Doctor! Doctor!

I feel like a pair of curtains...

"Well, pull yourself together then!"

Today I finally did something that I only ever do if I REALLY have to... I went to the doctor...

I started taking my anti-depressants more erratically around August last year, and I've probably not taken any at all since October. I kidded myself that I wasn't doing any better with them, and wasn't doing any worse without them... so it didn't matter if I took them or not. But the simple fact is that even though I say I'm "fine", most days I'm not. I'm not sleeping, and when I do sleep, I waken up just as tired in the morning. I can't concentrate at college, I don't have any energy, and if I was in my proper mindset, I wouldn't have had a major panic during that simulation I had to do a couple of weeks ago.

And I've still got a cough and tightness of breath, that seems to have been around for months... And I've been advised to get a letter from my doctor to help me get a house transfer quicker, coz the doctor can say that such a big house with poor heating is not good for my chest, or my depression.

Well, I finished college a bit early today and along I went to see my doctor, having phoned for an appointment this morning. And didn't I really time it badly? As of Monday this week, my doctor's practice is (for some reason that we weren't informed of) being looked after by the other practice that shares the Health Centre... so I couldn't see MY doctor - instead, I had a foreign doctor who doesn't know me from Eve, and didn't seem to have my full notes with her.

So, after a long explanation, I left with 2 inhalers for asthma (although I don't think she's convinced of my doctor's diagnosis... she was going on about indigestion and acid irritating your throat - well, possibly, but that doesn't explain the tightness I have trying to breathe when I DON'T have indigestion) and my anti-depressants back again.

And then she told me I had to speak to my OWN doctor about getting a letter... which is all very well, except they're uncontactable for 3 months. So I asked at reception, and one of the LOCAL doctors spoke to me... asked a few questions, and was going to write a letter, no problem at all.

Came from the Doc's... got my prescriptions from the chemist (£20.55!), and then off to the shop for the rest of the day.

So, there I am - officially "ill"...

In the shop tomorrow, Friday, Saturday and Monday... and probably most of the rest of next week...

'k Off, Cough...

Aaargh... isn't it fucking typical? The night before I have to sit in a quiet room with 4 or 5 other students for 5 god-damn hours and concentrate on a simulation for my accounting course... and the night before I go out two nights in a row (coz I've got a much-needed day off on Saturday, and I finish my simulation tomorrow at 2pm, so that's like a half day) to get pissed and actually have a social life for the first time in something like a year... I get a fucking cough!

This is the chesty cough I usually get just before Christmas... just a bit later this year. Every time I go from a warm place to a cold place, or a cold place to the warm, or try to talk to someone, or exert myself in any way, or laugh, or when I get up in the morning - I cough to the point where I'm almost sick and I can't breathe properly. But I will not go to the doctor, or he'll ask how I got on with the inhaler he gave me, and I'll have to confess that it didn't help at all because I couldn't get into a routine of when to use it - and I'll have to confess that I haven't had a happy pill in fuck knows how long because they didn't do me any good (at least, I didn't notice any difference even when I hadn't been taking them for 2 months).

So I've got a bottle of cough medicine, and we'll see how that goes.

As my mum said so often - "It's not the cough that carries you off, it's the coffin they carry you off in..."