Help

Hi Arbor,

How are things going now? I hope you feel a bit better. I send you my warmth and love, hopefully through these simple words.

My few thoughts, not involving medical advice but ways you could feel more supported are:

• Do you have, by any chance either a psychologist, friend or carer that knows you, that could help advocate for you? Or even to listen to you when you feel in the edge?
• They could help by: writing an email to the practice, with a brief description about how the sudden changes in medication (getting it weekly as oppose to monthly) have affected you and any essential information.
• Maybe a middle ground is a reasonable request? Like fornightly. Maybe this can be asked at least.
• They could also help by: joining you when you go to your GP appointment (or phone appointment.)
• Another option may be: get the appointment with a different doctor, or move practice (I did this a few times, only because I felt uncomfortable.) However be aware that changing practices is a lottery, and sometimes isnt for the better.

One of my difficulties is that I suffer from stress induced seizures, and, as a result, I end up being too frazzled to sleep, which leads to compound exhaustion involving more stress ~ and more seizures, then even less sleep, and even more seizures with increasing intensity.

So perhaps obviously I can relate with your situation somewhat, given that in my case I have no sense of time passing ~ what with the irregular sleep patterns ~ resulting in my days and weeks (in the waking and then sleeping sense) turning out to be weeks, months or even years for everybody else. In this respect, ordering prescriptions and doing things on time does get “rather” problematic.

The thing with the blood tests and reduced prescription thing, perhaps obviously now ~ is that if they do not know the state of your blood chemistry ~ they are not going to run the risk of potentially letting you overdose / poison yourself with a full prescription if something is wrong ~ damage limitation / emergency treatment protocols and all that.

In order to reduce this sort of thing myself, I use a physical wall-hung calender to cross-off each day I take my medication, in correlation with my laptop to check the actual time and date.

I have got to the stage now where I do my main medications each and every day out of pure force of habit, just as I have also in terms of eating meals and drinking fluids at least 5 times a day much more often than not ~ what with my only sense of being hungry or thirsty being when my stomach starts making loud enough sounds ‘growling’ (as the expression goes) to let me know audibly ~ provided I am not too fragged and or hypoglycaemic to realise what’s going on (which happens from time to time).

With the days I miss crossing off on the calender, it gives me a better idea of how much time I am losing sense of, and when prescriptions and appointments need to be dealt with – or what needs to be done if they haven’t been.

Fortunately the lead practice GP has autistic offspring, and understands my difficulties without me having to explain every thing, and I have my record file flagged for special needs / reasonable adjustment / equality act provisions so that receptionists are aware of my communication difficulties – which makes things a lot smoother, most of the time.

I wrote a letter to start with and made a double appointment to discuss it all ~ and it all got sorted in one appointment time. Surprising easy, especially considering how difficult it had been and still is on occasion.

Ah well ~ back to it, day three of today, being that I am supposed to be waking up soon yet again. Eyes rolling forced smile emoji.

Hi Arbor, I wanted to share a link to the response I just made to your other post as it applies to this posts also. 

 RE: Medication 

Best wishes,

Sharon Mod

Yes i am hoping somebody has some resources knowledge i can tap into but just getting peer supportvia this forum is a large contibuter to improved wellbeing

I'm glad you got some sleep, and that you had reordered them.  

Do write again if you need to, as someone might know something that can help.

I hope you're able to rest today if needed.

Hi i am ok a fell asleep thankfully at 5.30am so i just awoke and feel relatively ok so my meds are ready to pick up as an email cane through at 9am this morning so i must have reordered them so only missed 2 days this time. I can sleep toniht now and then review getting some help ( not sure where from ) for the rest of the problem on Minday when i have recovered from the last 48 hours.

Hello, how are you now?     I hope you were able to get some one to one help?

From what you have explained very well, if I were in your situation and couldn't sleep and was having some difficulty with anxiety and psychosis and the situation youve described, I'd call 111 which is open 24 hours. 

I hope things improve soon.    

(In future, I think one way of managing it is to have a wall calendar for the month ahead so you can tick off the days, but i'd call 111 to explain what's happened).