Several Days of Self Care

Aka Getting my Money's Worth from my Bus Ticket This morning at the hospital, I finally after five long months of waiting, had my Ear, Nose, and Throat (ENT) appointment. It isn't Meniere's! Well, the consultant doesn't think it is Meniere's. She had a look at my history and symptoms and all that was going on and because my audiogram is showing hearing levels of normal, (the same result as the November audiogram) then it doesn't correlate to what Meniere's should look like. Thing is, we do not know what is actually going on. I'm to keep taking Serc (betahistine dihydrochloride) and see how it goes over the next six months - it may settle and go away, or it may not. To be honest, the number of attacks/episodes that I've had has seemed to decrease but my ear does seem to twitch, ache and do a weird hollow sounding thing from time to time (which might be Patulous Eustachian Tube, how fancy). Dizziness I still get most days but this can be triggered d...

Aka Time for an Update! It has been a few days since I last posted and thought it worthwhile updating the good ol' blog. I've been back at work a little over a week and despite my apprehensions, it has been surprisingly fine. For me, it seems to be fairly quiet at the moment, so hopefully I can crack on with some training, and fingers crossed I'll be feeling okay to be back up to full time and can continue working my way up the Banana Seller career ladder. Mental health wise, it is Mental Health Awareness week! If I'm honest, I never really thought that mental health issues would affect me that much. I've usually considered myself to be pretty lucky in my situations, but I suppose everyone has a wobble at some point. For me it's now, with my ear and hair, the world at large, and a realisation of late that I quite often compare myself to other people which doesn't really help me with my self-esteem. However, I've got my appointment coming up the day a...

Aka It Wasn't as Bad as I Thought it Would Be I've not posted with quite the same regularity that I normally would. This is because yesterday I had my telephone assessment for the Depression and Anxiety Service, and today was my first day back to work. Also I went bouldering and it was a blast! First of all, the assessment I had was pretty thorough, and lasted about an hour. My fingers hurt by the end of it, but I'm glad that I got to explain a bit of background and get the ball rolling on treatment. I tried my best not to rattle off everything that had gone wrong, or what made me anxious, or to bad mouth my ex too much, but all in all I got to provide enough information to give my supporter a rough idea of where I was coming from. I had to answer two questionnaires - one on depression and the other for anxiety. On the depression one I scored 8 out of something - mild symptoms and in line with the general population so not one to be concerned about. For anxiety, my scor...

Aka Getting Better Isn't Linear Yesterday was a bad day. I took a shower and after I was done, I hung my towel up and burst in to tears. Seeing my hair continue to go down the drain in quantities above what's normal for the amount I should be shedding is distressing. Gone was the thought of "it's just hair" and I was taken over with an all-encompassing grief that it is still falling out. Though I've not had the steroid cream long, it doesn't seem to be working. I want it to stop. I want the tingling that I've had on the right hand side of my scalp to stop. I don't want to have to wear a headscarf, I don't want to pay out for a wig. I want my hair back. I stupidly googled alopecia areata and then found out that large patches may not grow back. Patches on the side or back of the head are less likely to grow back than on the top. I don't know if what I have counts as 'large.' I tried to call the dermatology department at the hospital...

Aka Trying to Control Everything Today has been quite an anxious day. I've got a tingling in my scalp not too dissimilar to the one I had before my hair fell out, and I'm concerned that it might be about to happen again. This time it's just above my right ear/temple so if it does fall out it will be far more noticeable than it was last time. If it does happen, then I'm not sure how I'll deal with it - get a headscarf to wear out and about so people don't notice my horrible patchy head, how to deal with misconceptions, possible fears of how other people will see and treat me...it's not a good place for my brain to be. I'm trying to put down these fears by telling myself that it's just hair, the people who matter don't care, if I've got the time then I can explain it to other people, and hopefully it'll grow back. Plus, I've got a prescription and a referral to help me out with it. In my ongoing quest to chill the flip out, I've...

Aka Working 9 till 5...sort of Today I had a disconnect day. This means minimal usage of social media for me, to stop doing the endless scrolling that I normally partake in on Twitter and Facebook. I got a few things done, but I mainly chilled out on the sofa working on a notebook or stuff so I can plan myself accordingly, track a few things day to day, and note down life changes I want to make (mainly on the eco side of things). In a way, I suppose being signed off is its own disconnect from work. I've got time not to worry about concerns of the day, and I get to focus my energy on myself as opposed to the working tasks at hand. I've been composing this entry off and on in the back of my mind. There are a few things that I want to cover and I'm conscious that some of my colleagues read this blog (hello peeps). As such, I feel that I'm going to have to be careful of what I say perhaps, as I can be linked back to the company, but equally, this isn't a rant about...

Aka What I'm Doing to Get Better As the first few posts have been about how I've ended up in a mental health mess, I figured now would be a good time to focus on the positives and show what I've been doing to get myself better. At least once a day I'll have sad potato time, but instead of that I'm trying to recognise that I shouldn't wallow in these emotions and get up and do something, no matter how hard that is. There are plenty of times where I want to do something, but I don't want to do something. I want to participate in an activity but instead the meh takes over and I end up on the sofa with a dark cloud over my head. When I am sad potatoing on the sofa, I think the easiest thing to do is something small yet constructive - tidy the coffee table, empty the wastepaper basket. Something very low energy but still means that something has been achieved. Hell, sometimes I don't have the energy to get the washing out of the machine and hang it up t...

Aka My Immune System is Attacking My Hair Folks, I promise I'll do a more positive post soon! I have one lined up, but I'm trying to work my way through everything that's causing me to feel the way I'm feeling. When I had my GP appointment when I got signed off I was also diagnosed with alopecia areata. This is where hair falls out in patches on the scalp (it can also affect your beard if you're of the beardy persuasion). There are two other types - alopecia totalis, which affects the whole scalp, and alopecia universalis which affects the entire body. According to my in-depth research (*cough* Wikipedia *cough*) alopecia is an autoimmune disease where the body attacks hair follices in that particular area (in this case, the back of my head on the left hand side). Specifically, T-cell lymphocytes cluster around the affected hair follicles causing inflammation and hair loss. Personally I think anything with 'T-cell' in it sounds like something out of Resi...