Author: N.A.Z.

Reason for Name Change

by N.A.Z., posted in Name Change

Well previously my sign off name was AQ. I changed it to NAZ. where did that come from? I met a Hindi speaking person and they were saying the name Na-soo-ria meant life and sunshine in Hindi. I have yet to find the correct spelling anywhere but I like it. I spelled it with a “z” and go by Naz for short. Later N.A.Z. Became an acronym for “not anybody’s zero”. I’m frequently underestimated and dismissed because of my disabilities and because certain people expect nothing much, I’m then labelled as “high functioning”. I also hate that term but can’t think of a way to articulate what “high/low” functioning means without actually using those words. I’m open to suggestions.

Anyhoo that’s that.

Have a wonderful week my lovelies,

NAZ

Compassion from the Crazies

by N.A.Z., posted in Inpatient Mental Health

First of all assume “crazies” is spelled with quotations. I jokingly said I wanted to reclaim the words “crazy”, “insane” and “nuts” the way some black people have reclaimed the “n” word. Of course it is meant to be understood that those words are in quotations. And can only be spoken by those who fall into the category of having “lived experience” with a mental illness. I hate the terms lived experience and consumer survivor. Call a damn spade a spade I say. I have since found out that my trailblazing mentor, who has since passed, was trying to reclaim those words as well! My grandmother always said “great minds think alike… and fools seldom differ” hahaha. My mentor was definitely a great mind. I use them jokingly among my village of supporters sometimes. It lightens the mood a little sometimes.

Anyway, when I was in the hospital there was a patient who didn’t speak the same language as me very fluently. I had issues with not having an appetite and not eating. They noticed and would often motion me to come closer and give me a piece of food and watch closely until I ate it. It was actually a beautiful exchange. One “crazy” person clear enough to see, in the midst of their own psychosis, that I would benefit from a piece of banana and not to offer me the whole thing because it was just too much at the time.

Sometimes that same person would motion for me to lie down because I was becoming too overstimulated and needed a break. That touched my heart.

We’re more than just our illness.

Take care my lovelies,

Naz

Being Under-medicated is an issue too?!

by N.A.Z., posted in Inpatient Mental Health

Well my friends it’s been a while since I’ve written. It’s been crazy literally and figuratively! I’m going to give an overview of what happened in this blog and then I’ll create other blog posts that are related to experiences that let up to this situation.

I’m not going to reread the previous blog posts at this point because I may find them painful or triggering. There may be some repetition. My grandmother always said “repetition is good for emphasis” so let’s pretend it’s deliberate and I’m emphasizing lol.

So I likely mentioned the fact that I was on a benzodiazepine called clonazepam. It’s fine when prescribed as PRN (take as needed) that how I took it for years. Sometimes only twice in a month sometimes twice in a year. But due to doctor prescribed discontinuation of another medication I ended up going through withdrawal starting June 2019. I’m still experiencing the effects to this day. My doctor left (a whole other blog coming on that later) after putting on 3 x 0.5 mg of clonazepam daily as opposed to 1 x 0.5 mg as needed. The reason for this was the withdrawal from the initial medication created chemically induced insomnia, anger, anxiety on steroids that I’d never experienced before, nightmares and “weird” dreams and my PTSD was in high gear as well.

Eventually, 7 months of taking the 1.5 mg of clonazepam daily (really not supposed to be more than 1-2 months (whole blog coming on that) a got with a psychiatrist that was slowly taking me off.

I ended up going to the hospital voluntarily not because I thought I was delusional but I knew things were off with my sleep and my meds. My pharmacist and the in patient psychiatrist both agreed that the psychiatrist had me on 2 little clonazepam and that was the cause for all of my symptoms. Had this been a bipolar episode I would have been in the hospital for months. Not 5 days. I experienced true psychosis and it scared me to death.

Sooooo much more to say on this and I will. But I’m super tired.

Take care my lovelies,

Naz (I’ll explain the name change later)

Are you sick of your doctors pathologizing symptoms or dismissing everything as side effects once they find out you have a mental illness?

by N.A.Z., posted in Health

This has really been pissing me off as of late. (and that’s the understatement of the year). My whole issue is that I was taken off a psychiatric medication 1 year ago.. I called that “the beginning of the end”. I’ve probably mentioned this in previous posts but I have ridiculous memory lapses. It was the beginning of the end of life as I knew it. Still suffering from the effects of that over a year later.

So yes I understand that many psychiatric medications have side effects.. And sometimes even worse withdrawal. But just because it’s on the list of side effects, doesn’t mean it’s not also a disease or physical health issue. And If over 15 years of psych meds I’ve consistently had 5 main side effects and now I have like 97 (probably an exaggeration I haven’t counted).. Sure maybe they’re listed as side effects but maybe there’s also something wrong with my physical health that’s being ignored. My pharmacists, psychiatrist and psychotherapists are all scratching their heads because they can’t figure out why I’m having such rare and severe reactions to medications. Some of which I’ve been on before and had no reaction to. The pharmacist did explain that when I started certain meds 15 years ago my body is completely different today so it’s not as uncommon as I would think for something to have worked before and not to work today.. or for a side effect not to express itself for 14 years. I still feel skeptical about that.. Just the amounts of things that are going wrong.

I’ve also given into the whole “it’s a side effect so lets ignore it” thing. Side effects of 2 of my meds were joint pain. I had this horrible pain in the joints in my foot. Excruciatingly painful to the point where I thought it might have been broken (not sure how I would have broken it because I’m not exactly a speed demon on my cane lol). I put off getting it seen to because joint pain was a side effect. Went to my doctor and he couldn’t see anything in terms of inflammation. I had a feeling in was arthritis. He had it x-rayed.. It was arthritis. I found this strange. I had expected arthritis in my spine because of my condition. I actually already have arthritis in my spine. But in my foot?? That is not a side effect. I got scared because there are actually 360 joints in your body and I was concerned that I could get it in more joints. I do have pain in other joints. I’ve been keeping track of all of my symptoms/side effects/withdrawl symptoms. Many of these overlap with a few actual diseases. Specifically autoimmune diseases. I’ve been convinced this whole time that there is some kind of underlying physical health condition or disease. Once it is diagnosed the health care “professionals” would realize “oh it’s not 97 separate random issues.. they’re all components of this one disease” I’m convinced they will figure this out after I’ve died from the disease. And they’ll be like oops.. it wasn’t only side effects.. and it wasn’t due to the grief of losing her psychiatrist. (he’s not dead he was allegedly on medical leave but I’ve found out that there was a complaint and investigation about him. There are certain things he needs to do before he can be reinstated). If I hear that one more time!!!! I have been through so much crap in my life and you’re trying to tell me the reason my body is having these strange and rare reactions is because I’m “not expressing my emotions about my psychiatrist being on leave so they’re coming out physically”. wtf?!? What do you know about what I have or not expressed?? Did you even ask me? You’ve seen some of his other patients and they’re “taking it really hard” so you’re going to paint us all with the same damn brush. Seen one crazy seen em all?! If anything I have intense anger towards him and I fell I express that extremely well. F*** outta here!. Yes I’m aware of the mind body connection. Yes in other areas of my life that is definitely true. But you are off the mark here. Don’t use big theories you don’t understand. Sorry is my irritation showing? Well at least I’m expressing my emotions right?

So my doctor was going to send me to a chiropodist/podiatrist. I was thinking.. wouldn’t it make more sense to see the specialist that actually deals with and assesses inflammation and arthritis first!? Also a cardiologist because of some of my sypmptoms and test results, I looked it up and it’s a rheumatologist. Why am I, the patient, the person the one to look that up and bring it up to him and now he’s doing the tests? I’m not even mentally stable. Why am I doing your job? Yes I’m anxious but if you mention that as the cause one more time! I’ve had anxiety since I was 8. These things have not happened before. Something different is happening here. I’ve seen the results to the tests he just ordered. He can’t ignore those numbers. It will be an interesting conversation.

Unfortunately sometimes you can’t just sit back and expect the health care professionals to do their best, do their job, go over and above. I’m researching as best I can which is so anxiety inducing but If I hadn’t been researching I wouldn’t have discovered some pretty important things. Frustrating to say the least.

Something to keep in mind. I work at a mental health agency and they ran some statistics and found that I think over 90% of our client deaths were physical health related. Mental health you would assume the higher percentage would be suicide. The reason I know what an internist is because I’ve accompanied clients to their appointments. Internists deal with people who are on multiple conditions and have multiple physical health conditions. That describes so many of our clients. No coincidence that clients on 7+ psych meds also have a lot of physical health conditions. The medications are toxic but I still take them because what’s the alternative? But who’s “crazy” the person who takes a pill that will not cure them, causes many side effects, even worse withdrawal effects if you try to come off, causes obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, kidney conditions, thyroid conditions, lowers your life expectancy….. but yes doctor… I be takin my poison… I mean meds doctor… I sold my guitar and piano because I can’t play them anymore because the hand tremors doctor… my brain is slow but I still be takin my poison… I mean meds doctor.. now I’m obese but can’t lose the weight because the poison… I I mean meds changed my metabolism and I can’t loose it doctor… so now I’m at a greater risk of diabetes doctor. Thanks!! (that was dripping with sarcasm and disdain in case you missed that) And a psychiatrist that was one of my colleagues actually said “there’s no way that client can lose the weight unless they come off all of their meds” That’s how the psychiatrist knew the client was off the meds.. because they were losing so much weight. Wow.

Anyhoo, to people who are on psych meds and for he doctors who treat them. Don’t be so quick to dismiss things to being psychosomatic or side effects because sometime they’re also symptoms of real physical health diseases/conditions.

Anywho that’s the end of my rant for now.

Have a lovely weekend my lovelies. I actually have no idea what day it is today but I’ll go with that.

AQ

You’re with me on the Mountain top, but what about when I’m in the Valley?

by N.A.Z., posted in peaks and valleys

One thing I realized about who my real inner circle is. What i refer to as my inner circle are my real people who truly care about me and love me. They believe in me. They uplift me. They believe that I will be well again someday. There’s no doubt in their minds about this l. They don’t care what state I’m in mentally. Like they want to know that I’m ok but it doesn’t change the way the feel about AQ as a person or what she can accomplish. They are sometimes family but often they are close friends. Friends are the family we choose.

What i noticed is my inner circle has gotten smaller and smaller. I’m ok with that. It’s about quality and not quantity. But I noticed certain friends, who at one point were in my inner circle liked to be around me and congratulate me when I had achieved some type of success. When I was in the mountain top. But life has peaks and valleys. I found these same people when I was in the valley, struggling, in some kind of episode, unable to work as a result. All I heard from these people were crickets. In their defence I know some people can’t handle it when I’m not doing well. They don’t know what to say. I get that. But just say that! Don’t just stop communicating with me completely. Send me a text that says you’re praying for me.. send me a joke, send me pics or videos of dogs and horses (because I know that horses are really unicorns in disguise! Don’t let the secret out! Lol.. I’m only half joking though 😊). One of my friends who has a few kids said maybe this one person is super busy because she has a lot of kids. I totally get that. Kids keep you busy. But what I said to my friend that made this comment was.. did you have the time to speak to me for the last hour? She said no. Which I knew. (I kept asking her if she needed to go because I could tell she was busy with her kids) initially she started to say she had to go but then she said no it’s ok let me know what’s going on. She’s one of the friends I don’t call often so when I do she knows something is up plus there were lots of things she wanted updates on. So when I said to her did you have the time to speak with me just now for over an hour? She said no. And I said that’s the point. You have kids, you’re super busy.. but you made the time when there was none. That’s the difference. Then she understood what I was saying about my other friend.

One of my friends will just say “I listened to/read your message but I have absolutely no idea what to say. I respect that so much. My issues are so complicated no one can “fix” them. I don’t expect my friends to fix anything. But being able to acknowledge your limitations is huge. And being able to articulate that although you love me you’re out of your depth but you’re always here here for me even when you don’t know how to respond. I have so much respect for that!

Yes I have an amazing psychotherapist but she is new to me. So she’s been doing a lot of damage control. Trying to figure out who AQ is and put out all these little fires first. it seems when things go wrong with me it’s not just 1 thing it’s like 97 different things at the same time. I get incredibly stressed and overwhelmed. My therapist was like try to focus on what you DO have control over. That way you won’t be so overwhelmed. It’s fine to be angry about how your agency screwed your over but if that’s where you put all of your focus and attention you’ll get even more mad and nothing will get accomplished. You’ll feel more stressed and overwhelmed. So helpful.

Let’s just say someone was helping me put a case together and I had grounds to make a human rights claim. But the process of putting a case together is so incredibly stressful. So much so that I’ve been breaking out into hives. Stuttering (which I never have before). The person who was helping me was concerned because he’s helped others put cases together and they had no mental illness. Some still had breakdowns as a result. My family was very concerned. I was struggling with depression and a billion other things. They were like you’re on sick leave you should be resting! But I was like I have to fight this! This is an injustice and it’s really messed me up in a lot of ways” in the end I realized it was literally (and figuratively) making me sick. But I’m glad I at least tried. So many things in the past I did not report, did not advocate for myself. So this was very important to me. I’m totally disgusted with the agency not just from this incident but in general there were a whole bunch of issues. I had made my mind up to leave a year and a half before but I was so burnt out from the very job I wanted to leave, I just didn’t have the energy to do a job search. That’s like another job in itself. So Many people around me are disgusted by the agency. The consensus is that this is an agency that prides itself on advocating for people with mental illness and teaching other agencies about the importance about workplace accommodations and work life balance.. stress management. This is how they treat an employee that has a mental illness??. Fuck them.. and their mothers and I hope they get mauled by wild, rabid, syphilis infected racoons. Did I mention I’m angry af and also incredibly irritable? Because I am! No I don’t plan to hurt anyone depression is anger turned inward. That’s been more of my problem. Plus if I hurt someone verbally I’m just hurting myself. I’ll just let the racoons do it lol.

Anyway this took a turn but that’s ok. Just blame it on the “crazy” it must be useful for something lol. But I feel much better now because I let go of the legal stuff and I’m focusing on my recovery right now. What a weight off my shoulders.

Anyhoo what I started to say is I have an amazing inner circle who supports me and holds hope for me when I don’t have it myself. FYI not having an ounce of hope is a horrible place to be.. I do have some hope now though.

I say all this to say that it’s so easy to celebrate with someone when they’re on the top.. but where are you when they are struggling? My people are amazing. They’ve been incredibly loyal and consistent through the struggle parts. So when they celebrate with me it’s even more special because they were there with me in the valley and they know how far I’ve come. Amazing!

I am so blessed! So grateful and thankful to the amazing, phenomenal, compassionate, empathetic, hilarious, understanding, supportive, loyal, patient and caring people in my life. Wow some people don’t have one person like that and I have several?!?! So humbling. If that isn’t God I don’t know what is. I don’t mean that in a religious way. Some people came as a big surprise. They love me so much and I didn’t even know!

Have a wonderful weekend my lovelies. Be grateful for the amazing people in your life. Even if it’s just one person you are blessed!

Peace & Blessings,

AQ