Despairing at 4.00 am

I think it is happening again. I am losing it....although acutely aware that I am losing it (which doesn't make it any more tolerable). Insight is only helpful when you can put it to good use.

My body is breaking down. Have had this shoulder pain going on for a week and my stomach feels like it has got a brick in it. The chundling that is going on in my head seems to aggrevate the pain, the pain seems to aggrevate the chundling.

I woke up about 3ish in a state of panic. I have been here before but that doesn't make it any more easy to handle when you are in it.

Got desperate so rang The Emergency Duty Team...and I know I was clutching at straws but I didn't know what else to do. A very nice man told me to get to the local A&E. Which is not doable at present, and in my state. I explained this and he said to call out the duty doctor from my practise who could contact the Crisis Team. Maybe I am being defeatest...I feel pretty defeated but I don't have any faith that a locum doctor will understand....particularly as I am not sure anything can be done to help me.

Have taken half a lorazepam and most probably for the weekend will have to take more. I know lorazepam isn't the answer but I haven't got any others and am guessing if call the locum and they come out and refer me to the Crisis Team who then come out they will either say to take the lorazepam until I can see my psychiatrist or they will get me a place in an acute unit and I will be put on new medication, and left to get on with it.

Not sure I am particularly stressed about a new medication so much as the being left to get on with it. My experience of staff, in acute care, when trying new meds is that they treat me like a cretin and don't believe the side effects are happening. That I am making them up.

Such is the problem with being a relatively older loony. Been there, done it, got the negative reinforcement and now it's got really bad for me the choice is between the rock and the hard place.

I guess it boils down to trust. At present I don't trust myself to handle this...not that I am sure I have ever trusted myself to handle it but there have been long periods where, for want of a better term, I have been in remission. And worse, I don't trust services to handle this either. I wonder if they trust themselves.

Will take another half a lorazepam and hopefully that will get me through till day time. I might ring my friend, with a car, then and ask her to take me to A&E but again, I am not sure an acute unit is going to be a safe environment for me to be in.

I remember the first time I got so ill I had to go to hospital. although I was frightened, because I didn't know what to expect..it was, for me, a different experience being in the hospital then. It took me a while to get better there but I did (even taking the meds wasn't an issue for me) and everything about the place was good for me. Staff cared and bothered to talk to me, I got to walk about alot without feeling constantly penned in with my illness and I started eating and put weight back on. Not that weight has been a constant issue for me but when I get ill I lose weight quite dramatically.

I don't think I am going to ring the locum doctor. I can't stomach the feeling of being on a roundabout where nobody understands or can help and going round and round in myself whilst am given their reasons for not being provided care or being carted off to the acute unit. Although, if I have to go, at least the psychiatrist there is the one I trust. Hmmmm

Okay for now it will be another half a loz and hopefully back to bed for some sleep. In the meantime, and if things keep hitting panic mode...will have to ring the locum and go with the roundabout.

And if I make through the weekend (on varying doses of sedation) will then have to contemplate the GPs and get this shoulder seen to. The pain is constant and worrying. Then again I was born to worry. I think it is my destiny.