PF's journal

[PhoenixxFire]

Just got out of hospital for the 7th time. funsies.
Lowkey got kicked out because they needed beds for people coming in over the weekend lol.
Kinda annoying because the shitshow that is my supposed community support hasn't been sorted out at all. They tried to change my case manager because the mess last friday was because of her being shit but that didn't happen because of too much demand on the system etc. so I'm back with my only community supports being her and the psychiatrist through the same organisation which is very annoying.
They took me off a lot of my meds this admission so now I'm more awake during the day but it's even harder to sleep.
I don't really know what I'm gonna do now. I'm so fkn sick of hospital for obvious reasons but my community support is non-existent and I'm still sad all the time and everything is hard.

I'm borrowing a cat for a week in a couple of weeks so that'll be cool. I can pretend that I'm not so lonely. Also fluffy. I'm also meant to be looking after a couple of different cats over christmas/new years but I've got to get there first. IDK I'm just really tired atm, I suspect this mood is because they've lowered my anti-depressant but I didn't get the chance to talk to my fav psychiatrist about it before I got discharged.

[PhoenixxFire]

Hello,
I just enrolled in paramed/nursing for next year so I guess this is sorta a uni journal again. Contact hours seem way lower than what I had at anu which is a little weird. I also got my updated birth certificate in the mail yesterday which is super cool and now I get to waste my money on getting a pretty commemorative certificate because I'm an adult and I can make silly decisions like that. Also got a bunch of new coloured cords and made more bracelet designs which was fun - just gotta get people to actually buy them haha.

I don't remember what else I was gonna say. I looked after a dog named balgo and a cat named walnut. They were very adorable. It's getting way warmer now which is making me sleepy but it's making my garden pretty.

I sent a text to my case manager (community mental health nurse) basically just complaining about everything. She did say that I don't express myself enough so she was kinda asking for it lol. She called me on Friday to say that she'd gotten my text and said she'd call me this week to figure out what to do now but she hasn't yet so I guess I'm still just waiting.

I'm doing okay at the moment - keeping busy(ish) helps. Should really stop spending so much of my money on pizza and actually cook some more though. Or like actually eat the food I've already cooked lol.

[Bri MT]

Congrats on the course!

Have you got any pets lined up?

Good luck for the convo with your cm, hopefully she takes what you've said on board as something to learn from.

Do you have many easy recipes to add to the ease of food prepping/cooking? I feel like I've asked this before but I can't remember the answer rn

[K888]

Do you have many easy recipes to add to the ease of food prepping/cooking? I feel like I've asked this before but I can't remember the answer rn

Now PF is enrolled in uni again they must subsist entirely on pasta. It is the uni student code.

[PhoenixxFire]

Congrats on the course!

Have you got any pets lined up?

Good luck for the convo with your cm, hopefully she takes what you've said on board as something to learn from.

Do you have many easy recipes to add to the ease of food prepping/cooking? I feel like I've asked this before but I can't remember the answer rn

A cat for a bit in november and december, possibly housesitting in late december and early january, and I'm meeting someone on friday about looking after her dog for a few days over the weekend.

I'm thinking I'll make a quiche or a slice of some sort but idk what else.

Now PF is enrolled in uni again they must subsist entirely on pasta. It is the uni student code.

I haven't bought any pasta since I moved out. (mostly because my brother used to make it almost every night and I got sick of it.

[insanipi]

Now PF is enrolled in uni again they must subsist entirely on pasta. It is the uni student code.

I thought it was 2min noodles? Or have I done uni wrong this whole time

Also I'm keen for more animal adventures and your next steps with uni, Morgan! 🥰

[PhoenixxFire]

So I just got reminded that this exists.

I guess a bit has happened since I last posted here but also lots of nothing and the same shit over and over again.

I've only been in hospital once since that OD admission at the end of september and it was just an overnight stay in ED (they moved me to the nice and quiet emu in the morning after i spent the whole night awake in acute). I really wasn't doing well when I went in and I really wasn't any better when I came out but it reminded me of how much i dislike ending up there so maybe it had some value lol.

More importantly my useless clinical manager (aka community nurse aka the person whose job it was to try and keep me out of hospital) went and discharged me on the basis of a bunch of bullshit that never happened and them refusing to give me referrals because they thought I wouldn't attend even though I went to every single appointment I've had organised for mh this year. Can you tell I'm still angry at them?

Anyway they discharged me so then I was back to having no community supports at all. Someone from HAART (mental health crisis - CATT for you victorians) was all like oh no and she's like I'll make sure we organise some support for you...so she tried to refer me back to the same community team that had just discharged me so that they could refer me to another team (which they had already refused to refer me to). Big surprise, the community team wouldn't accept the referral. And the only way to get a referral to the therapies team is with a community manager.

So then they decided to get me in to see the psych reg who works for HAART. Now this appointment is on the opposite side of canberra - which may not sound like far but its one and a half hours each way by bus. So I'm like fine, I've gotta see someone. So I go to this appointment and the entirety of her plan is to refer me to the therapies team. Yes the same team that haart already tried and failed to refer me to. The same team that tch inpatient tried and failed to refer me to. The same team that I need to have a community manager to access - the only community team available to me has already discharged me and rejected a referral back to them. What a good use of over 3 hours. Needless to say I was a little pissed by this point.

Anyway amongst this I went to see a new GP and she reckons I should apply for NDIS funding because then I can get a private psych and support worker and avoid all the public system bs - but she wants a letter from a psychiatrist for that and this public psychiatrist was not interested and private psychiatrists in canberra take $600 and months.

So that's about where all the mh stuff is up to. Good times. Christmas is never a good time and i reckon I might end up with another pointless trip to hospital again (but hey maybe they'll try referring me to the therapies team for a 4th time!!)

Also apparently I have no iron which explains why I can't stay awake lately - not that I mind, being conscious isn't all that fun but GP told me to take an iron supplement which just made me throw up for days which was unpleasant.

I think that's probably all I have to say idk. I don't do much except get annoyed at various clinicians and the uselessness of public mh services (and especially canberra ones). I don't really know what the plan is from here. I'm meant to be getting a call from haart sometimes this weekend. Maybe they'll get to tell me that the referral has failed for the third time. That'll definitely be a surprise But idk. I've tried all of the public mh services in canberra that I, 2 GPs, 2 mh units, pacer, and various mh nurses and psych regs in ED could think of and they've all either told me to go see someone else instead or been useless so I'm a bit out of ideas.

[PhoenixxFire]

TW: not surprising if you've read the rest of my journal but this post discuss mental health and suicide.


I haven't been in hospital for the whole year!
haha cos it's only been 2 days

So I decided I didn't like the number 9 and went and made it a nice even 10 trips to hospital for 2020. I was in hospital over christmas and just got let out on new years eve. They gave us nice soap for christmas but even that doesn't help the stink when you've been wearing the same clothes for a week lol. They also gave us presents on the 30th?? better presents then they gave us on christmas??? and christmas crackers which they didn't give us on christmas????

Anyway they're trying to refer me to the same community team again for the 3rd time since they (the community team) discharged me. It has yet to work.

2020 was a strange year for me in a different way than it was strange for most people - I spent over a quarter of it in hospital. Canberra hasn't been affected by covid anywhere near as much as Melbourne and Sydney but what little effect there was I mostly missed as I spent april-june across various mental health facilities. I spent both easter and christmas in hospital - not that I would have celebrated them anyway but it's weird to just entirely miss major events like that.

In a way nothing happened this year. Comparing now to February, I'm in the same house, I haven't progressed at uni, I don't have any work or volunteering or hobbies different than what I did then. But so, so much has changed about the way I see life. About 368 days ago a very good friend of mine called a mental health team on me. And that's how I started last new years. Stayed up and watched the fireworks, had mental health folks show up at my door at 9am on Jan 1. It's sorta funny that that all started on Jan 1 and now I got discharged from hospital on Dec 31.

I remember that they asked me about past suicide attempts. At the time that question made me so anxious that I was unable to answer it. Now it's just a routine question that I can discuss perfectly fine and that really shows me how different my perspective on mental health is now to then.

About 279 days ago that same friend called an ambulance for me. Unfortunately it came with a side of cops
If they hadn't done that, I don't think I'd be alive today. I don't think that was the day that I was closest to killing myself but it meant that when that day came I was able to call an ambulance for myself. Turns out the first thing they ask is for your address and phone number and they don't say "what is your emergency". I was unprepared
This year I went from wanting help but being too scared to ask for it and not thinking I deserved it, through periods of feeling so bad that I didn't want to feel better anymore, to now (mostly) being able to ask for help (although I'm still very bad at it when it's not crisis level bad).

IDK what the point of this post is, everyone else was doing it though. It's been a year. Hopefully the new one will involve less hospital and more passing uni but if not then I hope I can see the world a little bit differently next year than I do now.

[Bri MT]

TW: not surprising if you've read the rest of my journal but this post discuss mental health and suicide.

I haven't been in hospital for the whole year!
haha cos it's only been 2 days

So I decided I didn't like the number 9 and went and made it a nice even 10 trips to hospital for 2020.

I enjoyed reading these.

I was in hospital over christmas and just got let out on new years eve. They gave us nice soap for christmas but even that doesn't help the stink when you've been wearing the same clothes for a week lol. They also gave us presents on the 30th?? better presents then they gave us on christmas??? and christmas crackers which they didn't give us on christmas?

New years generally feels more celebratory to me than Christmas but I've never associated it with presents.

I haven't progressed at uni

This feels like a good time to wish you luck for your new course!

It's sorta funny that that all started on Jan 1 and now I got discharged from hospital on Dec 31.
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I somehow missed the poetic nature of this until you mentioned it but yes.

"279 days" feels like a maths flex. 


Big

[PhoenixxFire]

^I just wanted to outflex your math.
Nah jk I googled it.

[PhoenixxFire]

So I've been in hospital 3 times this month, each time got progressively more shit.
First one they discharged me the same day and I was back the next day. Then they put me into a ward that had been converted from medical to mental health in under 24 hours and wasn't really any safer than home. Third time they threatened to put me in hdu, supposedly because I wouldn't be safe in short stay, ldu, or calvary, but they didn't detain me and let me go home because that wasn't actually why they wanted to put me in hdu, it was just their cover.
The psych consultant that I saw the second and third time just had it out for me I think. She got angry at me for not looking at her when I don't much look at anyone and also i have a n x i e t y. Then she lied to me then lied about lying to me and walked out of a review because I couldn't decide if I wanted to stay in hospital or go home (neither, i wanted to die, the whole fkn point of me going to hospital is because I can't keep myself safe, that's your job useless doctor.) Then she told the nurse and security guards that I was on an order (turns out I wasn't), told me that I was going to hdu and didn't have a choice (I did because I wasn't on an order) - I was a voluntary patient which means she had to get my consent to be admitted which she didn't do and instead claimed i had no choice in it and that I would be going despite me being *very* clear about not wanting to go.

In amongst all this I was told I wouldn't be getting a case manager then told by staff at the hospital that they were giving me a case manager and they'd been trying to contact me for days - they hadn't. I even showed them my phone records and they still didn't believe me. And this case manager was the person who had managed to call me just fine the previous week to say they weren't giving me a case manager.

In amongst all this the house I was meant to be moving into burnt down. Now i'm moving into a different new place. And landlord kinda hates me cos I told him I don't have pets (I don't) and then told him I wanted to get an assistance dog which he's not happy about but it's a fixed term lease so he can't do shit. Unfortunately new place is still in the catchment area for the shittiest community mh team in canberra so I've entirely given up on the public system.

Yay time to try the private system - oh wait now I have no gp because she left the clinic I was going to and was the only gp at that clinic. Second time in under 12 months that my gp has left. Now I've gotta try and find a third one. Love me some continuity of care. And the list of things I need a doctor to do is growing by the day. There's the referrals for mh services, paperwork for uni, ndis, and (hopefully) getting an assistance dog. Also my meds are not fkn working but I probably need to see a psychiatrist for that. Oh wait I live in Canberra that'll cost me $500 and the nearest appointments will be in 6 months.

So um yeah I'm doing pretty fkn terribly.
And also after the fkn terrible experiences at hospital this year I'm not even sure I want to work in healthcare anymore, and even less so in Canberra. And having that plan was kinda the only thing keeping me anywhere near sane. Funsies.
And also because of terrible times at hospital recently I really really don't want to go back there regardless of how suicidal i get. And at the moment it's bad enough almost every night that I'd otherwise go to hospital. So that's fun. It's really fkn hard to convince myself that there's any point being alive, and the reason that I thought I had for being alive are slipping away. All I want is one single person who's actually on my side and will help me and who I can actually access. Who would have thought that's too much too ask.

[PhoenixxFire]

Today has been wild.
I barely slept last night (cos I slept most of the day yesterday) and I woke up way early. I still had shit to pack and I was out of sticky tape and I'm super lazy so I was like I'm gonna get it delivered from the reject shop. Turns out they don't deliver until 10 so fine less lazy now I have to actually go to the shop (still lazy, I took the bus when it's a 10min walk). Got my sticky tape, got home around 9. Coolio movers are coming between 9-12 and they're gonna call beforehand.

Next minute there's a truck reversing into my front yard and it's only 9:30...and I hadn't finished packing oops. Turns out I managed to miss their call, not sure how. So I hurriedly packed the last few boxes, helped them lug it all onto the truck, my fridge and freezer are still full of food that I intended to pack just before they arrived but oh well. Then I had to get an uber over to new place to unlock the door for them and that took 3 attempts because this fkn guy kept accepting it despite being ages away and having a passenger. So then I get to new place, lift heavy boxes yet again, funsies. Make a massive mess of my new room (half my shit is still in the living room).

Bump into one of the people I'm living with who I haven't met yet, say hi and introduce myself, she gives me an awkward smile and doesn't say anything (mood). Continue unloading shit, get a phone call from some legal office, luckily not meant for me.
Realise I need more coat hangers, get a call along the way from a guy at a post office at where I'm already heading about a parcel that doesn't have the street number on it. Buy my coathangers, collect parcel, start to go back home, realise I have a missed phone call, call them back, then go home with very sore feet.

Then I decided to turn my bed around in my room (that was a whole damn endeavour), then Narla's cuteness got too much and I applied to adopt her, then I cleaned all the shit off my bed and put sheets on it, then I gave up on unpacking and decided to eat chips and watch netflix.

I am tired. But in a good way for once. I think that's more shit than I've done for the entire year so far.