It has to get worse before it can get better

I should have waited till the end of the week before writing about the help I'm getting to treat my depression, because I just can't believe that the day just got worse and landed me up in the doctors surgery on a drip treating the worse migraine ever.

If you want/need to catch up then you can click here to see why I went to the Doctors for help this week.

OK I'M NOT DYING...In fact I do not even have anything officially wrong with me medically, but I'm ill and it's been getting worse.

You see I have a few 'little' things wrong with me. Which on their own are painful and can be an inconvience, but when you put them all together at the same time and chuck in the whole 'I'm struggling to be an expat, adjust to my new life, moved house (again) Dad had a heart attack, youngest has dyslexia and dysgraphia, giving up smoking and didn't get a role at the London Olympics that I'd set my heart on' you'll see why I'm having a tough time and why I've asked for help to treat depression and take Prozac.

So what is wrong with me?

I need oral surgery to stop my teeth falling out and it's linked with diabeties and the perodontist hasn't seen a case this bad, ever, in anyone under 65. My bones are degenerating.

I have chilblains due to poor circulation aka Smoking

I've suffered with migraines since I was a small child

I had viral menegitis in 2000 which rears it's ugly head from time to time

I've had pneumonia on more than one occassion, in the last 5 years

I was a victim of assualt, 15 years ago, and suffered nerve damage to my neck for which I require regular pain killers and hospital treatment

There is a history of high cholestorol and diabeties in the family of which I now have elevated levels and I will be diabetic one day

...and all raising it's ugly head at the same time.

So I left the doctors on Monday with medication for pain, chilblains and Prozac. I had appointments lined up for blood tests, clinical psychologist, pain clinic, diabetic clinic, I forget what else and i go home to a very confused and worried hubby, but I actually felt a bit better, until tuesday morning after the blood tests when a pain in my head appeared from nowhere. It felt like someone was hitting me over and over with a hammer and I couldn't do a thing to stop it, meds, resting, darkened room and after what seemed like forever, hubby got home and took me to the doctors where they hooked me up onto a drip for an hour to administer medication. I could hardly move my head on wednesday and today thursday my neck is so stiff I have to move my entire body to look round. My head feels heavy, yet it's still thumping and it feels like someone is pushing on the back of my neck all the time.

But I have appointments, I'm getting something done about it all, but let me tell you it's not easy, I'm feeling more stress now than I did on Monday when I turned up at the doctors asking for help.

Our medical scheme, Discovery, have a payment gap thingy that I have to submit bills to, to reduce the gap then the med aid kicks back in. It's probably a bit more technical than that but.... and I have to request permission in advance of certain treatments or they'll not pay out or only pay a small amount if the health care provider doesn't charge the Discovery rates. So basically I don't know if all my treatment will be covered until I contact the health care provider and request codes to see if a) Discovery will pay for it and b) if Discovery will pay the full rate.

I now have to find a perodontist who fits the above criteria as the one I was recommended to see by a Dentist who does meet the criteria, will charge me R30,000 and Discovery will only pay back around R10,000.

I've lost count of the number of times I've emailed, telephoned and visited in person at Discovery to say 'I haven't moved from one scheme to another, I've moved from the UK and no scheme, it was free'. I'm also fed up of saying 'I don't know what to do or how to do it, therefore I do not know what questions I need to ask and it keeps costing me money because I didn't know if I said a, b or c, it would've been covered'

So back now to the depression. I'm so angry with hubbies company that the Medical wasn't set up when we arrived, despite requesting it over and over, telling both the company and Discovery 'we don't know how it works, please help us' and being greated with 'here are all the lovely bonus things you can get from us' and 'an advisor will be in the office on wednesday' who then failed to turn up on two occassions.

I can still see the light at the end of the tunnel. My family and friends* are being amazing. It will get better, it'll be different. I can't let go of the crap of the move and lack of support from hubbies company till they say sorry, despite them asking what they can do and us saying 'try saying sorry' There are still a few contractual issues to sort out and they won't rock the boat with the agency that handled and cocked up our house move as they are processing our visa renewals at the moment.

So I guess I need a bit more time before I will start to see the benefits of asking for help, the appointments and waiting for the prozac to kick in...in the meantime I'll leave you with my next trick which is...

things can't get anyworse or more stressful so I thought today would be the best day to smoke my last cigarette.

*twitter

What else will the day throw at me?

What started off as a trip to the Perodontist for what I thought was a scale and polish (the referal form was written in Afrikaans) has ended up with an appointment for Oral Surgery for bone degeneration, a test in the morning for diabeties, which if I don't have now I will have eventually, a referal to the pain clinic and a clinical psychologist, pain meds and anti inflammatories for the chilblains and Prozac.

I left home at 9am and returned with pizza for the kids lunch at 1pm. What a morning.

Being an expat isn't all sunshine and pools although, yes we do have all that. Yes I'm lucky that I don't have to work anymore, the kids benefit from me being at home every day after school and through the holidays and hubby comes home to a clean and tidy house every evening and a home cooked meal.

There are parts of it I do enjoy such as the cooking, I've impressed myself with some of the things I can just 'throw together' and with the introduction of a slow cooker from a friend for my birthday it's all systems go. I don't actually mind the cleaning, it's a tiled house and so easy to do, we also have little furniture and what ornaments we have are in a glass cabinet so it's not really a difficult job. But I do miss work, meeting people, deadlines, sociallising and I find life sometimes very lonely, repetitive and boring.

At this point you're probably thinking 'that sounds like my life' but what you have to remember is that my old life of work, study, volunteering, sociallising stopped over night when we emigrated. And here's where the Prozac comes in. Moving house is stressful, everyone knows that, chuck in my fathers heart attack, renewing our visas, discovering our youngest wasn't being supported in school with his dyslexia and then a diagnosis of disgraphia and it all got a bit too much for me. Forget all the crap with the UK banks and the lack of (non exsistant) support from hubbies company. I'm, how shall I say it? at the end of my rope.

Now don't panic I'm a practical person and I may wallow in self pity with a 'woe is me' attitude but I'm a doer, one of lifes 'the more stress I have the better I thrive' get on with it type of person. But there comes a time when I need help and today is that day.

I left the dentists and went straight to the Doctors to request to speak with the Practice Manager, I wanted to know how I went about the diabeties test? who did I see about feeling depressed? stopping smoking? do I google a psychologist or need a Dr's referal? Do I see the practice nurse for a blood test? How do I get to see a pain specilaist? I got as far as her saying 'come through' before the tears started. She listened, made an emergency appointment for me to see the Doctor and now I feel alot better.

However over the next few months I have a list of appointments with a variety of people. We are in our medical aid payment gap so I drove to Discovery to find out what's happening, what's covered and what's not. I couldn't have asked for better information and assistance.

I'm over whelmed right now, I thought calling home would help, but it just reminded me how ill my dad is with diabeties, heart disease from smoking, lack of exercise and poor diet. However his reply was positive he said 'I'm 72 when all this happened to me and all I can do is maintain it, you're 41 and can prevent it all from happening'

I'd already planned to stop smoking this thursday, I set the date last month and I'm 82% of the way through Allen Carr's 'stop smoking' on my kindle app. I've schedule to return to swimming tues, wed and thurs am, having used the cold winter mornings as an excuse. I also downloaded 'thinking slimmer' a few months ago and then slapped myself for wasting £30 on hype and never listened to it, however on Saturday I thought what the heck and this morning I actually put the chocolate and the coke back in the cupboard as I was going to eat it to cheer myself up when I realised that I'd be better off with a late breakfast of Special K. I'll not use it to think myself slimmer but to think myself healthy and I've set my goals as just that and besides 2 jeans sizes smaller won't hurt me.

Blogging and sharing and tweeting is wonderful therapy for me. As soon as I put something out there, there is no hiding from it any more, denying it's happening. there's been too much of that despite me being an 'open' person. Always putting a positive spin on things, using humour hasn't actually helped, it just delayed this moment, put off asking for assistance, not wanting people to think I was a failure.

Because I'm NOT a failure, I'm a success. I've done it, I've emigrated, I've integrated, I've achieved far more than I ever thought I was capable of and now I'm there, now I've reached that point, it's time to say 'I need some help in understanding it all, medication to get me through while I unjumble and off load my mind'

I'm depressed, I asked for help, I'm taking the meds, I'm proud of how far I've come and look forward to the next set of challenges, but this time I know I NEED to ask for help along the way and not lie and say I'm fine.