The Beautiful Lovebirds

I SAW a pair of lovebirds today. Outside the paper shop, chirping merrily back and forth, then eyeing you suspiciously if you ventured too close. It would have been kinder to the birds to hang them higher up. Birds feel distinctly uncomfortable when they have to look up at copious random passers-by. Even if they are oo-ing, aah-ing and cooing all over them.

My local birdery once had a single lovebird on sale. If you get just the one, it falls in love with YOU. I would love to have lovebirds. (They're no more expensive than budgerigars!)

I had an appointment at the drug clinic this morning. But it's two weeks until my script runs out. So I rescheduled for next week. I'm getting a new worker. I hope the new one is as kindly as the old one. And I hope he's more efficient. He was supposed to be getting me an appointment with mental health services when I was suicidally depressed. About TWO MONTHS ago. Though I never told him exactly how bad I felt. I'd never trust a drugs worker any further than I could throw one!

The real reason I wanted to get off methadone so badly, by the way, was so that I could die Clean. ~ No risk of having to do Cold Turkey in the afterlife!

My dose is currently a flat 30mg. Next time, I might ask for 25. Dead or alive, I still want off that repugnant crap!

I keep getting symptoms of mania. Racing thoughts. Pacing back and forth. Laughing fits. Cannot sleep at night. Valium Marilyn thinking I needed the loo because I wouldn't keep still. My other friend Greg Arious convinced I'd been at the crack. Even his highly annoying and insulting paranoid schizophrenic friend thought I was off my head on drugs when I hadn't taken ANYTHING. I told Greg Arious it was a NATURAL HIGH. Something with which most drug addicts are completely unfamiliar!

We all got free Chinese dinner last night! The paranoid schizophrenic was very generous.

As for my mental "state" ~ it's not even hypomania. My mood is pretty normal most of the time. Sometimes [in the past] some of the signs appear then disappear as quickly as they came. Doesn't mean it's necessarily any "episode".

I am determined to focus my energies anew on my children's book. Haven't penned a word for 3 days since I came to a standstill where a piece of well thought-out dialogue was required.

Still I was up till at least 5am last night so I could have written it then! My mind was crystal clear by that time. But I ended up reading the Famous Five and actually being able to follow what they were doing. When you can't even focus on a children's book [like the night before!] then your attention span has gone pretty terminal! They've just found sunken treasure. Julian and Dick are heaving it out of the river, while the girls look passively on! The creaking 1950s dialogue has me doubled up in laughter.

Well I have to go-go. Too many things to do!!

SAK NOEL ~ PASO (NINI ANTHEM)




SAK NOEL ~ PASO (CLUBMIX) beauty pageant video

 

 ALICE DEEJAY  ~ WILL I EVER

 

Most Odd

WHY O WHY did I waste so much of my time on DRUGS~?? They only make life much more mediocre.

I only stayed up till 4am. I was trying to read the Famous Five but just could not focus. My attention span is growing terrible. Pages and pages flying by in a blur. I am ranting, ranting, ranting in my head all the time at someone who is not there!

O I didn't want to say this but 2 friends of mine are dying. When  you've got liver cirrhosis that bad it looks like you're pregnant, that's terminal. And my certain other friend has a breast lump ~ yes, someone ELSE ~ PLUS lumps under the armpit. That means she is fucked. At this rate I'm going to be left completely alone. I'm the only person I know who thinks he is going to live past 90,

I'm not depressed any more! I feel more excitable than average. At least when people die they are at peace.

What am I saying about "fucked"; my Mum's breast cancer had spread to her lymph nodes too and she's alive and well 5 years later!

Great Expectations just came on. The black and white version. One minute Pip was a kid with that Elizabeth Taylor-like brat saying, "You may kiss me if you like." Then he was grown up. Then some people were sentenced to be hanged. Then she (brat-girl) inherits the house. Then it was over!

The dance music (presently) on Clubland ~ Freesat 514 ~ is way too slow. I need something exciting and fast like this:

CLUBLAND XTREME HARDCORE MEGAMIX 8 ~ CLUBLAND TV




Barbra Streisand. What a voice. She mightn't have been "pretty" in her prime but wow, was she beautifully sexy. Last night I put on Yentl. Tunes going round and round my head. Cannot get ANYTHING I want from her to put her: "embedding disabled by request".

So here's DJ Sammy "Heaven" Sweetzero remix

 

Hope y'all are having a good weekend!

A Windy Time

I WAS IN A REALLY WEIRD MOOD yesterday. My friend Pinx wanted £25 off me, £10 of which I owed to her, £15 of which she was borrowing from me. This entailed, annoyingly enough, a walk in the freezing cold and rain.

Then I stopped to have a wee round the back of a church and found I was hearing "voices" or very loud random thoughts. I could point to where precisely they came from, which was the air around me. Then we messed about going round Morrisons. I kept having laughing fits. Then we went in the £1 shop where they had fart cushions and then I really was laughing my head off. We tested it out at the bus stop and I thought "if the police come past they'll think I'm a drunk, cackling like this" but I'd only had a half can of cyder at this point. I don't hear my thoughts aloud all the time by the way.

 Anyway then I went and got my step-Dad a death card because his Mum has died. Pinky told me in no way should I get the sunset one I really wanted. So I picked out a landscape of hills reflected in a lake ~ neutral. I really wanted Van Gough's Starry Night from the rack above but wasn't sure if it wasn't too depressing. I've no idea of my step-Dad's taste. He and I have water under the bridge but I did write, "I was very sorry to hear about your Mum. I know you loved and cared for her deeply," which he did. She died of Alzheimer's in a care home. No idea where she was. Then I signed my name.

And then the phone rang. It was another friend wanting a DVD back. I said fine I'll be right with you. He lives only 7 minutes away. Searched everywhere in my bag. It wasn't there so I really flipped my lid. Stamped home. Then all the way to his. Which took ages. Was still in fury when I got there; he asked what the hell was wrong. I just told him I was a moody bastard. He thinks I'm cuckoo anyway. Then I got out the fart cushion and was laughing my head off again. What I really wanted was some sexual lubricant to rub down the neck to make the farts sound really wet and dirty. But nobody had any. His dog went nuts when I let off the windbag in its face. Jumping back and forth then running up to me, trying to savage the Rubbery Trumpeteer.

Oh yeah then I got offered free brown and white ~ that's heroin and crack ~ but I said no way in hell. A little too vehemently. Crack really rattles my cage; brown does nothing. Plus it will dirty up my test down the drug clinic.

So I quickly went home. Tried to sleep in the early evening because I thought I was tired. Couldn't sleep. A good sign, really. I'm no longer sleeping 12-15 hours every day. In the last few days my sleep has become really poor. I put on the film Quills and was laughing my head off at the dirty stories ~ especially the graveyard one where the man gets so vigorous with a corpse that her bones fall apart.I didn't like the bit where Michael Caine (the sadistic dr) orders the Marquis's tongue cut out. Though the film was set in an insane asylum, the Marquis de Sade was no lunatic. Yes he was a pervert. Yes eccentric. A bit hypomanic, maybe. But not mad.

Come midnight I was too excited to sleep so I put on loud dance music videos. I know from experience not to bother even trying to sleep when I feel even slightly hyper. At 3:45 I lay down in bed but still couldn't sleep. I took a Nytol and eventually crawled under the duvet at 5:25, truly exhausted. It was daylight outside. I got up around midday and have done little except watch back-to-back Dallas repeats. And that's my day!

PS I no longer believe I'm seriously ill at all. With liver disease or anything else. And don't even care that much about turning into a woman! If I were going to turn into anything I'd much rather be a roborovski hamster. Or better still a bird. A seagull wheeling high in the air.

 LMC: CLOUDS ABOVE

 


MADONNA: GIRL GONE WILD this is the song from Madonna's perfume ad. Took her long enough to bring out a fragrance. You'd think a business-headed girl like her would have got in on that act years ago.

 

Why I'm Turning Into A Woman

I THINK I KNOW WHY I am turning into a woman now. At least on one side of my chest. RISPERIDONE the antipsychotic I took on-off for nearly a year DOES cause "gynecomastia" in men and boys!

I was getting money out of the cash point at 1am last night when I heard a woman's voice yelling "that dog looks like a donkey!" It was a friend of mine. Drunk out of her head. Wanting a can of dogfood for a man she later claimed was trying to sleaze her up. She was so out of it in MY corner shop ~ picking up jars of peas, slurring on about pet food which it eventually transpired they don't sell (they don't sell breakfast cereal either) and I could tell if we didn't leave quick we were going to get chucked out. So we had to go a few shops down for Pedigree Chum and then the giant dog was too nervous to touch it! She has liver cirrhosis so bad it looks like she's pregnant. And she told me the symptoms of that were real heavy sweats (which I get, but blamed on my methadone wearing off too quickly because methadone does cure them; then again opiates cure a multitude of symptoms (not just pain) so that doesn't necessarily mean anything... also episodic extreme fatigue (yes) ~ but then again I got diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome 16 years ago and I always assumed it was just that. I'm hep C negative. Yes I did used to drink enough to get memory black outs. But that was years ago. I still drink. I was drinking yesterday and the alcohol was making me feel ill. My tolerance for it seemed to have fallen (which is a sign of liver disease). When I knocked it back I felt really high ~ more like a drugs high than a feeling you'd expect from drink... followed by horrible dehydration. And I had to knock back double the volume of water compared to cyder and even then I didn't feel 100%. Ukh. What the hell is wrong with me?

I'm totally off the drink today, by the way.

 We went back to her flat and she had a really good grope of my tit and kept comparing it to hers. It doesn't even look like a woman's breast, not even one that would score 1/10 in terms of size. I pressed down her fingers and said "feel it. There's something else there." And she said "It's not a lump. It feels like a bit of gristle." And that is exactly how it feels. The word "cyst" means "bladder" (hence cystitis). There's nothing round and bladder-like about this and no way is that "normal" breast tissue.

I just looked up symptoms of alcoholic liver disease and though they do point out how nonspecific they can be, I get a lot of them. Including this weird nausea-like feeling. No jaundice though. If they think they're giving me a torturous liver biopsy without general anaesthesia... well I'm 50:50. Would I even bother having one? Bearing in mind they insert a terrifying knitting needle length contraption that tears out a chunk of liver. It's like the device they use for testing cheese, but in miniature. Liver biopsies REALLY HURT. Another friend of mine had one and now has to go for another. And she says this time they've promised her general anaesthetic. Though everything this person says has to be taken with a pinch of salt. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of treatment for alcoholic liver problems anyhow. Which is even less reason to bother with a biopsy.

Another reason I didn't think I had anything wrong with me for weeks, despite what I now see as "symptoms" was that the nasty drug quetiapine (Seroquel) made me ill all the time. And as y'all know I'm prone to depression. In certain "episodes" I get quite a strong feeling of malaise. For lack of any specific symptoms I told myself it was all in my head. As for quetiapine: the first week on that coincided with flu-type symptoms and heavy sweats. Weeks later I was still getting excessive drowsiness, faintness, dots in front of the eyes (like when migraine is coming on) and the type of brain fog associated with hepatitis C and CFS/ME. Then I found out that of all things the athelete's foot spray I was applying every day was messing up metabolism of the Seroquel. When I stopped that I felt better ~ but not completely well. The same symptoms persisted. Just to a lower degree. I need to find some mental treatment that works, surely. One day I might really need it. I've met loads of people on olanzopine (Zyprexa) and they don't seem to moan about side-effects.  Another possible route for the mental health is mood stabilizers. But lithium, the commonest one, sounds horrible. Anyway it's not good for rapid cycling and a lot of my "episodes" are pretty short. I just get lots of them close together, without necessarily any period of truly "normal" mood in between. A lot of people on mood stabilizers say that even if they do flatten out the mood completely (rather than just reducing the amplitude of the manic-depressive cycles) they tend to leave them feeling slightly depressed all the time. Well that's bloody wonderful.

Anyway what am I talking about here? I've been posting for too long. Anna Grace if you're reading this, change your comments setting. You got zero comments last time because your old blog is set to "team members only". Whoever your "team members" are, I'm not one of them. And why, Anna did you say you were in Hawaii a few weeks ago. And now you're telling us you've been in Wisconsin the whole time?

Anyway I've got to go. If your weekend can't be great then may it be tolerable :-)

What Happened At The Hospital

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN WEEKS I wasn't clucking when I woke up this morning. I was so para about missing the 9:45 hospital appointment I got up at 7am. Packed a toothbrush, deodorant, Michael Jackson book, Famous Five and everything. Just in case I needed instant surgery. I drank most of my methadone. Am saving some till tonight in the hope that I won't have to walk to the chemist tomorrow in menopausal-style sweats. Miraculously I had survived the previous 24 hours on just the 30mg prescribed. I had been drinking a little extra on top as I'd messed up my system taking heroin every day for just over a month. I'm off the heroin now. And off the extra methadone too. I won't be going back to either in a hurry.

The consultant told me I was growing breast tissue. He mentioned normal and abnormal tissue but wouldn't tell which was mine. I had to tell him about the methadone and the Seroquel/quetiapine. Methadone because it could mess up general anaesthesia if some opioid like fentanyl were part of the cocktail. Seroquel becaus it can cause production of breast milk even in young boys. He said there was no connection between this and what I have. He did say cannabis can make you grow tits, but I never touch that crap. The doctor seems to suspect my problem has something to do with my liver. As for why is the swelling one side only, he said that just happens sometimes.

He can't think I'm seriously ill, surely, as my next appointment is in JUNE. He also said excessive male breast tissue does not necessarily have to be removed. We'll see about that. I've also got to have a scan in about 2 weeks. I had to go down for blood tests ~ liver function, electrolytes and soemthing called B-HCG or B-HC4. Couldn't read the doctor's writing. O I just googled it! B-HCG is the PREGNANCY HORMONE!!!

Here's the scene from Carry on Matron where Kenneth Williams thinks he's turning into a woman. Watch it and you'll see why I love Carry on films so much:

 

Anyway back to the blood-letting and I really wasn't looking forward to the stabbing at my veinless arms but she got me first time in each hand. My GP annoyingly enough wanted a glucose and lipids profile so I needed 2 tests. My right hand dried up after barely 1ml and that took a stressfully long time to dribble out. The left hand was a real gusher ~ 3ml within a couple of seconds. I haven't hit up there for years since hitting an artery right beside where she hit the vein.

Then I hit the cyder on the way back. Only drank one litre (as well as a half litre can on the way there) ~ but that was enoughto make me feel dehydrated and crap all day. It's past 8:30 and I still don't feel right.

So anyway I've no idea what's supposedly wrong with me. The mystery continues...

Illustrated: fentanyl ~ often used in general anaesthesia.

Surgery!!

IT'S NOT A BREAST CLINIC it's general surgery outpatients I'm supposed to get to first thing tomorrow morning. I'm pretty glad about that. I thought I'd end up in a room full of women hiding myself behind Hello magazine.

Still the prospect of surgery fills me with a faint fear. The painkillers won't work, because I'm on methadone. I have "elevated tolerance" to opiates. Doctors love that word Elevated. Elevated tolerance. Elevated mood. Everything about me is elevated. Including my hight. I'm fairly tall. I'm not in an elevated mood now though. I've been feeling severely irritable for ages, plus depressed. Today I'm not in any mood, except one of creeping trepidation.

Surely they won't keep me in for surgery on the very same day?? That will really mess up my methadone collections. If I can't get out of the hospital for early evening Friday there's a good chance I'll miss that day and won't be allowed my weekend pick up. Also I'm broke until Friday. Barely a pot to piss in. Yes this is partly due to drug abuse. Partly due to not being able to manage my money. I have to save up bus fare to get back from the hospital. If I do get hacked open I'm not WALKING back all bandaged up with bruises on my neck from the drips.

I can't afford to phone the methadone clinic and ask for any special treatment. My talktime is down to £1.50. Everything hangs on Friday when I should get money early because of the Mayday bank holiday (that's a public holiday to those of you on foreign shores). Maybe the hospital will let me use their phone.

(Another reason I'm broke is that someone who's lent as well as borrowed in the past and is usually 100% reliable, borrowed £20 he can't pay back till Monday when I won't need it. The DWP have left him hanging penniless for THREE WEEKS because he's being transferred from Terminal Decrepitude Benefit to State Pension and that's what they do to people...)

Ukh. I'm really not looking forward till tomorrow. Last time I was in that hospital I walked past oncology and felt ever so glad I wasn't due to walk through THAT door. Just past oncology, in the humming bowels of the building was nuclear medicine ~ even scarier! The sign had a picture of an atom on it, just to freak out new patients even more!

I've got to go I only shelled out for half an hour in this place and am about to be terminated. I'll let you know whether I still have 2 nipples by Friday.

 N-TRANCE: SET YOU FREE

SCOOTER/VICKY LEANDROS: C'EST BLEU EXTENDED

 Yes I KNOW I have terrible taste in music. I'm OLD.

Illustrated: my personality, even though my name's not Yvonne; a scary atom as used on the nuclear medicine sign

Life is a Gift

I HAVE AN APPOINTMENT WITH A BREAST CANCER specialist this Thursday at 9:45am. I nearly didn't pick up the phone from the clinic, thinking it was an annoying friend.

I am sorry about what I said yesterday, or the attitude behind it. I have been very ungrateful for my life. Talking about meeting God, when life itself is a miracle from God.

As for the rest of the ranting, I really don't know what the hell I want. I just know I don't want to be FORCED into any treatment against my will. I want my own life to be my own decision.

Apparently my swelling is visible through clothing. The lump itself feels flat, the shape of a very shallow pencil eraser. It's about 2cm or 2/3 of an inch long. I've been told by several people, including my mother, who's actually had breast cancer, that it's probably a cyst. Cysts hurt. Cancer doesn't (until the terminal stage and we all know about that.)

By the way I never mentioned this before because for weeks it just felt like a bruise. But when I knocked it the night before the doctor's appointment for my toe, I had a proper look and realized how swollen it actually is.

Re my other minor medical issues: the pus-ridden toenail has stopped pussing, still smells a bit of dustbins and has gone itchy ~ a sure sign of healing. I'm on flucloxacillin 250mg x4 daily.

My once crooked and inflexible broken finger has straightened up so well it barely looks any different to my other fingers now. It isn't stiff. I can type properly again.

I don't know how long it will be till I find out whether I'm at death's door and how far from that door I actually am.

I know if I do get diagnosed with cancer I will probably cry. I cried when the doctor told me I had schizophrenia and manic depression together and back then I was in what he succinctly called an "elevated mood" (ie ravingly manic).

I'm reading Enid Blyton's Famous Five. Her characters are obsessed with food and seem forever to be knocking back ginger beer.

My mood has improved considerably since last week. I'm not even that bothered about the prospect of surgery ~ just as long as they don't lop my nipple off!

Well I've got to go. I'm about to have four cheese tortelloni and broccoli with a mountain of grated Red Leicester.