Hesitantly, I prodded the Moodscope icon button on my home page… Oh my! 

- Buttercup Yellow and Deep full Blue and “ Welcome to Moodscope “ appeared on my screen. 

-  I'm home…

After approximately three years absence struggling. Bipolar troughs and mania completely carved up my life and then lowest ebbs and physical illnesses resulted in kidneys failing and a rapid descent into sepsis. 

It was a merry go round. (But decidedly not enjoyable).

Home/A&E/Community care/Psychiatric Inpatient/MRIScans/Xays/CAT scans/bloods/onto a couple of different hospitals acute wards… finally the doctors told my relatives I had to be discharged as I was no longer ‘acute’ and the bed was needed – please remove her to a Care Home.

So, stage 2 of recovery saw me moved into a Care Home in October 2023; close to my son and partner, with a seriously unhinged mind, raging anxiety, paranoia and no real attachment to reality. The home was very clean and tidy, but unfortunately I was in with some extremely disturbed individuals and, apart from my son, the rest of my family were back in the Midlands and not able to visit or ring me their support. Sleeping I was not, so after six months the family arranged for me to move to a different home near Worcester and this has suited me much better.  

I arrived here on 17th March 2024 and slowly and steadily this home with all of its staff; cleaners, carers, kitchen staff, the maintenance man, the night team, well-being facilitators, the cook's cats, nurses, administration and up to top General Manager worked a special kind of magic; and gradually, from being in terror and withdrawn in some tormented distortion of living, I have now remembered who and what I am and finally, with a new pill started in February, now the terrors are going, sleep is without nightmares and has a decent length so I wake with a mind that can function.

Not the same mind; but now with a burgeoning confidence to reach out and make my own decisions, all-be-it starting with making firm choices on the breakfast menu, and dare I go in the shower and feel safe to enjoy the lovely feel of warm water cascading over my head.

And oh, I had forgotten all about you… but then the word… “Moodscope” emerged from under a pile of cobwebs, it seemed. Here I can see so many of my old friends – I know you will understand where I’ve been.  

Now I'm going to send this blog;

There is so much more to say and discuss (for instance what extra torment to have been a medic and now on the other side of the fence). Thankfully this Place has worked the best kind of medicine! We should all be humbled by the love that good staff give and the carefully structured individualistic programmes that they painstakingly work through.

Thank goodness Moodscope is still going.

With love and waving hands.

Ach

A Moodscope member