The good weather over the past few days has really given me a boost and I have been outside alot more – I spent a whole afternoon during the week in the back yard clearing out all the dead plants from the pots, planting some seed potatoes, tidying up the greenhouse and shed, and turning over the compost in the compost bin. Shamefully I have to admit to feeling a bit stiff the next day from the physical exercise which shows just how unfit I have become. But no pain, no gain, so the stiffness means that I have worked muscles and hopefully burned off calories.
Then on Thursday I took the dog out for a good walk – about 3 miles at a brisk pace with some hilly bits, and I did a similar walk yesterday. I can’t believe how unfit I have become, getting out of breath just walking up a gentle hill which I used to walk up briskly with barely a change in my breathing rate. But if I keep this up and do something physically active like this every day, it will have a positive effect in a number of ways – getting me out and about and seeing people again, getting fresh air into my lungs and sunshine on my face, burning calories, getting fit and hopefully losing the roll of stomach flab which I can’t even bear to look at at the moment.
The spring weather makes it so much easier to get out and go for a good walk – it is a real pleasure and it is a long time since I felt pleasure in doing anything. So I’m so pleased to see that Spring is finally here – in the past couple of weeks, suddenly the daffodils have started to appear all over the place.
I’m sure that getting out for a good walk last night helped me to put my bad mood behind me. My bad mood had been caused by getting an email from my CPN to say that she would be coming round to see me at home after 1pm yesterday afternoon. This was despite me having sent an email the previous day saying that due to all the messing around with appointments, I didn’t want to meet with her at the moment and would be in touch in due course if I felt I needed her support. I have plenty of support at the moment – GP, Therapist, and support group and I have an appointment next week with an OT support worker to look at healthy living, so I don’t really want or need to see my CPN at the moment, and in view of the recent problems with her and the messing around with appointments recently I really do not want the anxiety of a new Care Co-ordinator right at the moment, although I am definitely decided that, for both my sake and the sake of my CPN, I do need to change Care Co-ordinator in the near future.
So having read the email from my CPN yesterday morning, I immediately switched from being in quite a good mood to feeling angry and resentful that she hadn’t taken on board anything I’d said in my email, and that I had to wait around for her to come yesterday afternoon. Because I was angry and frustrated and a bit stressed, I didn’t reply to her email as I didn’t trust myself to be polite.
And so I waited around yesterday, tidying the house, getting odd little jobs done before she was due to visit. 1pm came and went and I started to get even more angry, as I thought I was going to have to wait around all afternoon, not even able to go outside and do some gardening in case I missed a knock at the door. Eventually at 2.30pm I went online and discovered an email from my CPN saying that she was sorry she hadn’t been able to get hold of me and that she was now going on leave for a week and what did I want to do about changing Care Co-ordinator. Presumably she had been waiting for me to confirm that it was ok for her to visit me and so because I hadn’t emailed her back to confirm, she hadn’t visited.
I had a real mixture of emotions when I got that email – relief that she wasn’t coming, with anger at her for yet another missed appointment, and frustration at myself for not responding to the email from her yesterday morning.
But despite feeling still quite grumpy and fed up when I set off for a walk with the dog at teatime, by the time I got home an hour later after quite a strenuous walk, I felt completely different. At one point, I had nearly decided to add an extra couple of miles to the walk by continuing along the ridge I had climbed up instead of dropping down the hillside to the road and my house. I think I did start to experience the “runner’s high” that people talk about when exercising. I felt like I could go on for miles, and it was only the fact that I was hungry that stopped me. So I think I have definitely changed my attitude towards exercise – instead of feeling like I just can’t be arsed, I am now positively looking forward to getting out again for another good walk.
But today I might have to settle for a shorter walk this evening as this afternoon is the annual village jumble sale. I love going to the jumble sale and usually come back with a huge bag of clothes and stuff, most of which only cost 20p per item. It means that I can stock up on cheap size 14 clothes which will see me through the next few weeks until I begin to see the benefit of doing all this walking and can fit back into my size 12 and size 10 clothes. Then I can pass all the size 14 clothes on to the charity shop and forget that I was ever that size without having spent a fortune. And some new clothes, even second hand ones, are always good for a self-esteem boost. Some of my favourite clothes have come from previous year’s jumble sale or charity shops.
The only problem with the jumble sale is that there will be lots of people there. And lots of people who will want to chat, and might ask me about work or who might have heard on the grapevine that I’ve been ill (I’ve resigned from a village committee due to “health reasons”) and I will have to put my mask on and smile and lie about looking for work after being made redundant, and how I have been ill but am getting better without actually saying what has been wrong with me. People round here don’t really understand mental illness – they are traditional country folk who see mental illness as having “trouble with your nerves” and that you just need a good slap and a kick in the backside to pull you out of depression. At least that’s the impression I get. Perhaps I am judging them wrongly. But whatever, I will have to be smilingly chatty without really saying anything or revealing anything. I can probably manage that for a couple of hours today. The benefit of last night’s walk means that my mood is pretty good this morning so it won’t be too much of an effort to put the mask on for a while.
I’ve been taking a half dose of Mirtazapine (15mg) off and on over the past week or so (I didn’t tell my GP that I sometimes don’t take it, only that I had reduced the dose from 30mg to 15mg) and I am convinced that the newfound enthusiasm and motivation is due to the reduced dose. I just feel more awake and enthusiastic about doing things, instead of that all pervading sense of “can’t be arsed”. That’s the only way I can describe it – just can’t be arsed. However I do notice a difference when I miss a dose – I go to bed much later, and therefore wake later, and don’t sleep nearly as well, often waking several times during the night. So I do think that the Mirtazapine does serve a useful purpose still as a sedative night-time med and so I have accepted that there will be times when I really need something to knock me out and get me to sleep. But hopefully I will only use it on an occasional basis.
I have definitely noticed a lack of sugar and carb cravings when I don’t take the Mirtazpine and am now prepared for the cravings when I do take it, trying to ignore them or if I can’t, trying to find a healther, less fattening alternative – raw carrots, grapes, dried fruit and nuts. But it does take alot of will power to resist them.
But I want to fit into the new size 12 jeans which I bought in Asda the other day, within a month. They are hanging up in the kitchen next to my food cupboard and serve as a good reminder that raiding the food cupboard for crappy snack food late at night is not good.
