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Feb. 19th, 2007 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneAs you may have noticed from the odd/frenetic nature of some of my recent posts, things have not been brilliant recently.
I've let a lot of you down, since Thursday night, and I will try to make individual reparations.
My excuse? Looking after a suicidally-depressed Ashley. The worst down-swing she's had in the time I've known her.
But today, after a weekend of broken sleep & broken promises, after being awake since 3.30am, and making call after call to GPs as soon as they opened, I managed to get Ashley to a professional. A professional who was - in fact - actually professional. Ashley's finally getting the mental health referral she should have had as soon as getting to Oxford (seriously - who is ill enough that they are signed off work with incapacity benefit for depression & panic attacks, and yet has no contact with a mental health professional?), a GP who appears understanding, and smiled in acceptance when, after pausing for an extra-long time in her dictation, I prompted her with "male-to-female transexual?". While she was a little hung up on gender dysphoria as the "cause" of Ashley's depression (a completely erroneous assumption), she was clearly willing to learn about a condition she had little experience of, never faltered with female pronouns, told Ashley that she'd "never have known without reading the notes". She's also got Ashley scheduled for a follow-up appointment almost straight away.
Thank the gods for the good eggs in the NHS. When I left her Ashley is was asleep, smiling, in her own bed. I may have cried a bit because of seeing real enjoyment in her eyes for the first time in far too long.
And then, on the walk home, I noticed that the world had gone back into colour for me, too. I hadn't noticed that it had gone grey. But someone had made a rainbow out of rubbish in the Angel & Greyhound meadow; the builders on Magdalen Bridge were all gathered around one man tentatively digging, as if they'd found a body; a readhead with rainbow-coloured stripy socks was riding a low-seated bike slowly along Holywell Street.
This post has a message, boys & girls. I'm sorry if that seems terribly twee and victorian. Oscar Wilde wrote fairy-tales too, you know. But the message is that, no matter how shitty things seem right now, they can and will get better. For you.
I've let a lot of you down, since Thursday night, and I will try to make individual reparations.
My excuse? Looking after a suicidally-depressed Ashley. The worst down-swing she's had in the time I've known her.
But today, after a weekend of broken sleep & broken promises, after being awake since 3.30am, and making call after call to GPs as soon as they opened, I managed to get Ashley to a professional. A professional who was - in fact - actually professional. Ashley's finally getting the mental health referral she should have had as soon as getting to Oxford (seriously - who is ill enough that they are signed off work with incapacity benefit for depression & panic attacks, and yet has no contact with a mental health professional?), a GP who appears understanding, and smiled in acceptance when, after pausing for an extra-long time in her dictation, I prompted her with "male-to-female transexual?". While she was a little hung up on gender dysphoria as the "cause" of Ashley's depression (a completely erroneous assumption), she was clearly willing to learn about a condition she had little experience of, never faltered with female pronouns, told Ashley that she'd "never have known without reading the notes". She's also got Ashley scheduled for a follow-up appointment almost straight away.
Thank the gods for the good eggs in the NHS. When I left her Ashley is was asleep, smiling, in her own bed. I may have cried a bit because of seeing real enjoyment in her eyes for the first time in far too long.
And then, on the walk home, I noticed that the world had gone back into colour for me, too. I hadn't noticed that it had gone grey. But someone had made a rainbow out of rubbish in the Angel & Greyhound meadow; the builders on Magdalen Bridge were all gathered around one man tentatively digging, as if they'd found a body; a readhead with rainbow-coloured stripy socks was riding a low-seated bike slowly along Holywell Street.
This post has a message, boys & girls. I'm sorry if that seems terribly twee and victorian. Oscar Wilde wrote fairy-tales too, you know. But the message is that, no matter how shitty things seem right now, they can and will get better. For you.
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Date: 2007-02-19 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 04:31 pm (UTC)Remember, you are not alone. Call me if I can do anything to help.
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Date: 2007-02-19 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 04:58 pm (UTC):bighugs:
x boykitten x
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Date: 2007-02-19 05:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 10:04 am (UTC)Again, surely you jest? I put it down to a diet of solid crap, and smoking and drinking far too much.
I should write a healthcare book...
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Date: 2007-02-19 05:20 pm (UTC)*snuggle*
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Date: 2007-02-19 05:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-19 05:57 pm (UTC)I'm so glad. And I'm here if you need anything, okay? Just across the quad.
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Date: 2007-02-19 08:04 pm (UTC)For now, *bighugs*
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Date: 2007-02-19 09:56 pm (UTC)*squish*
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Date: 2007-02-20 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 10:05 am (UTC)I love you.
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Date: 2007-02-20 10:58 am (UTC)