushed lots (or so they told me I was bringing the excited Jean down to see them all - she would not go to sleep as she wanted to see moon walkers - her main comment afterwards was it was Charlottes mummy and scout mummy's and cub mummy's and church mummy's - which I thought gave an interesting insite into how she views the world - oh and hedgehog lady which is actually one of our neighbours who wore a hedgehog apron at something).

First Class (by alaric)

Once a week, I go to London for a few days, almost always by train. It costs £42 if I buy a ticket from the station on the day - or, if I book in advance at TheTrainLine, as little as £16. Tickets ordered in advance are cheaper, but it seems there is a limited allocation of each price grade - as the more popular routes quickly sell out of £8 each way tickets, then the next level up (£11.50), then the next level up (£18).

However, when I booked the tickets for last week, for the return journey on Saturday, only the £18 ones remained - but, unusually, there were still some £19.50 first class tickets left.

I'd never travelled first class before. So, I decided I'd give it a try. £1.50 isn't much to spend on an experiment.

And my conclusion is: first class equals a comfier seat and the offer of a free biscuit and tea or coffee.

Which, if I drank hot drinks, would definitely be worth the extra one fifty, at the going rate for such things.

As a non-hot-drinker, I think I about broke even with my experiment, but on a journey of more than an hour, the better seat would be well worth a similarly small price increase.

But travelling first class is nowhere near worth the more than doubling in price (£116 rather than £42) it costs if you buy your ticket on the day. That's a total ripoff.

Twitter Poetry (by sarah)

I have found a home for all those tacky rhymes I came up with about everyday stuff - and that is twitter. I started typing the poems into tweets and found that there is actually a communitee of poeple tweeting poetry which is interesting - Ella who has just joined pointed out that it was something that occured to her straight away although she was thinking hikus not the tacky dross I produce.

Mainly they are the sort of thing I make up to entertain Jean but I am chuffed that one of them has been pilfered (with credit mind!) onto my friends blog - I just couldn't resist making something up about the cat who had too many kittens (and yes I am going to keep on about baby animals - between pregnant cats and guinea pigs and people I seem to be surrounded by an over load of cuteness at the mo!).

Poetry is the one thing that I have had published multiple times - I think actual anthologies/peotry collections that have a poem (one has two in) from me is now at 4 and then a couple in newspapers (nationals 🙂 ). I haven't actually sent any poetry off for a long time last attempt was Myslexia which was a no go though I got a lovely letter from them.

I have been submitting short stories but have found this a bit of a struggle as the stories want to expand them selves into novals and this has obviously been evident in that the responses I've been getting are 'we loved the imagery and the characters but it needed to be a longer story it read in places like a summary' etc...

I'm taking the fact that people are responding positively about the writing even thought it is ultimatly a regection as a good thing?

Poetry quiet frankly doesn't pay enough for me to pay out the postage costs and the like. I have been unable to go to many poetry readings since christmas becuase of my course and stuff but found that was far more rewarding - plus I was reading it out so didn't have to worry about the spellings and gramma - I know what its supposed to sound like so that is how I read it.

Most of my poetry is also niche - it is sciencetific/technical so arty peeps tend to not understand what the poem is actually about and the science peeps go - why are you writing the concept in an unclear way? Sigh.

Short stories just quiet frankly don't want to be short - I am thinking that I need to face the fact that I am a novel writer. This is a bit depressing as when I was writing the Drs Wife I was obsessed with it and could not leave it alone - I have perposly not started another noval becuase of this - for a start I have seen 0 back for the invested time - I hope purely becuase I wrote the whole thing in long hand and have only typed up the first 30, 000 words! That was all pre-flood and I haven't typed up a single word of it since which is disgraceful - its a short novel at 85,000 words approximatly - obviously this is a guestimate I have avearged words on lines etc... I did this for all the different note books its in and there are alot of them :/

But why am I writing about writing again? I am concidering my future yet again - if I am just stressed out then I need to think about academia seriously thats if I can go back after ending up in hosptial a second time on them :(. The same goes for business plans - stomach ulcers and IBS are both apparently acted up by stress so I need to actually look at my life and not fall apart.

I want to achive something with my life but writing is a gamble - especially as I can not spell for toffee and I do try (well most of the time my blog posts on here are a bit erm... I just want to write what I'm thinking and send it live and so is often not spell checked). The spelling is my bottle neck - I have missed submission deadlines waiting for people to spell check things for me which is frustrating and not their fualt they are busy people and there's no way I can pay for proper proof reading at least on shorts.

This has turned into a bit of a ramble hasn't it?