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| Looking down the valley |
During October, I pondered on the
fact that since the start of my illness, I often couldn’t remember what I did
between 2 and 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
My partner said it was because of the ‘circadian biological clock’ (lowest
energy point) but I still thought it weird.
Another side-effect I noticed was being clumsy after a few drinks, even
when I didn’t feel drunk. The brain
really is a strange thing!
At the start of the month, my joy
at discovering that aromatherapy seemed to work was short-lived. Despite dropping off during mediation, when I
turned over to sleep I would be plagued by the familiar barrage of random crap
going through my head and raging hot flushes.
That being said, on 1st October, I still felt comparatively
rested. I spent the morning refining and
posting my blog for September and added a link to ‘Kos ‘anecdotes’. At lunchtime, I had a dentist appointment in
the next village and planned to go straight onto the big town. I needed to go to the bank and get some
essentials.
I felt anxious during the journey. The bus crawled along on approach into the next
village - due to someone falling in the road apparently. The dentist was running late and it took half
an hour instead of ten minutes. I filled
the waiting time with breathing exercises.
I saw a new, young dentist who seemed nice. However, when cleaning my teeth, he kept
telling me to relax my lip even though I was concentrating on my breathing to
relax and he had hold of my lip so how was I supposed to loosen it?
Afterwards, I felt very strange
and light-headed. I contemplated going
home but a bus stood waiting at the stop so I got on it. I still felt weird when I got to the big town. I walked around to clear my head and had a
‘comfort break’ in the department store before embarking on my errands.
I got annoyed when buying light
bulbs. It took ages to find the right
ones as the packaging had changed and they had doubled in price. It was all a ploy to steer you towards the
more expensive low energy options. An
elderly Asian couple shared my struggle.
Holding newly-purchased lamps, they searched for the bulbs to match. The man said to me: “you wouldn’t think it
would be so hard to buy bloody light bulbs would you?” Touché!
The bus home was absolutely
packed – mainly with loud and smelly high school kids. A nice girl sat next to me at first but when
she got off, a huge young man took her place.
He was so large that he practically sat on top of me! I became very squashed and hot. The bus crawled along and I thought, ‘My
god! Will this bus journey never end?’ I got off early and decided I was never doing
that again. I had thought it would be economical combining errands but it became
such a ghastly experience. I was
exhausted!
That night, it was an effort to
sleep even though I was knackered and the fatigue continued into the next
day. I managed to go to the market and
complete some chores with small rests in between. It was a lovely day and I should have spent
more time out in the sun. But I felt too
depressed as a result of the previous day’s traumas followed by a rubbish
night. I played guitar to cheer myself
up. I worked on stretching my fingers
and quicker chord changes and added another song (‘Mr Tambourine Man’) to my
repertoire. I still struggled with the G
chord but it sounded right occasionally.
That night I took Temazepam for the
first time in three weeks and fell asleep quickly. I didn’t wake until 7 a.m. On Friday morning, I lay dozing, smiling to
myself because I’d had a decent sleep for the first time in ages. Then I dropped off again for another hour.
My friend with the interesting
ailments came round. Her arm was still
not right and she had trouble changing the dressing on her toe. She had tests done on her eye and while awaiting
the results had been prescribed some drops which made her feel awful and
tired. I said it might be one of the
active ingredients and she should check.
 |
| Writer's house - Looking out |
Despite my extreme fatigue, the sunny
weekend weather tempted us out of the house.
On the Saturday, we walked up the valley side to visit an open day as
part of ‘fun palaces’.
 |
| Writer's desk |
This took place
at a house once occupied by a famous local poet and had since become a posh
writing school.
Thus most attendees were
literati. There might even have been some well-known people present; they
all looked the same to me. We had a
nosey round the house and gardens,
enjoying the views looking back down the valley.
On Sunday we walked along the
canal to the hippie boats. There was evidence
of new cultivation and built structures; including a shed that looked like a pixie house.
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| Pixie house |
From there, we crossed the road and proceeded up
a small valley, following a path up on the left side of the stream. We spied
several old broken down buildings amongst pretty trees and waterfalls, and
came to what looked like the remains of a mill next to a bridge over the stream. We crossed the bridge and ascended a steep
paved path. We then veered off to a
smaller path to follow the line of the stream again, albeit much higher up.
I realised I had dropped my camera
somewhere. Retracing our steps back down
to the bridge, I found it lying on the ground and then we had to do the climb
again!
 |
| Old broken down building |
 |
| Mini moor |
We saw an old friend with a group
of walkers. She told us she had lost her
teaching job when the school she worked at became an academy - yet another
victim of public and voluntary sector hell!
I briefly updated her on my
situation. We continued to a flat rock
which was a lot more overgrown than we remembered (like a mini moor) for a picnic.
After that, we walked back down and tried to identify some animal
droppings (I found out later they belonged to deers).
 |
| Kinky bridge |
The last part of the walk involved a very
steep descent, making our toes very sore, which we briefly forgot at spotting a
kinky sign under a bridge. We caught the bus back to town and had a
drink at the pub on the corner before going home. I then realised that the sole on my boots had
come apart.
That night, I could hardly keep
my eyes open and went to bed early. Despite
dropping off during meditation, when I turned over I couldn’t get to sleep
again! I tried to focus on my breathing
but failed to stop my mind from churning. I tried to practice what the ‘mindfulness’
course suggested – letting my thoughts
come and go without getting caught up in them.
Eventually I did sleep on and off.
The next morning it was so dark. The
weather had turned truly awful and I remarked on how lucky we had been at the weekend.
I worked on getting my blogs out
to a wider audience. I received a
request on LinkedIn from a blogger in India which led me to join a writers’
group. I started a new blog on Wordpress
called ‘Cool Places – words and pictures from the South Pennines and beyond’. I added three new posts straight off. I also set up an account on IFTTT (if this,
then that, which automatically sends your blogs to social media when you post something),
updated my social network accounts and started uploading a backlog of photos
which prompted a few ‘likes’.
As it was Mental Health Awareness
Week, I looked for Mental Health blogs I might be able to link to. In truth, I became sick of the sight of posh
people and footballers banging on about stress and depression and wanted to
redress the balance but found no easy way to do it.
Week 4 of ‘mindfulness’ involved
a ‘compassionate’ meditation and analysing the diary sheets from week 3. On Monday I got a headache from working on my
writing followed by reading the actual textbook so didn’t have the brain
power. When I got round to it the next
day, it took me ages – 20 minutes my arse!
As expected, I made no startling revelations but noted small changes I
could make to manage my fatigue.
My Mum rang and I tried to
convince her that ‘mindfulness’ was worth a go.
Of course she had lots of resistance claiming she couldn’t meditate
because she ‘couldn’t stop thinking’. I
told her that wasn’t the point. In the
end we agreed I would bring the book when I next visited.
I called on my art neighbour who was
quite stressed. Their house move had
been delayed due to a dispute over who owned the garden. She had also started a counselling course and
was trying to manage her ill parents. I shared
the wisdom of my experience of dealing with elderly parents: there was only so
much you could do before accepting help from the professionals.
I endured three night’s running
of truly awful sleep despite meditating, breathing exercises and other relaxation
tricks. I tried to implement the
philosophy of the mediation practice - being kind and patient with myself and not
give up. Wednesday night I gave up on
all that in favour of Temazepam and slept through to 6.30.a.m. Then the boiler
woke me. I dozed another couple of hours
before struggling to get out of bed. I
felt really groggy.
Thursday night I was back at
square one. As I tossed and turned, my
thoughts turned to the current Ebola outbreak and how ineffectual (and possibly
counter-productive) the response from officials had been and concluded that we
will probably all die from it (have they not seen WWZ?)
Friday morning I felt really
awful but managed to drag myself up to have a bath. In the afternoon, my friend with the interesting ailments visited me. Her hand was a lot better – she had a lot
more movement and less pain, but her toe was still manky and her eye problems
remained.
On the creative arts front, I made
birthday cards. My partner had made a
print of one of his photos as a present for my art friend. I wrapped it in my handmade paper, decorated
with hydrangea flowers (picked from the garden). I was rather proud of my resourcefulness.
On the guitar, I learned three
minor chords and the C chord. I added a
few more songs to my repertoire including ‘natural mystic’– I really enjoyed
that reggae strumming - and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ which made me
realise those fancy intro parts weren’t always as complicated as they sound. I could stretch my fingers a bit more
although C and G were sometimes still jangly.
On Friday night, my partner was
home earlier than normal and cooked mussels and chips for dinner. We stayed up late drinking wine and watching
films. Consequently, I was still tired
on Saturday. In the evening we had arranged to meet our art
friend and some other people for her 50th Birthday. We met at the Wine bar and she appreciated the
crafty effort that had gone into her gifts.
We got acquainted with another friend of hers. She and me ordered the same meal but hers was
miles bigger than mine! (As a good
friend of the owners, she got special favours.
She gave me a bit of hers to make up which was nice). After eating, we went onto the pub round the
corner. At the end of the night, we saw my
art friend into a taxi. By then, it had
gone very foggy which was kinda cool.
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| Small clough |
Sunday we were tired and hungover
but keen to go out. It was still foggy early before brightening up. We walked up to the woods opposite and
followed a small path right up to the top and along the ridge, then carried on
up the lane before veering off onto a footpath to a small clough. It turned out
to be a very steep climb up (weird clough if you ask me!) I got very tired and dehydrated and had to
stop for refreshments before continuing.
We came back out onto a different lane and turned left towards the next
village.
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| Woods via dodgy path |
We then spotted a causeway
leading down and thought it would be okay to follow it but it got very marshy
and tussocky so we turned back. By this time
I was really tired. We retraced our
steps back along the lane, then down a very dodgy path through the woods. We came back onto the road to be
amused yet again by a sign – albeit this time due to augmentation.
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| Augmented sign |
When we got home, our legs ached
from climbing and navigating tricky bits. At bedtime I ran a radox bath. I
could barely keep my eyes open and fell asleep fast. I slept six hours straight then dozed for
another two hours. The best sleep I’d had without drugs for a month! Nevertheless, I was still fatigued and achy
from walking.
I spent Monday working on my
draft blog and read the next chapter of ‘mindfulness’ which involved a
‘treasure of pleasure’ meditation, and writing down ‘ten good things’ at the
end of each day.
I was sceptical about
the helpfulness of this: despite my depression, I had not lost pleasure in life
per se, although I got fed up not being able to do all the stuff I wanted despite
my valiant efforts. But I thought the advice on ‘pacing’ and not
being too hard on myself for not doing enough, might help.
 |
| Steve Harley and band |
In the evening I met my walking
friend at the pub on the corner. She was
sat outside with a pint and I remarked that the not drinking hadn’t lasted
long! She said it was a one-off for our
special night out. We went over to the local club and ensconced ourselves in a corner near the bar to
await the arrival of my partner and Steve
Harley. They both appeared at the
same time. At the start of the gig, I watched Steve’s fingers (as I always did since
learning to play guitar) and realised I knew all the chords he was
playing! They played for two and a
quarter hours, a mix of new and old material, but chatted far too much
in-between songs.
 |
| Steve Harley in solo mode |
My walking friend went home early
saying she had heartburn. She said “if
he does Sebastian, clap for me”. Of
course he didn’t. My partner joked that
the orchestra were hiding behind the curtain – ha! Ha!
After the gig, a woman we knew from
ancient pub days came and chatted to us.
She had been in rehab, saved loads of money, and was now apparently
spending it all on drink! She had got SH
to sign an album for her and kept going on about how gorgeous he was. We escaped to the bar where she followed us. We drank up and ran away.
I was of course tired the next
day but managed to carry on with my normal activities. I finished making a birthday card for mum and
went out to post it. In the afternoon,
following yoga and meditation, I fell asleep for an hour. Feeling refreshed, I practiced guitar – I revised
the chords I’d learned and tried another song.
Cheekily, this added a B7 chord which set me off wondering what the
actual notes were. Obviously I knew the
basic notes of the strings but what made a sharp for example, and what does the
7 mean? I also looked for Steve Harley
song sheets but concluded you had to beg in a sycophantic manner on the fan
site to get them. Bugger that, I thought!
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| Crap on stall roof |
The following day I went to the
next town and visited Posh Nosh in the market hall. I chatted to the stallholders who used to
have a regular pitch at our local ‘farmers market (sic) about how it had gone downhill of late. I noticed a sign pointing up some stairs for
a ‘pop up gallery’. I went to
investigate. There was no such thing but I discovered a
treasure trove of wrecked and abandoned paraphernalia and got
fantastic views of crap on stall roofs.
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| Abandoned paraphernalia 1 |
In the afternoon I wrote a post
for my ‘Cool Places’ blog. I realised I
was getting a bit addicted to this blogging and spamming lark but did not think
that a bad thing. I felt good about linking my writing to photos more and
someone had re-pinned one of my tree prints on Pinterest. Later in the week, I wrote ‘tales from the
co-op number 7’ and tidied up ‘notes on life the universe’ on Blogging.com.
I had a strange night, dropping in
and out of sleep in small bits. The next
day I felt unrested and my partner was feeling unwell. He said he had a headache and I said I had
one most days and he snapped back “oh really”.
I didn’t say anymore as I didn’t want to argue. We sat quietly and later he said sorry.
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| Abandoned paraphernalia 2 |
Workmen in the shed behind our house
started making awful loud noises from 9.00 a.m. and carried on until almost
6.00 p.m. which did my head in. I tried to
pluck up courage to have a word and see if there was anything that could be
done to lessen the disturbance but felt unable to do so without getting angry
or upset.
My partner said he would find
out on his way to work. He did, but didn’t
tell me until he got home in the evening.
In the intervening period, I had tried everything to ignore/block out
the noise to no avail.
In the afternoon I had my second
aromatherapy session. Again, it was nice
despite the pain when she was getting the knots out of my shoulders which I
bore without complaint. After, she said
my shoulders seemed okay but she could tell a lot was going on in my head. She
said I was obviously someone that liked to think a lot and it must be hard to
stop. I said that wasn’t the whole story
and related some of my experiences of having tried everything to calm my mind
down (and reflected again that no-one seemed to get it).
When I got home I attempted meditation. It was impossible with the racket of drilling
outside. I was so tired and frustrated
I cried a bit and knew I wouldn’t sleep but was too knackered to get up. I put rainforest sounds on the DAB radio and lay
listening to it until it became quieter outside. Then I tried to sleep once more but the noise
started up again!
That evening, I rang my mum for
her birthday. Her
stream-of-consciousness conversation made me even more frustrated and tired so
I cut it short. My partner asked me if
it was a hard call. I said I didn’t want
to talk about it. He helped me prepare
dinner and I apologised for being so crap and no fun. He told me not to worry, he was doing art (as
usual).
On Friday I was crossing the road
to the local supermarket. I rushed a bit
too much to beat a van coming round the corner and managed to hurt a muscle in
my left hip. I cursed my own stupidity after
the aromatherapy the day before. The
pain plagued me all day.
 |
| Wrecked river sculpture |
In the afternoon I walked into
town and noticed that the ducks had wrecked
the river sculpture. I met my friend
with the interesting ailments at a cafe in the square. There was some improvement in her various
ailments although her eye problem remained a mystery. The doctors said it might be hayfever which
of course was rubbish.
 |
| First Bus - "You know nowt" |
We had a wander round and spotted a ‘First Bus’ promo featuring a smart bus as seen in London. A woman was shouting at them that they knew “nowt
about round here” because they were from Lancashire. Hilarious!
I saw another friend on the way back; he had lost
his bar job due to an accusation of theft and would be homeless in a week. It sounded like the same shitty crap I went
through (again!) He said he planned to
go to ACAS followed by tribunal if necessary.
I didn’t say anything but bitter experience had taught me that the
employer usually wins.
When I got home I was exhausted. I decided the ‘treasure pleasure’ meditation was
a waste of time and did the ‘compassion’ one instead to try and ease my aches, pains
and extreme fatigue.
Over the weekend, I felt as if I
was coming down with a virus. We stayed
in on Saturday, cooking, baking and crafting. On Sunday, we both felt tired and crap but
needed to get some air. As I was getting
ready to go out, I had a bit of a
fit at the state of the floors. Leaves
and twigs had been trodden right through the house. I told my partner not to wear clumpy boots
inside and he started to argue that he didn’t know they were wet – that was not
the point!
 |
| Old road and buildings |
This put me in a bad mood which dispersed
as we set off on a walk. I suggested going
up to the woods above the playing fields. We spent some time considering the old road
and buildings and imagining what it was like as a village in days gone by. We then carried on up through the woods until
we came upon a ring of stones where we paused until it started raining.
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| Stone in the woods |
We headed downwards and came onto the
riverside path. We marvelled at the
changing water flow. After a dry summer,
recent rain had brought more trees down and the river appeared to have shifted
to the north with a new waterfall forming.
We went for pizza at the Italian
cafe before strolling through town and looked in a skip behind a short-lived
Italian restaurant. We found some old
Perspex shelves and a plastic cutting board destined for crafting
purposes.
By Monday I did
not feel well at all and this was to dominate my experience for the rest of the
month. I spent most of the time in bed,
keeping occupied by working on my various blogs. I worked on drafting ‘memoirs’ and wrote
three entries for ‘Cool Places’ i. I found an old file in which I had written some
blurb about walking. I used this to do
an ‘about’ page then split the blog into two, with one focused on local places and
the other on locations further afield. I
spent ages getting them to look how I wanted.
Simultaneously, I sorted through photos
to upload and choose some for blogs. Too much of this sort of activity made my
head hurt so I tried to limit myself to two hours writing in the mornings and made
sure I had some proper rest in the afternoons.
The next chapter of ‘mindfulness’
involved an ‘open heart’ mediation. Strangely, the first time I practiced it I had
a weird EHS ii episode and figured it was sending me to sleep. But when I tried to sleep I couldn’t.
I still struggled to get to sleep
most nights despite not being able to keep my eyes open and feeling very weary. I had the same old rigmarole of trying to
sleep, then needing to get up again and trying to think things through but not
coming to any fantastic conclusions other than I needed to keep trying. I thought about how much this sort of ‘viral’
illness was directly related to my mental health. Was there a direct correlation between the
depression/fatigue/lack of sleep and getting physically ill to a point where I
became bedridden?
I tackled my insomnia with the usual
tricks of breathing, relaxation, concentrating on nice feelings and listening
to the river. I also invented a new
game. This involved counting the gap
between cars going past on the night-time road below before I eventually
dropped off in the early hours.
I had two more episodes of EHS:
the first time was like a stack of cardboard boxes toppling over. The second time sounded like several alarms
on mobile phones going off at the same time.
I heard the back end of Hurricane
Domingo arriving early on Tuesday.
Although it calmed down mid-morning, it kept coming back with spectacular
force at times. I did not expect the
leaves on the trees to last much longer but reflected that at least we had been
on lots of woods walks before I became bedridden. Maybe it had worn me out. But as I had said before, I preferred doing stuff
then feeling knackered to not do anything.
On the plus side, the rain put the noisy workmen off!
By Wednesday I could
manage short spells out of bed although I became fatigued quickly and had to
take it easy. I was in the kitchen when
there was a loud knock at the door. I
guessed it was the postie. By the time I
got to the door, he had gone but had put loads of stuff through and I wondered
why he had knocked. Then he knocked
again. I tried to tell him he needed to
give people more than two minutes to answer the door and he started arguing
with me. I got annoyed, grabbed a parcel
off him and told him I was the customer.
That was the second time I had argued with that middle class tosser. It
put me in a really bad mood and wore me out so I went back to bed.
My partner was very late home. I asked him why but he had no answer. He’d also had a Performance Review and when I
asked about it he just said it was ‘boring’.
Instead, we chatted about Christmas.
For once he agreed with me that we did not need expensive gadgets and
not to spend too much money on presents.
That night, I took Temazepam and slept
four hours in one go. I Felt a lot
better the next morning but my fatigue
returned quickly when I got up to do a bit of cleaning and washing.
We were bemused by India Knight having written
a book about how to be a woman over 50 (stupid Guardian bossy woman!) I put a comment on twitter with amusing
results. iii
Over the
weekend, I thought I was improving, but slowly.
I still spent most of the time in bed, getting up for meals and to watch
films. My partner went to the shops for
essentials and helped me keep fed and watered.
When the clocks went back on Sunday morning, I tried to get the benefit
of the extra hour but after a restless night, I gave up at 8.20. I got
dressed for the first time in a week but still only managed a few hours out of
bed. At night-time, my partner made us
hot chocolate. This seemed to help at
first. I fell asleep soon after 12, then
awoke thinking I‘d been asleep hours but it was only 1.40! After that, I slept intermittently, plagued
with hot flushes.
At the start of
the last week in October, I still felt ill and stayed in bed. I kept up with the ‘mindfulness’ course. Week seven entailed the ‘open heart’
meditation and two new ones: ‘connection’ and a ‘three minute breathing space’
which I was meant to do three times a day; I struggled to remember all of three
every day.
I used some of
my time to design a couple more birthday cards, finish a backlog of photo
uploads and write two articles for my ‘Cool Places 2’ blog. While writing ‘Mooching around El Raval’, a
bit of research on Google made me realise we had missed half of it (the seedier
bottom end – ha, ha!) ’Furness abbey and
surroundings’ was based on a description I wrote in my holiday diary at the
time. I also referenced Bradshaw’s guide and felt pleased at how my writing
ability was developing.
I managed short
periods out of bed and a small amount of housework but nothing too strenuous. I
was careful to stop and rest when I felt too tired or got headaches. Whilst putting some recycling out, I couldn’t
believe how warm it was for the end of October and tried not to get too upset
that I was unable to be out enjoying it.
 |
| Emoticon art |
As it was
half-term, my partner was home earlier than normal and helped with cooking,
shopping and cleaning. On Monday
evening, we texted each other while he was stuck on a slow train. We had a laugh at his ability to make art
even with the ‘tiny dot pictures’ as he called emoticons.
By Wednesday I
thought I was on the mend again. I got
up and finished cleaning the kitchen which took ages longer than normal and
knackered me. But after a short rest, I
felt up to venturing off the street to the local supermarket.
That evening I
had a relapse and felt really crap on Thursday.
There was a flood siren test and my partner said “it’s like the war” and
then asked “what if we activated all the old nuclear sirens still lying
about? Everyone our age would think it
was world war 3, and all the young people would be like, ‘what’s that shit?’”
I felt
depressed at my feebleness dragging out.
I tried to stay positive but it was very hard and I kept wanting to
cry. I decided to do nothing at all
apart from rest and meditate. But I
became increasingly sceptical about the efficacy of ‘mindfulness’. The ‘connected’ meditation encouraged me to
reach out to everyone, even people I didn’t like. I found this a tall order; I did not want
right-wing aresholes to be bathed in kindliness at all!
In the evening we had planned to go out in Leeds
as I had a discount card for a restaurant.
My partner decided to go to Trinity for a bit of shopping instead and
texted to say it was like a mad disco hell.
I guess not having kids made us somewhat immune to the madness of
Halloween. I was glad I hadn’t been able
to go.
That night, I
got bad tummy ache and by Friday morning it really hurt. My partner was ‘working at home’ and I made
an effort to go with him for the weekly shopping. It was so weirdly warm and sunny again – like
summer. (The warmest Halloween on record
as we got told about a million times!)
In the
afternoon I went for aromatherapy. I
mentioned my tummy blockage and she performed some reflexology on me as well as
the usual massage to try and help. Then
I went back to bed, got up again in the evening for trick or treaters. Our only callers were two small boys leaving
us with a stack of Haribos.
I could hardly
eat at dinner time and after one glass of wine I started to fall asleep. I went to bed at 9.30 and slept until 7.30 a.m.
albeit in one-hour snatches.
So, I ended October
with a catalogue of woes. I started to
wonder if all my efforts to stay active and positive over the last couple of years
were a waste of time. I embarked on a
new tactic – to stay in bed until I really felt like getting up. Would it work?
Footnotes
ii EHS – Exploding
Head Syndrome
iii Twitter conversation
– getting a record 7 retweets, 9 ‘favourited’ and 7 new followers!
Me: @indiaknight:
“I have found being a woman over 50
quite straight-forward without needing a stupid book!”
Tracy Thorn: (yes, that one!) @Me
and @indiaknight:”I
quite agree. I don't need a stupid book either. Honestly I wish writers would
just stop. With their stupid books.”
Me:”Yeah, like 'how to dress'. About, like wearing clothes?!”
Me: Yes, but amusing that after thousands of years some posh woman tells us
we have been doing it wrong!”
Elspeth Potts: ”You're very
lucky then! I need all the help I can get! :D!”
Me:”How have you even managed to live up to now then?!”
Elspeth Potts:” In a box: D!”
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