I have decided, after a call to a useless worker on a helpline, to cut nobody an inch of slack with regards my self-medicating. I have used psychoactive stimulant chemicals for a number of years now to hold depression at bay. I'm breaking no law, but going against medical advice, with a badly damaged heart after a serious heart attack and multiple cardiac events.
Free from the urge to kill myself, the last couple of years have been the most fun I've had since childhood, and the onset of severe mental illness. The call to the useless call-handler was like "Oh yes, your legal highs, when was the last time you used them" (she needed an excuse to hang up as fast as possible, four syllable words frighten her.) "They are not legal highs, I only ever (used to) use that expression as a last resort if people could not understand., and it must have been about six hours."
"Aha - well I need" and I interrupted her "since I used some of the Doctor's thirteen chemicals - it was a long long while before that I used my own"
I don't want to obsess (a side effect of psychoactive stimulant chemicals) with this conflict. I can summarise it thus - as I was explaining I had phoned to try and share the magnificent experience of dawn, the first grey strands of it just visible, she interrupted to suggest I try and concentrate on the here and now and what was happening right now.
Yes, I'm close to popping my clogs.
My brother has bailed out. He doesn't want to see me suffer. My beloved key worker gave in, when I gave up, in March and split.
My only reliable contact with the human race has been contact with my new, Polish key worker. After I had known him two months, I realised he was not getting half of what I said (I had barely let him utter a sentence - that's isolation).
Now, I have just refused, my final opportunity of a detox from the chemicals and my favourite Consultant told me continued use meant certain death. From another heart attack, it could happen today, easily.
I cannot get out of bed. Without physical support. I collapse every time I go out and now refuse, more or less to go out as it is so dangerous.
My GP has ignored about twenty attempted messages to say I cannot make it, I'm not mobile. She has ignored six emergency discharge summaries in the last six months. The surgery has ignored three written complaints by myself. My GP tried to use the fact I got a lift to The Emergency Department as evidence I can walk.
My kind-hearted GP, whom I had loved a lot since knowing of her, seeing her occasionally, since 1987 - finally phoned me about a month ago, but very nervous this time about blackmailing me into attending "or else not getting diazepam or painkillers". I refused - after an hour of arguing she told me she needed advice as I am so complex. Fair enough.
Now I realise how unlucky I have been, Nazis are mercifully rare in the NHS, but she IS one of them, being so judgemental about self-medicating.
The findings of a complaint I made about an Emergency Doctor who over-ruled another Doctor in November, who had witnessed a serious cardiac event, while I was in intensive care and made up a story to get rid of me, are due in a month's time. The investigation has gone for an independent medical opinion. I have my notes, my complaint is obviously true; he decided a junkie was not worth the hassle and was too busy chasing a nurse around the Emergency Ward to care whether I lived or died.
The reason I have pursued this silly Doctor into (quite possibly) The Scottish Parliament pro bono, is that he took away my last chance.
After vowing for thirty years never to use a needle, my resolve finally went and I began skin popping the stims, (subcutaneously injecting psychoactive stimulants) after he threw me out of hospital.
I have not had a friend since my mother died four years ago. I loved my GP because every appointment I attended, she would spend up to an hour trying to help. Since I began collapsing, life has been slowly slipping away, no GP, no Support Worker, strange total absence of even the friendly Aunt - no family. Now I am beginning to lose my ability to use virtual worlds to chat to virtual friends. I cannot use the phone any more I'm not able to communicate.
My worst fear is real, I'm dying alone, in a hovel and nobody really cares. I've used up all the 'care' I have been allotted.
I'm not that bitter, much of the time I feel more tranquil and serene than ever, but I am absolutely desperate to be able to concentrate for a total of about a day, to see delivery of my paperback novel, self-published complete with ISBN number. A dream I have had since the age of five, after reading my first book.
If anybody actually reads this wall of text - well done!
And that's where I'm at, I feel better for sharing. Thanks.