#WeekendCoffeeShare (September 7, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare. It’s 7:40PM as I start writing my post, so like most times, I’ve had my last cup of coffee for the day. I will have a glass of my favorite soft drink in about half an hour and after that it’s just water, or maybe a cup of bedtime tea. However, I’d love for you to join me for a virtual cup of coffee. Let’s get into my post.

If we were having coffee, first I’d rave about the weather. After all, if you know me, you know that in my opinion summer is the best season. It’s September, but the weather is still summer-like. During most of the week, we had daytime highs above 25°C. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to cool off slightly and after that, sometime next week the temps are supposed to drop to 15°C.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I got in a lot of exercise minutes over the past week, mostly walking. I’m doing a challenge with my spouse on our Apple Watches that lasts up till this Monday and so far, I’m doing much better. I had expected to be slightly better because my spouse is a truck driver, but then again we have the same movement goal even though I’m shorter and as a result lighter than my spouse, which means I burn off fewer calories with the same activity.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I had my second play therapy session on Wednesday. The first was a bit of a disappointment, because as soon as she saw my staff, the therapist started saying I could come alone next time. I felt mostly disappointed about the fact that she hadn’t asked me or my staff why I need a staff to attend our sessions. When I explained this at this week’s session, she was totally cool with it.

We mostly played with PlayMobil®, which was really intriguing. I did overshare a bit this week, which I later regretted. It feels really challenging to set healthy boundaries, which is one of my goals that I told the therapist about.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I spoke with my support coordinator again today. On Monday I had a meeting with her and the behavior specialist. One of the things I’d asked to be implemented as soon as possible, is the agreement that staff won’t unlock the door for me when I’m in crisis and will, if necessary, physically prevent me from leaving the home. I had since wondered where the agreement that the door be unlocked came from. I looked at my support agreements, but there was nothing. Today, my support coordinator looked all through my file and couldn’t find the agreement either. This frustrates me, as honestly I have no idea who came up with it. It wouldn’t have been as frustrating, had this not been interpreted as a rule by literally all staff, even staff who hadn’t previously let me out the door. I mean, on Thursday I said I was leaving in an agitated tone and immediately the staff said she’d unlock the door for me. It frustrates me to no end that staff are making rules that they don’t write down and that, as a result, can’t be discussed with me. I hope that, once my support coordinator writes the agreement that I can’t be let out the door, which she’s going to do on Tuesday, this at least will stop in this case. I’m pretty sure there are many other unwritten rules about my care though.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d tell you I’m really feeling like doing something with polymer clay again, but I am rather uninspired. I did try to make a flower pendant this evening, but so far it’s just a cut out flower with no detail.

A Good Meeting With My Support Coordinator and Behavior Specialist

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I really want to write more about what’s on my mind and, after a few months of struggling, I finally have some good news. I just saw in my private journal in the Day One app that it was a year ago when I heard my moving date to this home. I moved two weeks later. How time flies! After a meeting with the behavior specialist and my support coordinator on Monday, I can safely say that, if the things we agreed on will actually happen, I’m going to have a pretty good life here.

I had requested this meeting a few weeks ago and it was originally scheduled for the 17th of September, but thankfully there was time to do it on Monday. We mostly discussed a document I’d written sometime in early August detailing my care needs (as I see them). Thankfully, most were things the behavior specialist and support coordinator could agree with me on. Here are the things we’ve decided.

1. Less staff switches and more clarity about who will be supporting me during the day. Currently, it’s only clear who will do my two-hour-long activity in the afternoon and the rest is guesswork. I wrote that I can’t help trying to figure out in my head who will be supporting me for which of my eight or so support moments during the day. The support coordinator and behavior specialist came up with a schedule for who will support me when based on what times each staff comes on. This, and all other agreements, won’t take effect until sometime in late October.

Staff will also get designated time to write up their daily notes about me. I also requested staff do a short handover (like, two minutes on how I’m generally doing) when they switch. I can’t remember what was agreed upon about this, but it should be relatively easy with the fact that I’ll have mostly no more than four staff supporting me over the course of the day.

2. My day schedule for weekends will be changed to be the same as my weekday schedule. Currently, there’s a fifteen to thirty-minute time difference, which is confusing. I originally proposed to remove an activity time slot from my one-on-one on weekends, so to make it very different, but that didn’t seem to be a good idea. I honestly mostly said this to stick to my allocated one-on-one hours. After all, the other support coordinator used to be really strict on these.

They’re going to try to get me slightly longer staff support in the evenings. Currently after 7:15PM, I’m supposed to be by myself except for a few two-minute check-ins.

They were also very clear that appointments with the physical therapist, play therapy etc. are not dependent on my day schedule. What I mean is, if they happen to be during a support moment, fine, but if the therapist’s most suitable moment is outside of my one-on-one, that doesn’t mean I’ll need to compensate or go to therapy without staff support. The other support coordinator had been shoving my day schedule into the physical therapist’s face before she could even pull out her calendar, which led me to say that PT isn’t day activities so shouldn’t be during my activity time slot and I’ll go alone if this means no support.

Finally, it was agreed upon that, if I come out of my unsupported time in distress, staff will help me and this does not need to be compensated for (unless it takes so long that staff’s other tasks will suffer).

3. The support coordinator will be advocating for there to be a trusted staff for me at least part of the day most days. The other support coordinator is the home’s planner and he’s been really tough to get along with, so we’ll see where this goes.

The support coordinator did say that she and my assigned staff will try to see me regularly too. I can also ask one of my trusted staff whether I can talk with them (support coordinator or assigned staff) about something.

4. I asked for recognition of how far I’ve come over the years with respect to for instance accepting temp workers, accepting unexpected staff changes, etc. This was quite a hard one to explain, but it eventually made sense.

5. I asked to no longer be let out the door when in distress. I agreed to be physically restrained and led to my room if necessary too. This is going to take effect sometime next week, since I felt really let down when the staff opened the door for me.

I later realized that this is really already in my crisis plan, but it contradicts the support agreement that I’m free to leave the home as I please and as such staff unlock the door when I want to leave. How this will all be put down on paper, is not fully clear with me, but I’m confident it will work out.

Overall, I’m really pleased with the outcome of this meeting. The only problem I can foresee is the other support coordinator, who is really coordinator for my side of the home, discarding everything as unworkable.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (August 10, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this beautiful Saturday in August. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s nearly 10PM, so I’ve long had my last cup of coffee and my soft drink for the day. I, however, do have Kinder Country candy bars in my cupboard, as well as lots of other candy. I bet I could persuade the staff to open the cupboard for you, but I can’t persuade them to brew you a coffee. Water will have to do. Anyway, let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d start by sharing about the weather. It’s mostly been quite warm with daytime temps in the mid to high 20s Celsius. We did get rain yesterday, but thankfully no thunderstorms. On Monday, the daytime high is supposed to be 32°C. I’m a warm weather person, but that’s too hot even for my liking.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I did a lot of walking over the past week. On four days out of the past seven, I got in over 100 exercise minutes according to my Apple Watch and I didn’t even go swimming this week, as the institution pool is closed now.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that I’ve been struggling a lot lately. Part of the reason I’m showing it more might be the fact that I discontinued my morning dose of topiramate a little over a month ago, but it’s not (just) that which explains why I’m feeling like crap. After all, I’ve been feeling like crap for months. Make that years, honestly. I am realizing I never recovered from the blow to my self-esteem that was being more or less kicked out of the care home in Raalte. No, don’t interrupt that I wasn’t kicked out, since I know I literally wasn’t. However, when I realized the intensive support home was the nightmare it was and asked to be put on the waiting list to return (or actually return, since I asked before my room was filled up), I was told that some people had actually been glad that I’d left.

Why is this relevant now? Because, even though my current home is better than the intensive support home, I’m still feeling like I’m massively overloaded and my capabilities are massively overestimated when I’m struggling. This leads to staff not following my current support agreements, which even when followed to a T create just about barely manageable a care situation if even that when I’m feeling low (they’re okay when I’m feeling good). I know I said the same of my day schedule back at the intensive support home, but I only said so because my staff there had already decided I was a spoiled brat and wouldn’t stop complaining until I had full-time one-to-one. Which was almost correct before topiramate, but it wasn’t when I was on this medication. And it isn’t now either. After all, when I wished for near full-time one-on-one back in 2021, I didn’t realize its implications in care. I do now.

I realize I might need to go back on my full dose of topiramate (even though the evening dose is going to be discontinued next week too), but I don’t think it’s an excuse to keep everything else the exact same, since my needs weren’t being met before I discontinued this medication. In short, yes, the med might get me to shut up, or it might not, but either way something else needs to change too.

After many meltdowns, I finally wrote down my care needs in a document and E-mailed this to my assigned staff. I did water them down a little to make them manageable within the way my home operates, but not so much that I’d have every reason to still complain if the team decide to implement this. At the end of the document, I put in a brief summary of my care in Raalte (in early 2022, so when the team had already fallen apart) and asked for recognition of the improvements I’ve made since. I mean, I don’t seriously request to be moved now (I do blurt it out during meltdowns) and I wish I got half as suitable care as I got back then.

The support coordinator mostly making decisions about me, is on vacation now, but she’ll return on Tuesday. I hope I’ll have a meeting with her and the behavior specialist soon to discuss my needs.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share some positives of the day today. I realize this post was mostly negative, after all, but today was a pretty good day. Here are some reasons why:

  • My assigned staff was here this morning.

  • She brought me a cup of coffee right when waking me up.

  • Even though we were late finishing my morning routine, the staff coming for my morning activity came right on time.

  • I went for three walks today.

  • I had a waffle with forest fruit jelly, powdered sugar and whipped cream on it with my afternoon coffee. And a macaron in the morning. Sorry not sorry, dietitian.

  • I was able to ask the staff who did my afternoon activity with me, whether she’s leaving (which I thought because I’d seen her with a client from another home) and thankfully she said no. I am proud of myself for up front asking her rather than getting distressed.

Share Your World (July 22, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I haven’t touched this blog in over a week, but thankfully have been doing okay. Today, I’m joining Share Your World. Here goes.

1. When you retire (or when you retired) do you have a picture of a small cottage with a white picket fence outside in a quiet village or something similar?
I honestly wasn’t fully sure at first what Di meant with this question. Do I have a picture? No. I have just one physical picture in my home and that one is of myself. Oh wait, she meant whether we envision ourselves living in a small cottage blah blah. Well, I for one don’t. I’m not technically retired, in that I’m not of retirement age and, since I never worked, I still consider that age (which by the time I reach it is probably mid-70s) the cut-off point for retirement. I don’t honestly envision myself ever living in a small cottage. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll live in a care home forever.

2. What do you associate with school dinners (apart from school of course)?
I envision another post in the making, as I can talk up a storm about school lunches. We didn’t get a cooked meal at my schools. Well, I did a few times when I’d be having after-school activities. I remember one such meal, a dish called “hete bliksem” in Dutch, which is basically a stew of mashed potatoes, apples and bacon. I detested it!

3. Can you play a musical instrument?
No, not at all. I took lessons learning to play keyboards at the training center for the blind when I was 19, but really didn’t get beyond the absolute basics. I have forgotten all of it since. Like I’ve also probably shared before, I took a few guitar lessons when at summer camp in Russia in 2000, but it took me the whole first lesson to figure out what the instructor, who spoke only English and Russian, meant by the “strings”.

4. What made you smile today?
My being able to teach one of the student staff here about care profiles and him appreciating my “lesson”. Care profiles are the care packages and associated budget each client in long-term care is allocated. I really loved perseverating on a topic I know a lot about without it personally affecting me at that very moment (because the student staff isn’t the one making decisions about my care).

Another thing that made me smile today is being able to describe the above image, which Di used for the optional gratitude section, directly from the web through my screen reader. I think I somewhat agree with the sentiment expressed in the quote too. At least, in my case, life may not always get better, but I do get to experience good days at every age.

Stabilize With Medicine

Posted on by Astrid

I talked to the support coordinator, the one who’s officially the other part of the home’s support coordinator but attends my meetings with the behavior specialist because I don’t get along with my support coordinator (my former male assigned staff). She had talked to the intellectual disability physician and I won’t have a meeting with her on tapering my medication until late September. The reason is the fact that there’s lots of temp workers at the care home during the summer months and they want me stable for now. Well guess what? If you want to wait for there to be few temp workers, you’d better wait for 2034, as I usually say. For those not aware, 2034 is my code word for never. It’s inspired by the book called 2034, which is about World War III.

I’m pretty angry about this whole thing, because well I already have mildly decreased kidney function as is. That is, I had mildly decreased kidney function a year ago at my last bloodwork, so who knows if it’s gotten worse now? And, as you might know, kidney disease doesn’t usually cause symptoms until it’s pretty advanced.

I don’t even mind waiting till September, except that this means seven months on my current med combo rather than the originally planned six weeks. And except that who knows what will get in the way in September? For all I know, the support coordinator might’ve gotten pregnant or sick or have left like the last one.

I honestly feel like they want to stabilize me with medicine rather than with the right support. And, for what it’s worth, I’m not very stable as is. Never was. Not with five different medications, many of which on high doses.

This post was written for John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop, for which one of the prompts is to pick a line from a song you like and use it as the title of your post. I picked the line “Stabilize with medicine”, which I’m not sure is a full line, from the song Serotonin by Girl in red. This song is rather explicit, so I hope John doesn’t mind me sharing it in his challenge.

Experiencing Envy As an Enneagram Type Four

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Lately, I’ve had some real struggles that got me thinking hard about myself. I often want to love myself and that, interestingly, seems to include denying my less than stellar qualities. Then again, if I really want to love myself as I am, that includes accepting my shadow side too.

Today, I am focusing on one of these aspects of myself I’m not so proud of: envy. I’m exploring this from an Enneagram point of view.

As those who’ve read my other Enneagram-based posts know, I’m a type Four. Fours’ core vice is envy. More specifically though, I’m a sexual/one-to-one (SX) type where it comes to instinctual variants. These are not just focused on envy, but on competition.

I don’t necessarily consider myself very competitive in sports or games or whatever. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. However, I realized I’m an SX type when reading the first chapter of The Complete Enneagram by Beatrice Chestnut and watching some YouTube videos too. I realized I do compete with my fellow clients for care.

Like, I can’t stop claiming that one particular fellow client doesn’t need to deal with temp workers. Whether that’s true, doesn’t even matter to me, as I honestly couldn’t care less about his care. In that sense, I’m not competitive. Oh wait, that’s a lie. I didn’t start competing for care until I met the full-time one-on-one client at the intensive support home, so in this sense, it does matter what others have.

I do also believe envy is part of what got me to decide to enter a forum my spouse is active on recently (I left when my spouse called me out). My intention wasn’t to spy on my spouse, but rather I was envious of the connections my spouse had made through that forum. Never mind that I am on a ton of forums myself and could have developed genuine connections if I just cared to put in the effort. I probably have myself and my being a Four to blame for the fact that I never feel like I belong anywhere. Which makes me think, maybe I really am not an SX type, but a social (SO) type. I do need to look into instinctual variants more.

Enneagram: I’m a Type Four! #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Oh well, once again I’m late, extremely late to the party. For today’s post in the #AtoZChallenge, I thought I’d muse about the Enneagram.

The Enneagram, for those not aware, is a spiritually-based personality typing system consisting of nine different types. They are all interconnected in various ways. I, for instance, am a type Four (“the Individualist”), but I do share traits with both type Three (“the Achiever”) and type Five (“the Observer”). My Five wing, though, is strongest.

I’m getting ahead of myself though. What’s a Four, exactly? Fours’ core vice is envy. Fours’ core motivation is to express themselves and be understood as the unique individuals they are. Their core fear is not having an identity or significance. As a result, Fours are self-absorbed, emotional yet creative and empathetic.

When in distress, a Four will move closer to resemble the bad qualities of a type Two (“the Helper”) and become clingy. When feeling particularly well though, a Four will move closer to exhibiting the positive qualities of a type One (“the Perfectionist”) by being more objective and principled.

I will illustrate this using an example from my own life. I am often envious of people I perceive to have better quality of care than me. When I’m my normal self, I feel this envy but can keep it at bay. When distressed though, I show it more and become extra clingy to my staff. On the other hand, when I’m feeling well, I can more objectively view that no, in fact, no-one is receiving optimal care.

At its worst, Fours are called “Defectives”, because they experience their own pain so deeply. I wrote about this last January. I really do hope that, over time, I will grow into a healthier Four. Like I may’ve said then too, the healthiest version of the Four is the “Appreciator”. This makes sense, in that Fours (at least, healthy Fours) experience positive emotions and artistic and natural beauty at a deep level too.

March 2024 Reflections #WBOYC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s the end of the month, so it’s time for my monthly reflections. As usual, I’m joining #WBOYC.

This month was really tough. I started it with second-degree burns all over my left upper leg because of a self-harm incident the night of February 29. Thankfully, the wounds have completely healed, though last Tuesday, a staff who doesn’t come here regularly and hence saw my leg for the first time since it had happened, was a bit shocked anyway.

I have now been on my lower dose of Abilify, my antipsychotic, for a full month too, since I started that on March 1. I told my support coordinator that, for now, I’d like to remain on this dose and not go down further, even though it’s definitely not an ideal dose. Honestly, right now, I’m pretty sure it’s the least ideal dose I could be on, as I’m still experiencing daytime sleepiness but also significantly increased irritability. However, I don’t want to go back to my old dosage, which was causing more sleepiness, and I fear I might become unmanageable on a lower dose. We will re-evaluate in a month. Let’s hope the increased irritability is temporary.

Like I mentioned a few times over the past month, there was this horrible compensatory system, by which every minute I’d come out of my unsupported time in distress would have to be compensated for. It has caused me intense distress and was eventually revoked. However, I’m nowhere near my old self. Then again, my “old self” was lying in bed far too much.

Today, I got more bad news: my support coordinator is leaving in mid-April. I don’t know the other support coordinator, who will temporarily be coordinating the care for both sides of the home until a new support coordinator has been found and trained, that well, but she sounds okay. I do feel relieved that I’m no longer solely dependent on my male assigned staff but have a female one too. Okay, she only works one or two days a week, but at least she’s there.

Over the past week, the only positive I can report is that I’ve been able to walk more and, as a result, close all of my activity rings on my Apple Watch each day.

I didn’t create that much out of polymer clay. Honestly, the only thing I can think of having created this past month is an orange unicorn that I didn’t even feel like photographing. I tried my hand at earrings once, but ended up incorrectly explaining to my staff how to drill the hole into them, so I threw those away.

I did cook macaroni for my fellow clients once. I also went to the day center’s tiny gym room, but that was stupid. It only had strength training equipment other than a broken stationary bike and the strength training equipment couldn’t be adjusted.

I did read a lot, mostly children’s books about unicorns. I started in the Unicorn Academy series, which I love but unfortunately isn’t on Bookshare. I’m still debating whether I want to actually buy more of the series. I also have been reading foster care memoirs.

I only posted eight blog posts (I think), including this one. I will, however, aim to participate in the #AtoZChallenge in April. I don’t have a theme, but will go with random reflections. And yes, I have a topic picked for the letter X, in case that’s going to cause me to quit yet again.

Worries

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s Sunday Poser is about worries. What worries you about the future?

Unlike Sadje, I mostly have personal worries occupying my mind. Most of them also aren’t long-term. I mean, I do sometimes worry that the sweet and high-fat foods I consume today will lead to an untimely death ten or twenty years from now, but that worry isn’t as all-consuming as my worries about the next few weeks, months or the next year. I joke that, in 2034, everything will be okay. I got that from the book titled 2034, which I still haven’t read and is about World War III erupting that same year. I think it’s more likely that World War III is going to break out that year than that the care system will be any closer to ideal. However, in reality, I can’t look that far into the future, so I know I should care, but really I don’t.

This is probably the same reason the state of the planet doesn’t keep me up at night. That is, except when I read a news article detailing that the magical 1.5 degrees of warming have been hit in some parts of the world in 2023. Then I did worry: will the planet catch fire (not even sure whether I’m talking hyperbolically with all the wildfires we’ve had) next year?

Still, most of my worries concern my personal life. That doesn’t mean the news doesn’t effect me, but it only does when I think it relates to me personally. For instance, when I read that policy makers were talking about reintroducing 24-hour diapering for elderly people who can still use the bathroom but need assistance with it, I was intensely worried. It was said in the same article that the phrase I repeat many times over and over again when talking about my care was: “It’s better to have reasonably good care for two people than excellent care for one person.” Did they mean me? Was my care, with (at the time) nine hours of one-on-one a day, “excellent”? Apparently, because now I have just seven. But I’m still worried they mean me. After all, I still cost considerable money (far more than elderly people needing an hourly assisted bathroom break) and aren’t sedatives cheaper than one-on-one, just like diapers are cheaper than nursing assistants?

It isn’t really a clear thing I do worry about though. I mean, yes, I do worry about my care being cut, but then again, I can’t look far into the future. When I try, I’m always wrong on so many levels. So they remain mostly vague worries that keep me up at night.

Sometimes though, like recently, they’ve been more short-term, concrete things that worried me, such as over the past week the fact that my support coordinator, behavior specialist and intellectual disability physician had a meeting on Friday. The positive news is that the explicit compensatory system, by which every minute I’d come out of my unsupported time in distress had to be compensated for at my next one-on-one moment, was discontinued. Rather, from now on, staff will again discuss with me once I’m calm whether they can come back at a later time for my next support moment since they needed to spend more time on me. I am so happy I no longer have the compensatory system hanging over my head, even though some staff said the end result would be the same. I don’t care about the end result (which, by the way, will probably mean I’ll need slightly less support, honestly); I care that this makes me feel much more comfortable.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (March 16, 2024)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Oh my, I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without blogging since starting this blog, have I? I’m really struggling and today, I don’t really want to do a gratitude post, so a regular #WeekendCoffeeShare will have to do. I’ve long had my last cup of coffee for the day, since it’s 9:30PM. I’ve also had my soft drink, Dubbelfrisss. I’m afraid I’ve only got water to offer you now, but oh well. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that my burns, which I told you about in my post last week, are almost completely healed. I no longer need them dressed and just need a cream put on them to keep the skin from getting too dry. As a result, I’ve been able to walk regularly again too, meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this week except today so far.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I had a really rough week this week otherwise. I’ve really been struggling with the fact that staff are to adhere strictly to my day schedule and to make up for every minute I come out of my unsupported time in distress by showing up at my next support moment later. The fact that it’s literally by the minute, wasn’t a misinterpretation, it turned out today when I talked to my support coordinator. It’s been causing me intense distress though, which has gotten me to send staff away with ther “freakin’ stopwatch”, even though when I’m in severe distress staff are supposed to stay with me (and I’m usually open to them making up for it later on when I’m calm). The compensatory system (staff having to make up for every minute of extra support minutes) only applies when I’m in distress and not when I need support during wound care or a pedicure or whatever. The reason, it turned out, is the fact that I’ve been needing more suppport lately and the staff fear my one-on-one will need to be increased, which they say they don’t mind for their own sake (assuming it gets approved) but would think is a pity for me. They seem to think, but I wasn’t to look at it that way, that my distress is attention-seeking.

Honestly, I can see their point, in that I’ve needed more support lately, but my care needs fluctuate and will probably go down again. Besides, they never write it down when I agree staff can leave at 5:15PM rather than 5:30PM to put their pizza in the oven, when I have a lie down for 30 minutes during my one-on-one or whatever, essentially cutting my one-on-one back. I don’t care about those 15-30 minutes, but staff have agreed to cut back on my support if I’m even a few minutes in distress outside of my one-on-one. And it’s not because they have other duties, because like I said if I have a 30-minute pedicure, that doesn’t get compensated for. It’s essentially to encourage “crying it out”, which has actually had the opposite effect.

Like I said, once I’ve calmed down, I’m quite open to staff having to compensate for the extra time they’ve spent with me, because I can see they need to attend to the other clients too. However, having this compensatory system hanging over me and it being strictly by the minute, causes me even more severe distress. I’ve also been ruminating over it at night, leading to night-time agitation and the night staff needing to come out to me. Wednesday night, they even had to come out to me three times. After that, I now have a PRN sleeping pill until Monday per my and my mother-in-law’s request. I only took it Thursday night. It’s a short-acting benzodiazepine, which had a slight effect when I took it. However, I honestly feel I should be able to cope without it now.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that I was two weeks on my new, decreased antipsychotic dosage yesterday and feel a lot more alert. According to my former mental health agency, the first two weeks don’t count with respect to behavior and honestly I’m noticing I’m slightly less irritable than I was until Wednesday. It might have been a night of relatively restful sleep or it might’ve been the fact that the staff who worked over the past few days weren’t stopwatch people. I certainly don’t want to go back on my old dosage.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a positive note by telling you that my mother-in-law visited me on Tuesday. She was able to bring me the package of crafting supplies I’d ordered a few weeks ago. I ordered a few clear stamps (to be used with polymer clay in my case), a mold for polymer clay, precision paintbrushes and a couple of earring cutters.