Lost and Found

 

I retreated into the woods and could not find a way out.

I was trapped in the perfect storm – extreme physical pain due to the giant fibroid currently still in residence sitting on nerves in my spinal cord and so large it has displaced other organs. It causes very heavy bleeding which then has an effect on my blood. Lack of magnesium has been defined as contributing to my increased level of epileptic seizures

I was already in mental pain due to having to accept I have failed to find work that I can do safely and the realisation that I have been way too willing to give 100% to others and receive at best 30% back in return.

I became scared to go out so I lost contact with people. I lost contact with myself. 

Loss

The past year has been about so much loss. I lost my identity when I had to go back on Benefits due to my inability to find work where I was valued enough to be supported properly with suddenly finding myself having to deal with the most toxic people and unhealthy culture at the dizzy heights of the upper echelons of the NHS. I had already lost my identity once in my old career in International Development to which I was devoted. I was therefore no stranger to workplace bullying so it was all oddly familiar to me when I started to work in healthcare freelance. What I had not anticipated was the trauma this would dredge up. My principles yet again got in my way. I am wired to speak out about misconduct and as such, meet the consequences. But do I really want to be someone who remains silent in the face of the unacceptable? Of course I don’t. 

 

 

I have been admitted to hospital so many times and at others been in hospital visiting my two friends. In my previous blog I talked in detail about the impact the death of ballerina Elaine McDonald, Prima of Scottish Ballet whom I saw dance in Edinburgh when I was 7. I found myself thrown into helping organise aspects of her funeral and in particular, trying to make sure her husband, my best friend Donald, was in a fit enough state to cope with it all.

He really was not in a fit state at all. I organised coffee and buns for the contingent coming down from Scotland and then I headed for Donald’s flat to ensure he was up and ready. I got him in a car which was no mean feat. He could hardly walk so a joint effort between myself and the driver finally got him in. He was in a complete fog, only barely aware of what was happening. I got him to the café to join everyone hoping it would bolster him. I met Elaine’s brother who had come from the US. He was Producer at Abbey Road and worked extensively with the Beatles. There were people from Scottish Ballet I knew from the 1980s – in fact the café was buzzing and absolutely packed.

When it was time to head for the Church just along the road, it became clear Donald could not walk. I sent someone over to Chelsea & Westminster Hospital to commandeer a wheelchair which they kindly supplied. I wheeled him into the Church. He then proceeded to lock himself in the toilet.

In the end I felt unable to mourn Elaine myself as I was in “carer” mode. I was also in such terrible pain from the fibroid. The funeral Mass was traditional but very beautiful. Elaine’s sister who had always been portrayed as the villain of the piece had done such a good job. At no point did I feel excluded. This all started me questioning the version of events I had been given over the years. Everything seemed to be turning upside down. I felt under immense pressure to keep going, which of course I did. I am used to functioning in extremis. it is however dangerous as all the trauma stores up to revisit me after the event, when I finally get to sit down and reflect.

We went to the cemetery. I was seated in a limo with Donald right behind the hearse. I did not feel any sense of exclusion. It seems the sister privately had started a rumour that I was the Other Woman, who had designs on the tenancy of Elaine’s flat. This was of course untrue. I respected the two of them and their volatile but long-standing relationship which endured despite the trauma of Elaine’s stroke and Donald losing his identity which was replaced by one of “Carer”.

I realise that death brings out the best and the worst in people, and families in particular. I chose to ignore the nonsense and conduct myself as well as I could.

From the funeral onwards, Donald’s downward spiral continued. It was truly painful to witness. His mental and physical health was in rapid decline. I was told by his brother-in-law that he kept passing out unconscious. By this time I had decided to try to back off from any further involvement by was persuaded to store items of Donald’s property in my flat. I had his duck collection of some 300 or so items, and large suitcases of clothes.

I had a call from Donald one night in distress. He was begging me to come round to his flat. I grabbed my keys and phone, got in a taxi and arrived to find Donald in a dire state. I sat up on his sofa for three days and nights just watching him disappear into the abyss using the same destructive methods I used to use to escape from my pain.

In the end, he walked into the living room in the middle of the night and passed out unconscious right in front of me. His breathing was disordered. It was very frightening. I called 999 and he was taken away by ambulance.

I found out that he was discharged only a few days later and it seems this was because the physical issues he had were being ignored as all the staff could see was extreme alcohol misuse. This was another case of the Diagnostic Overshadowing with which I am painfully familiar. He was on a downward spiral. I could not stop him no matter how hard I tried even to the extent of being dragged down with him.

At this time my own health was getting worse. The fibroid causes heavy bleeding which in turn affects my blood and that (and overwhelming stress and sleep deprivation) led me to having frequent grand mal seizures. I kept coming round in ambulances after having a fit in the street. I would lose my memory and be doubly incontinent. And all the time the pain was more and more excruciating. Taking my own life started to seem like the only option for me to escape from it all.

As usual although clearly acutely unwell, I was rapidly discharged from A&E as soon as I was vaguely coherent & able to stand more or less upright. Of course I ended up back in again. Nothing was ever resolved fully. I was very close to taking my own life so I tried again to get help. I rang the Mental Health Trust Crisis Line as I did not want to be dumped in A&E again only to be discharged in the middle of the night. They insisted on calling an ambulance so there I was again.

I spent a night in a packed A&E. My fibroid-related pain was even worse due to being on a trolley and had not been seen by anyone so I could request pain relief. I was in a holding centre basically, somewhere to fester unnoticed while over-stretched staff did their best to cope. I was on suicide watch and those nurses really helped. They made me tea. They cared. They SAW me. It was agreed I would be stabilised physically then packed off to a MH ward. That sounded fine. I just wanted it all to stop.

I was on that trolley all night and most of the next day. I was in unspeakable agony. I had also started missing my meds as they had not prescribed anything. I remained there for the rest of the following day. Finally, the delightful psych liaison nurse to whom I owe SUCH a lot, came to give me the good news…a bed had been found. The bad news was, it was in Milton Keynes. Initially I laughed as I thought it was a joke. Sadly, it was not. After a totally sleepless night, in extreme pain, I was then to endure a two-hour car journey to Milton Keynes.

I was seen by a very nice doctor but still no pain relief – mot even a single paracetamol. He also said I was way too physically unwell to be admitted to the Mental Health Unit so I was transferred to Milton Keynes general hospital next door. I ended up in A&E where I spent a further sleepless night sitting on a plastic chair. The pain was so immense that I really could not take any more.  Eventually I was moved to a bed then transferred to another bed. After all that, I had a few days being given the help with my physical state that I should have been given in Chelsea and Westminster. I started to feel gradually a bit more human. I felt grubby, had no toiletries, was bleeding heavily and had nothing to change into.

I felt like I was crumbling. I was isolated, desperately lonely and as soiled on the outside as I felt inside. I wanted it to be over by whatever means. 

 

I was still on suicide watch and one of the nurses went above and beyond the call of duty to bring me clothes from her home and toiletries. She was GREAT. We ended up singing Country & Western songs together. I will forever be grateful to her. On the other hand though, three members of staff meant to have me under “close observation” used the opportunity to have a good long sleep including a lot of snoring. Had I been minded to harm myself I could have easily. It served to illustrate the lack of consistency in standards. I was spotting cracks in the system to avoid looking at the widening cracks in me.

Eventually, I was transferred to the Campbell mental health unit. It was a very challenging environment as I was so exhausted. It was noisy, constant blaring of “music”, & very unwell patients making the place feel very unsafe.

It felt like staff were only just coping and naturally, errors were being made. There were so many meds errors happening with myself and others, I lost count. I missed the meds that help control the bleeding. They failed to order enough so inevitable the bleeding got so much worse leading to more tiredness due to anaemia.

It was of course, not all bad. The consultant was excellent and changed my medication to something I have found really helpful. He was clear, highly competent and above all, he was kind. I felt seen and I felt heard.

I tried not to, but I ended up sorting stuff. I got the water dispenser fixed and the ward now has pyjamas in the linen cupboard. Kingsley had no idea that there weren’t any hence patients, particularly those like me shipped in from other areas, were having to sleep in outdoor clothes. Was this a distraction from pain? Of course it was but at least something positive happened as a result 

I went to a group on healthy eating to show willing. It was then I received a text. It was Donald’s brother-in-law. Donald had passed out in his flat and was found by one of his carers. He was bleeding.

Donald died in hospital. 

The list of things which contributed to neglect screamed to me self-neglect, self-destruction and heartbreak.

I was numb. I felt shame that I had not been with him, that I had not pushed harder to get him the help he needed. In truth, however, he just could not live without Elaine. And if he was no longer her “carer” who on earth was he? Watching him deteriorate, having him cry on my shoulder, feeling utterly helpless was one of the most painful things I have ever been through.

Then something started to change. I felt the urge to take my own life dissipate like dark clouds starting to clear. It was no bad thing that I was in exile in Milton Keynes as I could not distract myself by taking over organisation of all connected with Donald’s death. I had to sit with my thoughts. I went to the Chaplaincy in the main hospital. By chance the Chaplain was there and he talked to me and gave me a beautiful prayer. I do not associate with any particular denomination, but at that time, I needed help to make sense of what had happened. It was very helpful.

I made a decision that I would start to show myself even a fraction of the care I give to others. I chose life at that moment. I did not want to put my family and friends through the sort of pain I felt at losing my best friend to the consequences of self-destruction which I know all too well. I had an image in my mind of a closing scene of The Piano. Ada deliberately gets her foot caught in rope which was attached to her piano. The piano goes overboard. She allows herself to be dragged under the water. Then it happens. She chooses to live. She kicks her foot free of the rope and floats upwards towards the light. 

 

Since then, I have felt much lighter. I still can’t quite believe Donald is gone. It was my birthday recently and it reminded me of all the birthdays I spent with Donald and when she was well enough, with Elaine. We would go to the river and feed the ducks. Donald would buy me stuff from the deli on the corner. I would go home armed with Buffalo Mozzarella, Italian bread and vine tomatoes.

Of course I miss him, I miss them both. There is the strange sensation that a huge chunk of my life has simply been erased. Even their lovely cat Big Boy had to be put to sleep as he was emaciated through neglect. I called the RSPCA. I sat cuddling him, gave him treats and he purred like a pneumatic drill.

 

 

Despite, or maybe because of, all of this, I have started to see light somewhere in the mist. Healing is a long process. Maybe I see there is something left of the person who had worth and that only by respecting that part of me will I come out of the mist completely.

I believe that I would not now be here were it not for the friends I have made through Twitter, my blog and the smattering of friends who have not abandoned me. I am still not great at the In Real Life stuff but maybe someday….I intend to give it a try.

I choose life. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twilight Zone II. Maelstrom of mayhem.

I remained in darkness for some time. Through being in hospital, I was now at least “in the system” which meant that I was parcelled around from B&B to hostel to therapeutic community and back again. These places were so dangerous, so frightening that I carried on drinking so once again, I could keep reality at bay.

There were moments of clarity when I wanted to get help. The trouble is the health and care services were so fragmented, there was never anyone around to respond when I was ready and time after time, the moment passed and I sunk back into the mire again.

No matter how good a service may or may not have been, there was little or no joined up working. I was too drunk for the mental health services, and too mad for the substance misuse services. I was still in very unsafe housing. This was time and time again the trigger for further decline in my health. The routine would be that I would drink until my body could take no more. I would for example have a fit in the street, or be found unconscious, and be taken to A&E. I would then be patched up medically and exited once more back out into oblivion. Of course, I was going to end up back there. No-one was helping me break the chain. It was a self-perpetuating Myth of Sisyphus and even if they could have held the rock for me for a while, it might have helped.

This could end up very repetitive, as it was repetitive. It was a macabre Groundhog Day that further drained me of any connection to humanity including inside myself. By this time I thought nothing of stealing to get what I needed. It was a means to an end.

Some snapshots that have stuck in my mind that will hopefully get over the impossibility of getting well under the circumstances I was in:

In a mental health hostel in North Kensington run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, had a room in the basement.  In the middle of the night, a man climbed through my window. I had been drinking brandy so was not too bothered. He advised me not to worry, he was a drug dealer and was just doing his job which in this case was selling drugs to the residents in the hostel. I gave him a brandy. He told me his name. Then off he went up into the main part of the hostel where the particularly unwell people lived. At this point my public spiritedness took over and I went next door to where I knew there was an on call “waking night” social worker. She appeared at the door. I told her what was happening. Her response?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         “I am only here for emergencies, don’t bother me with this”.                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Also in that hostel, I was, as one does, minding my own business on the toilet. I suddenly found myself a foot lower than I had been. The floor had caved in. Once again, this was a hostel for people with Severe and Enduring Mental Health issues run by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Social Services Department.

After yet again being thrown out of a Therapeutic Community for continuing to drink, I found myself in the Homeless Persons’ Unit with all my belongings in a black bin bag.        I officially had a Social Worker. Information should have been available to the HPU due to my vulnerable state however, this Social Worker was conspicuous by her absence during this period. I was in a very dire “walking dead” state and yet, was packed off in a taxi to a room in what turned out to be an illegally converted property in Tottenham. At this time with such support that I had being in Kensington and Chelsea, and given the state of my mental and physical health, I might as well have been sent to Mars.                                                                                                                                                                                       There, I was so visibly vulnerable, I was preyed on by a highly suspicious character, an Iraqi, who was connected to the landlord and had a very nice flat in the otherwise derelict building. One day he dragged me into his flat and I was raped. I had a moment of clarity at this point. I remembered advice from the Foreign Office that I had been given in my old life about finding myself sexually assaulted in an Arabic-speaking country. There was a phrase they advised women to say which might give them some space to have a chance to escape. How I remembered it I will never know. It was Ramadan. I shamed him in front of Allah. He pulled away and I ran for the door having the presence of mind to grab some dodgy looking leaflets in Arabic on the way.

I ran to a phone box right outside White Hart Lane stadium and called the police. I was taken to the Rape Unit in Wood Green. It was remarked what an excellent witness I was. In truth, I did not care one iota about any of it. I relayed information like an automaton. I didn’t want it to happen to anyone else. In the end I didn’t press charges. I knew I would not withstand a trial and I knew they would make mincemeat of me in court. He was released and I had to go on living in the same building as him.  I was too dead inside to care.

However, that did not last long. We were raided by Home Office officials in the middle of the night. They were after the lovely Ismail, a Turkish Kurd who had been tortured. I would hear him screaming in the night. He was represented by the Victims of Torture charity. He trusted me. He wouldn’t come to the door unless I helped him so I found myself the go between, in the corridor in my PJs, between him and the Home Office. He eventually agreed to go with them. I took the opportunity to fill the Home Office people in on some details. I told them Ismail appeared genuine and they should contact the Victims of Torture charity. I told them that it was not him they should be after but the other guy. I told them he was living under an assumed name and then told them his real name. There was a reaction. Then I gave them the Islamic Fundamentalist leaflets that I had grabbed. All I know is, the next day, he was gone.

I am amazed at how survival instinct occasionally stepped in and I showed strength that I absolutely had no idea I had.

To counter balance this horror, there were lighter moments too:

In the Social Services Hostel, I managed extended periods of stability. Three of us were in a basement flat – a Malaysian woman with very severe OCD, and a traumatised Ethiopian girl Tutu. I loved Tutu. She had no idea at all how to live in the UK. Everything was so mysterious to her it was actually rather lovely. On 5th November, she thought a revolution was happening because of all the fireworks going off. I noticed she was stockpiling blocks of butter. It turned out she was putting it on her hair. She was incredibly polite and I got to know all her Ethiopian friends. I helped her with her English and she would cook me VERY hot Ethiopian stew and watch me eat it while blasting out Ethiopian jazz from her CD player. I ate all of it despite it making me feel like my head was on fire. Tutu was actually showing me that against all the odds, I could still be useful to another human being. I could still merit my place on the planet.

There were other angels along the way. In one B&B where I was particularly isolated, a local GP brought me a food parcel which he had paid for himself. The refugee I mentioned above would appear at my door with plates of Turkish food. He had nothing but he was giving all he could to me.

There had to be a breakthrough and thank God it did come. It came in the form of a Junior Doctor, a Senior House Officer, from University College Hospital. I had been scraped off the street yet again and somehow ended up coming through their A&E. I am pretty sure I was being very obnoxious to him.

First, he described me perfectly accurately as a “Maelstrom of Mayhem”. I recall replying, once again showing the extent to which I took refuge, even then, in intellect “That’s wonderfully alliterative”. And then, crucially, he said

“You should try AA as it’s a spiritual programme”. 

He also gave me the details of a substance misuse drop in service in Earls Court.

I most likely told him where he could stick it, but actually he, without either of us knowing it had planted a seed. I wish I could meet him again. He saved my life that day and does not know it.

A couple of weeks later, I was tottering towards the Off Licence from my room in a B&B just off Kensington High Street. I was hanging on lampposts as the nerve damage had affected my mobility. I knew at the end of the row of lampposts was a source of vodka so I was a woman with a mission. It was around 9am on a Saturday morning. I got as far as St Bartholomew’s Church and there on the fence was hanging a dark blue sign with AA on it.

I diverted from my mission, and tottered down the stairs.

This was my very first AA meeting. I am hazy on the details. I know I thought they were all a bit odd. I knew that the “Chair”, ie the speaker telling his story, was a film director and I was shocked that he swore a lot. They paused at one point and asked if there were any newcomers present. Dutiful to the last, I thought that meant I HAD to speak. I followed what the others had done and said

Hello, I am Alison and I am an alcoholic.

At this moment there was a slight lightening of the load weighing me down. It was nothing spectacular but I felt something lift. I now know that that something was Hope. Hope had been absent from my life for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the people who remembers me from that first meeting is a nurse. She has since told me she doubted that I would make it. She honestly believed I might well not be alive by the time of the next meeting.

I had, it seems, found what I needed only just in time. That week, I turned up at the drop-in service which the junior doctor had told me about. Before long, I was on my way to detox at a private hospital in Marylebone and they sent a taxi to collect such belongings I had. They told me I would never have to live in a dangerous place like that again.

There was a huge ladder to climb but at least I could now see the ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The twilight zone. Part one.

                                                                                                                                          

Where am I? I know that is not my ceiling above me. Is it dark because it’s morning or late at night?

Who is this man next to me?                                                                  

I can’t take the onrush of fear. I need more alcohol.  I see he is unconscious and he seems to have only one leg. This should make it easier to escape.

I need more alcohol. The plan of action is first of all get some alcohol somehow. Then and only then can I quell the shakes in order to move to the next stage. 

I accomplished the first stage via a three-quarter full bottle of vodka located in the corner on the bedroom. There was a stench of stale urine, poverty and desperation. As I finally get myself out of the front door, I hear him shouting what sounds like a military ID. He must have been a soldier….. 

Any one of these episodes should have counted as a “rock bottom” by anyone’s standards. Some of us however, stay at rock bottom for an extended period, bumping along the seabed occasionally trying to gasp for air. The problem was I fundamentally believed I deserved this half-life I had created. I never felt good enough and running through my head on repeat was a litany of “if I can’t be good enough, I will be SO bad, I will be off the scale altogether.

I was now fully adrift and under the radar from support in London. At this stage alcohol in some senses saved my life. I only survived,I believe, by having an artificial cushion between myself and reality. I am convinced had the enormity of my current reality, that I was truly alone and spiralling out of control, in a dangerous, dark underworld sunk in,  then I would have taken my life.

The details are for obvious reasons and rather thankfully, somewhat hazy. If I try now to delve into what was going through my mind during this period, I only have a sense of desperation to ensure that as little as possible of my reality actually entered my consciousness. For that, I needed industrial quantities of alcohol. If I couldn’t find enough through the other Twilight Zone dwellers, I would steal it. I certainly found a whole skill set I never knew I had. I could still manage to put on a façade of sorts. If I got caught, they always let me off as a hormonal middle class lady. I didn’t fit the stereotype. I remember one of the street dwellers saying “here I am looking like scum, and you still manage to look like a millionaire’s daughter”. He was called Jim. He played the guitar. He’s dead now. AS far as I am aware they all are.

They were not all bad. There was a mutual support going on in that group of Throwaway People. They could see I was not used to that world. I know a group of them tried to keep me safe. They even donated from their cash meant for gut rot cider to buy me a plate of French onion soup from the café in Holland Park. One of them had been a published historian. He had a breakdown after the death of his wife, lost his home and ended up on the streets. His former publisher would arrive every so often with food parcels. By this time, the poor man feared being housed more than anything else. He would not have been able to handle it, he said.

It was a very dark period. There is one period of several months of which I remember nothing. I had been well enough to go for a Christmas lunch at a monastery with my then only friend, the poet and translator Vera Rich in whose landfill site of a home, I would take refuge from time to time. She drank like a fish too so the whole set up suited me. It was safe however and she never ever judged me. The next thing I knew I was coming round in a hospital ward. I was for the first time in my life completely psychotic. I remember it in detail. I felt euphoric.

I was advising a crowd of medics and nurses looking at me aghast that I was immortal, that I was waiting for angels to take me back to my planet. I was getting messages from my planet transmitted through my very smart winter hat like a satellite dish of sorts. I was very worried that these unknown “enemies” were after me to kill me but as I was immortal this was ok. At this stage I could see the actually stationary medical equipment above me moving. I KNEW it was THEM. They were going to shoot me. It was time for me to be public-spirited:

“Could I ask you all to stand out-of-the-way?. I am about to be shot but as I am immortal that is ok. However you are NOT immortal so please stand aside as I don’t want your death on my conscience”.

I remember nothing more of that night. In the morning I was no longer psychotic. A consultant arrived and asked me if I remembered what I had been saying the night before. I assured him I could remember it all and had no idea at all where it had come from.

Soon it became clear where it had come from. I was in a lot of pain. On examination, they discovered I had stab wounds in my inner thighs and one wound which looks like an incision of my appendix. It isn’t. It’s a knife wound. The wounds were infected with MRSA and I had an extremely high temperature which had caused the delirium.

Two things really frightened me. One, that I had been stabbed and recalled nothing whatsoever about it and still don’t. The other was that I had caught sight of the date on a newspaper. It was over a month later than my last lucid memory. I had blanked out the end of December and all of January.

All I know is that when I searched my bag, I found a business card of an African pastor. He had written a note on the back saying that he had found me in Archway. I had no connection with Archway. He had called me an ambulance and got me to Whittington Hospital. This was only one of a number of real life angels who seemed to appear at the very moment I needed them most.

An additional part of the mystery is that there was no alcohol in my system. I believe I must have been preyed on while in a visibly vulnerable state and something beyond traumatic had been inflicted on me and culminated in my being stabbed. I believe my already deeply traumatised brain simply shut down and so nothing registered.

The only sensation I have is of being held somewhere against my will. Vera told me I phoned her. I said “I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know who these people are” before the line went dead. The truth is, I don’t want to know the details of what happened except that I am lucky to be alive.

Was this luck or evidence of a Higher Power? I am not sure. All I know is there were a number of occasions where I could so easily have lost my life. And yet I am still here. Many are not nearly so fortunate.

Why do I do what I do? Why do I retraumatise myself by talking about these experiences in the hope that SOMETHING might be learned? This is why. I need to find a purpose for all of this. 

After an extended period of isolation in hospital, I was sent to a hospital in Ealing. Then a bed became available in South Kensington and Chelsea mental health unit. I had been approved for Housing in that Borough so was by this time in temporary housing from which I kept getting thrown out as I just could not cope independently at this stage. Temporary housing and hostels are not the safest of places and I was assaulted several times during this period.

When I was taken to Chelsea, I was deemed No Fixed Abode as I was between rooms in B&Bs or hostels. This meant I was admitted for an extended period to an acute ward until a plan could be put together to bring me some stability. I still did not stop drinking. I used to leave the ward to stock up on supplies which I smuggled into the ward very easily. The thing was I was officially in there for “PTSD” so as long as my drinking did not cause any Serious Untoward Incidents thereby causing a lot of paperwork, a blind eye was turned. There were a number of people labelled “alcohol dependent” on the ward who were monitored for alcohol use. They just used to visit me, as they knew I would have supplies. There were two AA meetings weekly in the main hospital and another in a church hall opposite the hospital. Did it ever occur to the staff that even one of us might have been helped there? No. I doubt they even knew that this free source of source was right on their doorstep.

However something was starting to change. I was now relatively safe. I say relatively, as a number of my fellow patients would get violent on a regular basis. I no longer required to drink to oblivion 24/7.

I was on a dormitory with five other women with a range of mental illnesses. In one of the moments of clarity I had started to experience, I decided that I had a choice. I could go under given where I now found myself, or I could learn from the experience. I chose the latter.

I was finding out new things about myself. I realised that I was not afraid of being around people with even the most distressing symptoms.

I seemed to be able to communicate with my dorm mates better than the staff at times. Opposite me was Gloria. Gloria had dementia. The only thing she said was a repeated request for help as she was convinced she had rabies. I used to go across to her and just chat. One day, she sat up and said as clearly as can be

“I’d like to go for a walk”.

I told her I’d have to ask the staff. I think they said something like “Gloria can’t even sit up”. However they said IF Gloria got up and dressed, by all means we could go for a walk. They clearly didn’t think this would happen.

Their faces as a smartly dressed Gloria and myself strolled past the Nurses’ Office arm in arm were a picture. We had a lovely stroll. She told me about her life. She had been a seamstress at the original John Lewis. We went down the Fulham Road and back up the Kings Road and back to the ward through the back gate. I was able to tell her son that his mother had come back to us for a time. He said he had not had such a gift in years. We were both in tears. She drifted off into her own world again but she seemed at peace. I knew she trusted me. The staff were mystified “how did you get her to do that?”. In fact they were no bothering to interact with Gloria. She needed human connection and so did I. We helped one another.

I started managing to laugh again. How could I fail to when we had “incidents” such as Jeremy taking all his clothes of at South Kensington station and strolling up Fulham Road singing “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” and very well too?

I was having to relearn things like having a wash in the morning and sleeping during the night like everyone else. I was aware that I had once had abilities, talents even, but had the sense that they were cryogenically suspended in another room to which I had not been given the key.

I was, without knowing it, in the very early stages of emerging from the darkness. There was a lot more darkness to come as the system there ostensibly to help me was ridden with gaps through which I fell many times.

At least however it was no longer pitch black round the clock.

I was still in the gutter, but just occasionally I had brief glimpses of the stars.

 

 

 

 

The downward spiral

I can pinpoint the exact moment when I crossed the line into active alcoholism rather than being a strictly controlled binge drinker. I was in Belarus with a Detective Inspector from Grampian Police. Against all odds and expectations, our combined efforts, and those of our friends in Homiel, had allowed us to arrange the repatriation of my colleagues’ remains in record time. We had accompanied the two coffins which were in a refrigerated lorry on the long drive from Homiel to Minsk. It took forever as we had to keep stopping to check the temperature. It was an unusually hot summer. We were sweltering in 34 degrees and I remember thinking” typical” that my boss was up ahead in a refrigerated lorry.

We had run the gauntlet of bureaucracy in Minsk but I had circumvented a lot of it by having blank signed letters from Sir John Everard, Our Man in Minsk, which allowed me to manufacture any random bit of official-looking paper that was suddenly demanded of us.

Finally it was done. There was nothing more we could do. The coffins were in storage ready for the Lufthansa flight to London via Frankfurt. We were on good old Belavia (NOW enjoy a pleasant flight as though apologetic for the crap flights of the past and warning us to expect at best ‘pleasant’) but their planes were two small to take crates containing coffins.

We retired to our hotel, once again back in the suites that I had bribed our way into. The DI brought out the vodka he had been given by the Homiel militia. I remember thinking “I am never going to drink that”. It was a very brief hesitation but the last time I had such a reservation about drinking for many years after that. What I know is, this time the vodka hit me somewhere differently. I have no idea what falling in love feels like but I can imagine it being something like this. Suddenly the heavy burden of unexpressed pressure, and of unreleased trauma disappeared.

God was in His heaven. All was right with the world.

I had a “where have you been all my life?” moment. I felt at one with the universe and finally, at peace with myself. It was an illusion of course, a mask, a façade, but one that became key to my basic survival until it was taken apart piece by piece.

We returned to Aberdeen and a flurry of press activity, the ongoing existence on the first floor of the Town House of “the Bunker” where only those staff trusted with “the Truth” were hidden away working feverishly on damage limitation exercises.

I had the sense of being paraded around at this time. I was forced to go to funerals and speak at the memorial which was broadcast live. I found it hard as I did not like Ann, my boss. I found her vindictive, jealous and bitter. I did not change my views just because she had met her death in these terrible circumstances. However, I had alcohol to help suspend my set of values, and extinguish the need to care.

To begin with, it did not take much alcohol to have the desired effect but, of course, it gradually needed more and more to reach the desired oblivion. I had started to experience worrying psychological symptoms. I felt constantly as though I was about to be attacked. I had flashbacks in the sense of certain smells and sounds took me right back to the Belarusian mortuary. Alcohol could remove those symptoms. It could stop the panic in its tracks and knock me out to sleep at night. It also enabled me to LIE to the widow about what led to her husband’s death. I felt the truth bubbling up and rising in my throat threatening to strangle me. All I needed was to excuse myself and head for the nearest toilet where a few swigs of vodka would have the desired effect.

I was gradually being eaten alive by fear. Each day the list of things I “had” to drink to carry out increased. One day, I could make a telephone call, the next day I found I couldn’t without some “Dutch courage”. That continued until there was very little I could achieve without alcohol in my system. My life became dominated by finding alcohol, hiding alcohol, consuming just enough alcohol for it not, I believed, to be noticed, but still to take the edge of the ever-growing tumour of fear that was invading my entire being.

One day I was approached, very bravely, by a colleague. She said it had been noticed that I occasionally smelled of alcohol. I can still feel the utter humiliation of that moment. She was very kind to me. However, no support was offered. I had started to drink so much that the truth would spill out of me in an uncontrolled fashion. I apparently blurted out at a Civic Reception that we had all been sold a lie about the deaths in Belarus and that there was a massive sin of omission in leaving out the details about the orgy that had taken place that day. It must have taken guts on that colleague’s part to approach me on this. I was far from ready to imagine living without alcohol to cushion me against reality however.

I was a loose cannon. I needed to be kept out of the way and silenced somehow.

I made the decision myself however. I was sitting in a Section Heads’ meeting and I was asked for my opinion on what kind of coffee machine we should have in the department. I replied “I do not give a shit”. I realised at that time that not only did I not care about the coffee machine, I also did not care about my job, or crucially, about the overseas communities with which I was working and to which I knew I was devoted. I realised that I had ceased to care and that that meant that something profoundly WRONG had happened to my personality. I had disappeared.

I packed up my desk and walked out.

I stepped off the edge of the cliff on which I had been teetering for quite some time. I had no parachute.

My flat became an oubliette. My days consisted of waking up feeling dehydrated and my head would start to race. I now know this “racy head” feeling was the onset of withdrawals as I would have had a good few hors unconscious without any alcohol. I would put on daytime TV and commence the operation that was getting myself into shape enough to get to the nearest source of alcohol to stop my head from racing.

Inside myself somewhere I knew what I was doing. I was killing myself by the slow method. I have a memory of walking unsteadily back to my flat past the Chinese takeaway, stepping with difficulty up onto the pavement and in my head was the line from American Pie “this will be the day that I die” running on repeat in my head. In truth I would not have cared one way or another. This was a state beyond suicide, which is an active state. I had ceased to care a damn whether I lived or died.

And this was the beginning. There was a LOT further down to go than this.

On occasion I could somehow pull the fragments together and manage to function after a fashion. I would turn up at appointments with the Professor who is a world expert on Trauma. I was very skilled at diverting him away whenever I could sense that he was getting to the core of my trauma which went way further back than the death of my colleagues. That incident had dredged up a lot of suppressed trauma from way back. It had all been festering there like an apparently spent volcano where the lava had been boiling unseen ready to explode through faults in the hard surface. I was terrified that it was going to be unleashed and engulf me completely. I could not allow anyone near there. It was too shameful, too painful, too dark. And I had a supply of vodka in my bag to ease the pain before and after our sessions.

My Psychiatrist was caught up in the idea that I was going to sue my employer with him as a key witness so our sessions were more about that than being about providing me with support. My Trade Union were well on their way to putting a court case together but I now realise I was too far gone to be a reliable witness by this time. I would be crucified.

My sense of that desperate time when I had to try to come to terms with the fact that I was no longer the International Officer. I had been my job. There was nothing else. My mother had instilled in me from early on that I was not going to make the same “mistakes” that she had in turning down a job in the Foreign Office in order to get married and have children. I was so desperate to be loved or at least accepted by my parents that I complied. The trouble with making one’s work one’s identity is that if that work is lost for whatever reason, it is like the worst form of bereavement. In fact I felt as though I had died.  I repeated over and over in my head “they think I can cope with this, they think I can cope with this”. It was dark, desperate and destructive.

So I drank. I just drank and drank to stop myself from thinking and from feeling. The vultures were gathering. I was getting into more and more debt as my sick pay had ended and I had been formally “retired on ill health grounds”. In addition, the physical consequences of extreme alcohol misuse and overall self neglect were becoming evident. Dad had to rush me into hospital after my stomach started bleeding. There was no time to get an ambulance. Mum developed a kind of sixth sense which would alert her to my being in crisis. She would all five foot one and a quarter of her, knock my door in to get me to safety.

In the end I had to face up to the fact that I was going to lose my home. This was beyond painful and in fact writing it, I can still feel it now. There was no other option however. I dream about it even now from time to time. I am back in my old flat that was my first home of my own.  I know I shouldn’t be there but I can’t leave. I hear some stranger come through the front door then I wake up often wet with tears.

I moved back in with Mum and Dad. With my Mum primarily “policing” me, I managed to stop drinking and at least create an illusion of being sober. However, I had done nothing to address the underlying trauma. I seemed well. I returned to university to do an MSc which I never finished. The stress of exams sent me spinning back into the vortex again.

At this point, all I wanted was to run. I managed to get a job running the Moscow School of Economics Office at Manchester University so off I went with a bank account filled up with “compensation” I had accepted from my employer in an out of court settlement. I had no idea how ill I was and that as soon as I was away from the relative safety of my parents’ house, and at large in an unknown City, I would relapse immediately. I never turned up at the new job. I had finally been consumed by the trauma and drowning in alcohol. I was now fully submerged in the Twilight Zone.

Someone had switched the lights off. I did not exist.

 

 

 

 

 

Crime and Punishment

In times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (Orwell).

In the eyes of some it is a criminal act requiring punishment even by those who know it is the truth. The act itself of putting one’s head above the parapet and going against those preferring to hide behind the wall, appears threatening, not playing the game and requires to be stamped out.

The immediate aftermath of the death of my colleagues was a whirlwind of funerals, memorials, press attention and for me, the pressure of dealing with bereaved relatives from whom the truth had been concealed.

I had started to use alcohol to try to blot out what I now know were the increasing symptoms of PTSD. I found I could drink to knock myself out to sleep and to knock into oblivion the onrush of flashbacks. It also helped me cease to care. The down side was that I had even less of a filter between my head and my mouth. The truth started leaking out in an uncontrolled manner. I became very dangerous indeed for that reason. That is when the punishment began.

I managed to keep a lid on it for a considerable time before it became patently obvious that I was out of control. I carried on working. I won major awards for my work but the toughest thing was finding myself caught between the Belarus Embassy, who were desperate to avoid legal action by the truth coming out, and my own organisation who were equally keen to avoid the truth coming out.

I have a lot for which to thank the Belarus Embassy. They offered me sanctuary – an escape from the relentless pressure in Aberdeen. I took to going down there and taking up residence at their invitation in their guest flat. It was an escape as I started to attend events with the Ambassador, have long conversations about art particularly Chagall, theatre, music, and the respective pressures we were both under in our work. He came a valued friend. We did normal things like eat pizza and his extraordinarily bad attempts at cooking in the flat “above the shop”. He believed I was the reincarnation of the Grand Duchess of Lithuania and Queen of Poland Barbara Radziwill and had beautiful boxes commissioned as a gift for me featuring her on her own and with her husband August Sigismund the Second. He bought me long stemmed roses. He took me away from the darkness for short periods. It was to no avail ultimately as I was on a downward spiral and it was to damage both of us. The clouds were gathering. The vultures were hovering.

My drinking back in Aberdeen was getting worse and worse. Every day the list of things I could not do increased. One day I could make a phone call, the next day I could not without a slug of anything alcoholic. The day I realised the effect all of this had on me was when I was at a meeting of section heads. They were discussing some project that I knew somewhere inside me I cared deeply about. However, when asked about it, I felt nothing. I said “I have no opinion”. At that stage I knew that something profoundly wrong had happened to my personality. I left the room, packed up my desk and walked out. That was the start of a whole year on sick pay.

I thought I WAS my work. When I realised I could no longer do it, I felt as though it was me who had died. That feeling was increased when my colleagues immediately demanded that I come in and collect my remaining belongings or they would end up on a skip. I dragged myself round there in a very vulnerable state to find my things, including gifts from children in Chernobyl like two small glass birds, had been thrown into boxes with no care or compassion, just contempt.

My GP who was also the Council’s Occupational Health Doctor had been trying to persuade me for some time to leave as the place was too toxic. He could not of course go into details but he said I was one of many colleagues being treated for stress, that it was a sick place and I would only get more ill if I remained there. However, I was devoted to the work, to the communities overseas I was helping and from whom I was learning. I had stayed on way too long and indeed I was very ill by this time. When I told him about the demand that I come in and collect my things before they threw them out, he said “they want to remove any trace of you”. By this time I wanted to remove any trace of myself. I did this by drinking myself to oblivion all day and every day. If I was my work, and I now could not work, I no longer existed. This was what it was it felt like.

My health worsened and I spiralled into debt. The Belarus Embassy continued to try to be helpful but I was being dragged into quicksand. I was in freefall. I remember overhearing Embassy staff saying “she is killing herself”. I was already dead as far as I was concerned.

I had been formally diagnosed with “work-related PTSD”. The doctors deliberately added “work-related” as they were urging me to take legal action. They were prepared to act as witnesses. I agreed. I had some odd idea that decency would prevail. It of course did not. I found people whom I thought were friends avoided me in the streets, whereas others whom I had not considered friends turned out to be angels in disguise.

Of course, the Council went into full defensive mode when the legal action was commenced by my trade union. Every effort was made to find other stressors for which to blame my decline into mental despair and alcohol misuse. I was summoned before a psychiatrist in Edinburgh. I went with Mum and Dad as they wanted to show him I had a decent and supportive family. I answered his questions as honestly as I could. Somehow he twisted the most innocent statement into something negative. He asked me if my sister had ever taken drugs. I replied “She’s a teenager. I have no idea”. That came out in my statement as “her sister is a known drug addict”. I can say quite categorically that this was not the case. This psychiatrist had clearly been chosen for a reason. Impartiality was not on his radar. It was distressing for my entire family.

And they decided to blame my “inappropriate” relationship with the Ambassador of Belarus and reported him to his Ministry.

Then the threats started. The female “friend” of our then Lord Provost who was the Leader of the Council involved in the incident in Homiel Margaret Smith, threatened me in the street. I recall her words exactly “you’d better watch what you are about”.

I got offered a voluntary job working for a European-funded youth project. They welcomed me with open arms given my experience of getting European funding. However when I arrived all keen to be useful again on day one I noticed something odd. I was early and spotted an erstwhile colleague from my old department scuttling hurriedly out of the building. When I got in, there was a very odd atmosphere. The warmth had gone. I was told to sit in an office and then a highly apologetic member of the charity staff asked me to leave the building immediately. They had had threats that their Council funding would be removed if I was allowed to do this unpaid voluntary job. I left the building. I had to. I could not allow this excellent charity to be damaged because of my presence.

So the punishment was to make me a pariah in the City in which I was born. And what did I do to dampen the pain? I drank. I drank to reach the stage where I felt nothing and it was taking more and more alcohol to reach the desired stage.

This was the beginning of the downward spiral. I had committed the crime of telling the truth and the punishment was to be meted out in full. But it was only the start. Things were to get so much worse.

I loved my job and I was good at it. I remain heartbroken at its loss. I do not miss the City, and I certainly do not miss the City Council. I miss being able to make a difference to people like the wonderful citizens of Homiel who gave me more than I gave them. I will never fully recover from this grief.

If you have enjoyed reading this blog, or have at least got something from it, perhaps you might consider a small donation to my Go Fund Me page. My current work in healthcare started to resemble rather too closely what I went through in Aberdeen, so at present I am unable to work until I have some time to heal. This means I have no income. More important to me however, is that my experiences mean something to my readers so please do not feel pressurised into offering me practical help. This is NOT why I am writing.

https://www.gofundme.com/AllyandIzzy

Thanks for reading this far.