DAY 53

Life is seriously testing me and it's getting pretty irritating. I don't like complaining, but I'm afraid today's post may sound a little whiney. All day yesterday (following the blogpost) I had horrific, vivid psychosis. It was almost impossible to ignore and to battle it pretty much silently tested everything within me. I had to go to work where my manager would pull me up telling me to 'smile more', I said it was just because it was warm and she said that everyone felt the warm. I looked entirely whiney, but she had no idea what I was going through and I wasn't going to explain.

I had a day of listening intently to people and having to come across as friendly as possible, some people may have thought I was having a bad day or that I was moody when I was genuinely trying to listen to people through humungous noise levels. What I experienced was not pleasant and heavily distressed me, but I had to pretend it wasn't.

I called my nurse and she said I had to ignore it and that 'people with my illness have to learn to distract themselves', which is potentially the most awful advice I've been given. My CPN was supposed to discuss distraction techniques with me but she's been off on sick for absolute months now, and I've still not received a new CPN to help me with my life - and it's just significantly gotten harder.

I had an emergency GP appointment today where I was told to stop my medication because my poor eyesight was not an acceptable side effect to go along with. I've now got to call my nurse and explain to her I've been told to stop by the GP and they are going to have to find another treatment for me.

How do I feel? I feel exhausted, after seeing the doctor I'm much more optimistic. I don't think my nurse truly understands what I'm going through and she doesn't have enough power (like a doctor or psychiatrist) to give me what I need. I'm now stopping my medication and hopefully my sight will return over time.

These side effects haven't been awful, I almost feel like a quitter for stopping the medication before it's had the chance to help me. I hope they give me another medication, I'm really don't want to be left alone to deal with this. I've been dealing with psychosis since last December and it's truly rotten.

There is a part of me that's feeling sorry for myself, but another part is optimistic. I've realised that I have an illness that ultimately - other than medicate - I have to ignore. This is a huge disability which cripples my life at such tender points and I'm losing my independence with it. I'm losing my ability to live normally and live happily. Knowing I have Bipolar Affective Disorder also means trying to balance my mood and not let these hallucinations take over my wellbeing and ruin my mood disorder recovery.

Hey, my life could be worse right? I could have a life without a bunny rabbit! That would be god awful.

I hope you are all doing much better than I am and remember - a bad today doesn't mean a bad tomorrow!