This was a rough time last year, I had been moved on the 4th Feb from a hospital near Brighton, to a hospital near Bradford. That in itself is a long story and journey. Imagine how you would move Hannibal Lecter and you get the idea. I will write about that one day but the advocate said it was one of the worst cases she had seen involving transport. Just thinking about it makes me really angry and low, and I still panic at the sound of sirens going past (even though there weren’t any in this case, the vehicle was sans sirens).
Well the move was so bad I started to write a diary! Which was better than scribbling things on the back of medication forms from MIND! Reading today’s entry from last year, I had forgotten how bad my medication had been screwed with during the move. A lot of the stuff I was taking had disappeared from my list, but the timings for the rest were completely messed up. So badly that in the morning, after breakfast, I was forced to take stuff that made me extremely sleepy, that previously I took at night before, you know.. going to bed. No wonder I had trouble getting to sleep at night. The worst thing about it was nobody believed me for a long time. I just had to start refusing to take things at certain times which made my medication schedule a lot neater, I was on a LOT of stuff so it felt better being off it after a while. Its a shame though as you don’t usually stop taking meds like this, you are supposed to wean yourself off them. I ended up having withdrawal symptoms from lots of different things as well as things I wanted to still be on but hadn’t been transferred yet.
By this point I had already started trying to lose weight, the hard thing was finding opportunities. I think I could get an hour at the gym twice a week at this hospital but it was fairly hit and miss weather you would get to go. I had no leave to go outside so the only other way I knew of was to eat less. I remember the gym in this place pretty well. It had 2 bikes and a treadmill. I attempted the treadmill but I was so heavy at this point that when I landed my foot would occasionally stop the belt, after about 5 minutes of nearly flying off the thing I elected to try the bike instead. The bike worked really well which surprised me as all I wanted to do was run.
I remember some of the staff in this place were extremely kind and just wanted to help the patients. One of the ward managers even offered to take me to the gym after he had finished work. It’s a nice feeling almost like serendipity when you realise that exactly the right person has exactly the right job. Some of the staff just enjoyed the power they had however. One said when I was being shown around “If you don’t make things hard for me, I wont make things hard for you”. That’s what you expect to hear in a prison, but I wasn’t there because I had done anything wrong. Unfortunately I had a lot of contact with this particular staff member. And things looked pretty bleak as only a few days before this, on the 9th, I had been put on section 3, that mean they could hold me for up to 6 months. Also, it was valentines day, and it is today, bloody hell…
Sans Shoelaces 