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Psychological torture in the everyday, an NHS experience (or three!).

Several times in recent weeks I’ve been in GP Practices, or Hospitals. Although the two recent GP visits are the later experiences, I’ll start with them.

For me, our GP waiting room is a kind of ante-chamber to Hell. The radio station they have playing in the background – coupled with the Covid-19 related spacing of chairs, and the concurrent demise of communal reading matter (something long associated with visits to the doc’s; Woman’s World, Hello!, issues of Giles!?) – is so oppressively and moronically mainstream, and inanely conformist.

It feels like being in a dictatorship of the mind. The Tories have annexed the Sudetenland of independent critical thought, by fostering a plebeian culture of bland mindless consumerism. A singularly soulless state. When I see or hear lockstep unison dance routines in trash online and TV culture, it makes me think of modern ‘Brits’ as a breed of goose-stepping turkeys, marching to their own holocaust.

And several of the elderly folk in the room are tapping their toes!? As if it were some form of harmless music. A nice sound!? Or even more outlandishly, an art, or craft, designed, perhaps, to uplift and expand, or at least beautify the immediate surroundings. But wait, this is in fact the sonic wallpaper to billions of cellular prisons, made with computers, to formulae dictated by returns on investment, designed to control, crush and enslave, not to enlighten or liberate.

Airheaded five-minutes-of-fame intoxicated wannabes queue for mile after mile, desperately hoping to be the kind of fantasy cyphers everybody is constantly told they want to be. All whilst drowning in endless rounds of addictive self-soothing endorphin hits, counted in ‘likes’ and ‘tweets’.

And what an ugly and tawdry world this muzak creates and adorns. A world of institutionalised blandness, built with mass-produced tat, always aiming about as low as you can go.

Not long before the two recent doctor appointments, where my ears and my soul were tortured by the crassness of modern popular culture, I visited Peterborough Hospital. The whole visit lasted six and a half hours (plus near enough 30 mins – or more [due to roadworks!] – either way, getting there and back).

I was seen by a ‘CRISIS’ team psychiatrist. And a fairly lengthy interview was conducted. l left the hospital in the firm belief that I was being referred for further help from the crisis team. It’s only been later on that I’ve learned that – prob’ as a result of this meeting (or poss a follow up meeting, at ours a few days later, with a guy whose name escapes me now?) – I am NOT being referred to the Crisis team for further support. This in itself is shocking.

Then, on this most recent call, today, this John Skeels character, who I don’t warm to at all (in fact he winds me up something chronic!), not only reiterates the point about the removal from Crisis support or intervention, but goes further. Blandly telling me I won’t be getting CBT either!!!

I thought I’d understood that Dr Joyce and the lady I saw in A&E were both assuring me I would get some immediate ‘talk therapy’ style support. So far, far from that, I’ve had to endure Groundhog Day style repetitions of cross-questioning, or ‘profiling’, from an alphabet soup of seemingly related yet also not related mental health bodies!

Raking over all this shit continually, without ever actually addressing it constructively, rather surprisingly – NOT! – actually worsens things!

Skeels started out seeming to suggest an initial assessment was due to happen on the call/day. But later on he instead offered a telephone appointment assessment – I’m losing count of how many times I’ve been in this situation: four, five, or more? – with a lady (Hannah Jones?), on 6th April!

My angry protestations about how awful this has all been – passed from pillar to post, continually repeating myself, whilst getting no actual support or help – finally persuaded him to bring the date of the assessment forward a bit: it’s now due 27th April. A week away, instead of over two.

So I’m now back to square one, ringing my GP and FRS (the First Response Service, aka 111, option 2), and queuing for aeons listening to Muzak and so-called A-I bots, telling me my call is oh so important (hence the interminable wait…*) and my queue position is ‘over a barrel’.

* Maybe they’re building suspense, to further heighten the appalling crash that comes when you eventually end hours of calling and realise, more often than not, you’ve achieved exactly fuck all. Except, perhaps, ramping up stress levels a bit more. The exact opposite of what’s needed!

Pretty piano music plays – on a short repetitive loop (isn’t this a black-ops torture technique?) – and I’m told ‘your queue position is, three’; we approach fifteen minutes, for the entirety of which time my queue position has remained three!!!

WOW… at about 15:02 in to the call, I’ve gone from position three to two! I hope I don’t have to wait 15 minutes for… oh, I’m #1 now! 15 mins for one place, then just one for the next!?

Once I’m connected, will I get anywhere? Dr Joyce told me to contact the surgery if need be. And I feel need is very much be! As feck all is happening via CRISIS or LADS or whomever… ah, finally, a human being.

INTERLUDE

So, twenty minutes waiting, two minutes talking, and in the end only verbal assurance that I’ll get call from Dr Joyce on Thursday coming. Hopefully that will happen.

After that tortuous call to my GP (is there any other type these days?), it’s time to join the FRS ‘virtual (aka very real) queue’. This time it’s a more ambient synth and percussion loop.

A little later… So far it’s just (just, JUST!?) been a little over five minutes queuing. And what will this call achieve? I’ll basically be telling them nothing’s happened, and they’ll want to go over everything again, for the umpteenth time. Leading to? Well, thus far, absolutely feck all, in terms of actual support or help!

Gaaarrgh! Gnashing of teeth, wailing, and tearing asunder of a sack-cloth and ashes!

Some more time later… It’s sixteen minutes and counting, on the FRS mental health crisis line. Wonder if folk have topped themselves whilst queuing? It seems the kind of purgatorial – or plain Hell-ish – way to make a depressed person feel even worse.

There’s nowt for making you feel the worlds’ sense of your true value than being made to wait aeons by a robot, before being allowed to interface with an understaffed, under financed and ridiculously complex (due to being dismembered in pursuit of private profit) system.

Nye Bevan would be apoplectic with rage, at seeing what Tories (and even New Labia) have done to his beloved and ought-to-be-cherished institution. It would just confirm for him the truth of his assertion that Tories are, indeed, lower than vermin.

Twenty-two minutes and counting… Jeezuzzz on a fucking pogo-stick!!! I’ll have lost the will to live by the time… oh, no, hang on, that was why I was calling in the first place!

Some time much, much, MUCH later… Well, it was over thirty minutes wait in the end. But when I got through the guy on the call – which lasted about an hour – was good.

I’ve subsequently also had a call from The Sanctuary, an offshoot of the mental health charity MIND. Spoke to a guy named Simon, which turned out to be quite helpful. That call was about 65 minutes! So much time on’t phone!

FOOTNOTE

One of the worst things about this hellish modern way of going about things is that it makes me so angry and querulous that by the time I speak to someone, I’m in a towering rage. A la Saxondale, perhaps?

Capt. Haddock, disgusted, refuses to look at cut-glass that doesn’t contain whisky!

The only significant think I did today, other than sleep loads, was this flyer/postcard design. If I get enough pupils, across the several areas: drums, guitar, art, English, etc. Who knows, I might still be able to make a living?

I’m not in the least religious. But ne’ertheless, I say Gawd Bless, my Mrs! She’s cooked a triffick dinner, again.

We love this guy! Check out Jason, The Cloud Gardener, here. We discovered him via the BBC’s Gardener’s World.

Vid

His story is inspiring. I love the bit in his BBC slot where he talks about nurturing a ‘broken’ plant, and how that helps him with his own mental health.

We need to really green our domestic spaces. It’s a challenge, as ours are very dark gloomy indoor spaces, which tend to kill plants!

I’m pretty sure all, or at least nearly all of us, have experienced the grim horror that is queuing on a call to a large organisation.

Currently I’m severely depressed, and I’m often required to call the NHS. I love and treasure the NHS. But under Tory and New Labour misrule, it’s being turned into an impersonal impenetrable block of granite.

I’ve just received a letter summarising a meeting I recently had with an NHS functionary. In this letter are numerous factual errors. Some trivial, some less so. They need correcting.

I’ve emailed about these concerns, and hope to hear back. But I’m not holding my breath.

What I would far prefer, and I’m sure I’m far from alone in this respect, is a brief conversation with an appropriate person, in a position to remedy the situation. What I most definitely DO NOT want is to waste precious time, energy, and – no doubt – money, listening to robots and Muzak. Only to get absolutely nowhere. Oh, except a little closer to my grave!

Ok, so I’ve spent all of today in bed.* In this day and age that’s like telling a C19th Mother Superior at the Convent you’ve just spent all day sucking Satan’s cock!

*so far…

My feelings on this must in part explain my out of character subscription (lapsed; now that’s in character!) to The Idler. A magazine whose title is more exciting than most of its content.

Anyway, I did actually do a few hours of horrid gruelling work. AKA trying to talk to people in the NHS system.

Now let me get this straight; I love the NHS. The fact it’s become a graveyard of impenetrable obsidian obelisks is entirely the fault of money-minded capitalists, be they Tory or even, alas, New Labour.

Off on one of my tanned-genitals, eh? Cannae be helped, Emma Freud.

But back on track: I estimate 3-4 hours of today was given over to fall-out from a letter, sent by the ‘proto-shrink’ (Clinical Nurse Specialist), who saw me in A&E at Peterborough hospital, on Monday.

Rather naively, as appears to be my way so often, I thought I was there for my own care. Reading the summary letter made me feel it was actually a Stasi fact-gathering exercise.

Depression can lead to paranoia. I know that. And maybe in part this is a case in point. But points are precisely my, er, point… here. And the notes the lady took during my venting confessional, which I’d imagined to be completely confidential, feel instead like exhibits A-Z of the prosecution!

What galls me most are two particular instances of miscommunication.

Once during the conversation she – Danielle Jenkins – ‘reiterated’ a point she thought I’d made, taking the polar opposite position to what I’d actually said. I corrected her ‘I thought you said… [the exact opposite of what I said!]’ statement during the interview. This is not mentioned in her summary.

Whilst by and large it’s a fairly complete rendering of the meeting, in which most of the mistakes (or just lack of clarity) are reasonably inconsequential, there is one particularly egregious error.

And so it is that she lists another thing she thinks I said, which once again is the absolute polar opposite of what I actually said. Once would be simply annoying. Twice points to crossed wires, Major Misunderstanding, etc.

All of this leads me to conclude that I need to record such verbal transactions for my own records, and later ‘proof’ of what really transpired, if needed.

At this point I feel drawn towards another apparent (it’s actually very connected) deviation. There have been times – not at the moment thankfully – when ‘conversations’ with my father have actually really just found me listening to an open-valved high-pressure torrent of depressive effluence.

Dad thinks, or thought at the time (at least so he would profess) that we’d had a conversation. I sometimes got to the end of my tether, and would draw his attention to this. Only to be told my recall was obviously faulty. This has been a theme over my whole life. Differing recollections in which mine is always de facto wrong.

This has not been helpful to the development of trust, in either myself or others. Nor indeed, in plain ol’ mental fortitude. When doubting your own mind is drummed into you over a lifetime. It has a debilitating effect.

Anyway, I’m absolutely adamant that in times past I’ve sat through very depressing monologues from a very depressed dad, in in almost complete silence. Sonny hbsinged occasionally notice, and ask if I was still there!

And, rather tragically, I now sometimes find myself playing out similar routines, in certain scenarios, such as this recent interview at A&E. As much as I love and admire my father, there are also less appealing sides to him – we’re all only human, after all – which I don’t wish to copy.

POSTSCRIPT

Well, I ran out of steam on this post. Much earlier in the day. It’s now much later. I did get up, numerous times, to do stuff; go to the loo, eat/drink, etc. The real basics! But in essence today was a day of bed-bound R&R, rest and recuperation. And boy have I needed it.

After two very good nights sleep at my sister’s (the second un-planned, at her suggestion), I wound up using a single zopiclone tablet last night, as prescribed by Dr Joyce, earlier in the week. I was only prescribed the one, on account of the danger of my ‘misusing’ them, if I had more!

Fortunately my mood has lifted considerably over the day. And esp’ so since my darling wife came home, and both ministered to me, and gave me a kick right square up in my ass! She insisted I complete several minor chores before I could have dinner.

I doubt I’d be here now, if it weren’t for Teresa. Thank you, sweet-heart, for standing by me and being a rock, and a source of consolation and common sense. Who loves ya, baby!

I’m currently watching snooker obsessively. Why? Because I’m undergoing the most hardcore bout of depression I’ve experienced in about six or more years.

Can snooker save my life? I don’t know, to be honest. But I’m just glad it exists. Why does it provide such succour? I really don’t know. Again, I’m just glad it does.

Today I’ve been bingeing on several mammoth snooker fests. One was the absolute classic, Higgins vs. Williams, at the 2018 World Championship. That was a real belter, no mistake. And watching it silenced the incessant self-destructive mental monologue that plagues me.

Depression and insomnia are an unhappily married couple. And the fuckers are visiting me daily and nightly. Snooker somehow helps screen out their incessant chatter.

Aaargh!!! It’s sooo g’damn cold. I’m in bed watching snooker, with the central-heating on, and a small fan heater in the room.

I’m still going through a tough patch, psychologically. Without giving too much away, I was in A&E at Peterborough Hospital Monday evening, after the local surgery called an ambulance ‘on me’.

I say ‘on me’, not for me, as I’d already agreed to go to the A&E dept at Peterborough. I didn’t want orvrequest an ambulance!

Teresa’s taken some time off work to be at home with me, and help me get through the present crisis. And I’ve just been trying to relax and take it easy. Step back and stay calm.

I love snooker. And I think I like it even more when I’m going through tough times, as I find it a real balm.

I’m having a really difficult spell right now. And snooker is oft-times seeing me through. Consequently I’m trawling the archives of YouTube and elsewhere for the best matches I can find.

This one’s a real doozy!