And The Shit Just Keeps On Coming

As I have said in previous chapters I recently have started to see a Psychiatrist, along with my Psychologist and GP. It has been interesting speaking with the Psychiatrist, its different than speaking with my Psychologist. There are things I experience, or that happen which I haven’t thought about when talking with the Psychologist, or GP. It’s odd, I feel pretty comfortable talking with him, and I seem to remember stuff that I haven’t when talking to my Psychologist. I think because in initial conversations, I had already seen the Psychologist a number of times and had started dealing with the OCD, he and I could look past this, and the anxiety on the surface and he was able to probe a bit deeper, from the get go.

He has been looking beyond just OCD, Depression etc. looking to understand the full range of symptoms and issues. It has been somewhat daunting, it’s different talking to him, and I suppose that it’s meant to be, it is an assessment, a series of sessions designed to be diagnostic more than treatment, well in the initial stages. After a while, and once things have been identified and the whole story is known then I suppose we will start to work on things. Get to the core issues rather than just batting away at branches.

The thing that has kind of stood out to me is whilst some stuff that I experience I know is abnormal, some I didn’t realise was. There have been things that have happened over the past months which haven’t occurred before, some of them have been terrifying. The most terrifying thing which has happened and only once so far thankfully, is when I hallucinated at work. I had been at work for a couple of hours, the day was pretty much stock standard, nothing terribly out of the ordinary. I was sitting at my desk, when I saw blood ooze from the top of the 1/2 wall separator between my desk, and the one in front of me. I say saw, but not really as in it was there, or I thought that what I was seeing was real. Straight away I knew it wasn’t really, there wasn’t blood oozing from the wall of my desk, but fuck, I could see it and it wasn’t like catching it in the corner of my eye or fleeting or something. I looked right at it, and it moved like flowing blood. It wasn’t blood like TV show bright red blood. It was deep, blackish blood. Initially, momentarily, I was shocked, but as quickly I was shocked by the blood, I realised it wasn’t real, just a figment of my mind. It lasted for about a minute, and then it was gone. I was fairly shook up, so I went to the nearest bathroom, and sat in there until I calmed down. I had a few hours up my sleeve from some overtime I had recently done, and really didn’t feel right, so I decided to knock off early and go home. I was still pretty shook up by the time I got home, so I just pottered around my flat, did some cleaning and stuff. As the day progress my back became very sore, the weather had changed dramatically and my back tends to…..disagree with that occurring.

I didn’t sleep well that night, I kept waking up and having bad dreams. The next day when I woke up, I was still in a lot of pain, and still pretty freaked out over the whole seeing blood oozing down the wall of my desk. I called work and let them know I wouldn’t be in that day. Then I rang my GP’s office and luckily there was an appointment free so I booked in to see him, and drove up a bit later in the day, for my appointment. I spoke with my GP, told him what had occurred. At the time the best he could do was to increase the dosage of Seroquel I had been taking, and referred me to discuss it with my Psychiatrist next time I saw him. He asked if I would be alright to go back to work the next day, and I said that I basically had to. Though truth be told I never really want to go to work, not that I don’t like my job, I just don’t like not being at home, I get scared when I am out of my place. I don’t like it; I don’t like it at all.

I get very anxious when I am not at home, or is it that I feel less anxious when I am at home. It’s hard to say if leaving my flat makes me anxious, or if being in my flat causes me to be calmer. I don’t know, I suppose it’s much of a muchness really. At the end of the day, I know when I am out of my flat I am more anxious than when I am in my flat, and if I am out of my flat somewhere like works, shopping whatever, I need to know I have a way out. Like I’m not going to be stuck somewhere and not be able to get home, when I want to. I don’t really know how to explain it any better than that, I know it doesn’t make much sense, I’m not so bad if I am at certain places like my family’s house. It’s pretty annoying but I manage the anxiety.

Recently I have been experiencing other things which I hadn’t previously. I might be at work, at the shops, whatever, and all the sudden the whole world around me seems to drop away, change, like its no longer real, and I am just watching things happen, externally from myself. It’s kind of like when you are 1/2 asleep and things still feel like you’re kind of dreaming them, but you’re not. You can still function, you can still make decisions, but your brain can’t tell if things are really real, or made up, but at the same time you know it is real. Generally when this happens I am shaking, sweating, my hearts racing etc. I spoke to my Psychiatrist about it and he said it is called derealisation, and it can happen to people when they are having a panic attack. So even though I am on all these great medications which are supposed to help me not have panic attacks, and all that, what has actually happened is that they have just changed the way I experience them. Mind you, saying this, it is better than the way I experienced them earlier, though I would much prefer not to have them at all.

When you start seeing things, feeling like you’re not really here (there as the case may be) I don’t know about you but I really started to question my own sanity, again. This seems a bit of a theme for me, more and more this comes up. I get scared that I am losing my mind, or have actually lost it. I put a lot of value on my intellect, being able to think, rationalise, question, solve puzzles etc. is kinda important. My brain, for me is my main redeeming feature. I have little going for me physically, I’m nothing special in this respect, I’m no good for manual labour stuff, the spinal disability has screwed that. So being smart is important to me. I’m a cleaver guy, I’m a bit of a nerd, my IQ is well above average. I don’t say this to boast, I am just highlighting that being smart, that’s important to me. My mind is extremely important, it is of a high value to me, and to a degree myself worth. If I lost that, well to me I might as well be dead.

In my last session with my Psychiatrist I talked to him about the déjà vu that I experience. I say déjà vu, but it’s not like the typical déjà vu where it feels like you have been there before, or experienced a moment before. I know I haven’t been in the same circumstance or what have you before, but I feel like I know what is about to happen. Not just roughly, like something like such and such is going to happen. But, specific details of what are about to happen, sometimes what I think is going to happen, does, sometimes it doesn’t. The feeling, the experience, whatever you call it might last a minute or 2, never very long but it is always accompanied by a feeling of dread, that something bad is going to happen, or that I am going to be in trouble for something.

After talking to my Psychiatrist about the déjà vu stuff, the hallucinations etc. we talked about some other stuff. He asked me if I will suddenly become very irritable, with little, to no reason. Which I do, I mean I am generally pretty irritable, but I can be pretty happy, or just calm and doing what I need to, and a second later, it like something in my head has gone, lets fuck this shit up, and in a heartbeat I am pissed, irritated. I tend to kind of shut down when I am like this, I become really quiet, my head phones go on, I do everything I can do to isolate myself. If people talk to me, I can be overly snappy, more than normal. I become very short tempered, I don’t become violent though, just more intensified irritation and frustration than what you would expect.

We kept talking for a while, discussing my thoughts, feelings etc. and he then started to offer some thoughts. Firstly he referred me to the Royal Adelaide Hospital for an EEG, wanting to rule out Complex Partial Seizures. Apparently, it is possible that some of my symptoms could be as a result of these, in which case a different medication needs to be added to the mix to help control these symptoms. It’s important that he rules this out, if it happened to be that I was having Complex Partial Seizures, that needs to be dealt with, it needs to be treated so they don’t become worse, or progress and cause a Tonic-clonic seizure. Also, it will assist my treating staff to ensure they are treating the right things, i.e. if the déjà vu is a symptom of a Complex Partial Seizure then treating this as a part of my OCD symptoms would be less than benifital. The results could also point to other possible disorders, like Brief Psychotic Episodes, again important to know, as these would need different treatment than what I am currently undergoing and medications I am taking. It is important to note that a Psychotic Episode, or someone who has a Psychotic disorder, does not inherently mean they are violent. Again, I blame media etc. for the perceptions put to mental disorders, Psychotic does not mean a person is violent, or more likely to be violent. It means that there is a problem with their mental interpretations.

Anyhow, so it seems that the shit keeps on coming, time to see someone else to get another type of assessment. It’s pretty frustrating, I start feeling like I am getting closer to an answer, and then a new question comes up. Though, there is a part of me which says, if they were to find something in the EEG then it’s not really all in my head, there is something that is standardized that can be referred to, which says, nope here is the reason for these things. I think that is still my biggest issue with all this, why? Why am I like this? Why do these things happen? Why, what is the actual cause of the issue, the disorders? If I knew that, somehow I think it would make it easier to deal with.