Moving forwards

Last week was quite a productive week, even if I had crashed quite badly after the Bank Holiday visit to Gressenhall. I managed to finish and post off my forms to the local M.E. clinic and arrange a telephone appointment with my G.P. about my anti-depressants. I've been on 40mg of citralopram for a few years now but over the last 6 months I've noticed that it hasn't been working as well as it was in the past. I finally got up the courage to ask to switch meds- friday the doctor prescribed me 50mg of Sertraline and on Saturday I did a straight switch from my old SSRI to the new one.

I had some quite bad side effects the first few days, my ME crash seemed to add to it as when I switched meds I had not quite recovered back to 'normal'. I spend the first five days feeling extremely tired, extremely dizzy and off-balance, had a fuzzy, heavy, cotton wool head with a nasty headache and felt a little sick. But the last day or two I seem to have gotten over that, I hope that that is all I have when it comes to withdrawal/side effects of this med change and I hope that this new med actually works and helps with my anxiety.

With the anxiety I also have an appointment in two weeks with the local mental health team for a face-to-face assessment to try and get more therapy and new therapy on the NHS rather than paying for it like I have been for the past year. I can no longer afford to pay for private so I hope that the NHS can do something for me, in one of their letters they mentioned two types of therapy that I hadn't done before and I'm willing to try most anything to try and control my emetophobia so that I can have some more of a life, a job, a relationship etc. Hopefully the meds will kick in and I can get some therapy started before winter comes and the utterly terrifying winter vomiting bug starts up again!

Gressenhall Rural Life Musuem

In August we visited a local museum twice, Gressenhall Rural Life Museum. This is one of my favourite local places to visit, so I was pretty happy to go twice. The first visit was early on in the month and it was quite a big thing as it was my mothers first day trip out after her last lot of bowel surgery (she had her stoma reversal about 6 weeks before hand but was suffering greatly since then with her bowel beginning to work again). Luckily Gressenhall is relatively close to home, only 10-15 minutes away from our house in the car and it is highly accessible with toilets and benches all other the site.

Stitching completed by an inmate in the workhouse.

Gressenhall Rural Life Museum started out as as poor house and the land was bought in 1776, in order to build the poor house, it was then transformed into a workhouse in 1834 under the Poor Law Amendment Act. If you are unsure about what a workhouse is, it was basically a parish run place where poor people could go for food and shelter, but it was made to be so horrible and unpleasant so that the poor people would avoid it unless it was absolutely necessary. In order to run the workhouse, men, women and children were seperated and they were made to work by breaking stones, pumping water, carting grave, oakum picking and domestic chores around the workhouse. In return the paupers got food, shelter, basic healthcare and education for the children. Gressenhall workhouse closed in 1948, and it was turned into an old peoples home, before being turned into a museum in 1976. For more information about the museum, click here

The Workhouse Laundry- Matrons washing machine

Sampler sent home from the front by a soldier ww2

The second visit we had to Gressenhall was on the bank holiday monday, when they were having their Village at War special event. Compared to our visit earlier on in the month it was absolutely heaving and very rainy and chilly, but we decided to go anyway. Unfortunately during this trip I forgot that I was unwell and joined in with the world war 2 dancing like I would have before I got ill, I did two slow dances and ended up feeling very tired and shaky and annoyed at myself. Unfortunately due to the rain a lot of the special things that were advertised for the event were cancelled such as the airplace fly over and a lot of the vintage cars weren't there. But we had a nice few hours there, before going home and spending a few hours under blankets with mugs of tea and watching Once Upon A Time.

In health news I found out that my original urine test... the dipstick gave a false positive and there actually wasn't any blood or raised sugar levels in my urine at all. So all that was for nothing, which is infuriating. But I got the forms from the local M.E. clinic so that's something positive :).

Hope everyone had a nice August :)