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...