This is the follow-on from, ‘You know when you just want a beer’.  Adapted from chapter three of Bi Polar Expedition. 

If you’re unfortunate enough to join the world of the mental health system, you’ll learn one fact pretty much straight away, understanding your disorder and the medication you’re prescribed is an ongoing learning curve from the outset…

All I knew at the time was I was ill and hospital, and the drugs administered would, in time, help me recover apparently.  However, not once, at the beginning of my bipolarity did anyone mention the word, side-effects or add the prefix – severe!  Just so you know, all forms of medication have a side-effect of some kind, even aspirin.  Most go unnoticed but, as I found out to my cost, the stronger the drug, the more powerful the side-effects can be.

So I’d escaped with the ward keys and hit the local pub and, as I’d been a naughty boy, (out witted the staff) I was jumped on, sedated and then pasted out.  I woke up to discover a burning sensation on my forehead, and a loud and repetitive banging noise in the background. 

All of a sudden the door of my room burst open and in stormed the cleaner from hell.  It was ages before I was able to work out why my ears were more sensitive than normal, but it was all down to my first batch of injected anti-psychotic drugs.  After what seemed like an hour all went quiet, and my door was closed again. 

For the next three days I sat in a vegetative state with an inane grin on my face and by day four I was in a bad way.  You could’ve slap with six pound turbot and I would’ve just sat there and smiled at you!  I could only manage to walk in short pigeon-steps and my legs were locked at the knees in a half-bent position. 

It was a bizarre situation and try as I might, I couldn’t stand up straight.  Brilliant!  Not only did I feel like prat, the predicament had left me eight inches shorter! 

Then I noticed my forearms, they were stuck out in front me like a puppeteer, which would’ve been okay, but I didn’t have any puppets.  Thinking it couldn’t get any worse, it did.  I found that my fingers and thumbs were all pointing towards the floor, and like my knees, were also frozen.  And to top it all off, every time I went to sit down, literally two seconds later I had an uncontrollable compulsion to stand up.   

Day by day something else joined the list of ever-growing side-effects.  I can laugh about it now, but I was in a great deal of pain, pain like you would never believe.  I tried to console myself that it couldn’t be as painful as child birth, but it didn’t help.  Fortunately, only person saw me in this state. and ever helpful my good friend evaluated my situation for the record.  He said I looked like ET with a beard.  What are mates for!  A week later I was still in the same condition.

As time progressed the agony spread its way from my legs, arms and hands and settled nicely in the whole length of my spine.  A full night’s sleep was impossible, I couldn’t sleep on my back or my front, and in the end I slept on alternate sides, waking up, on the hour, every hour.  I started to think that the Irish River Dance troupe had been practising on it for a month. 

Eventually, after three weeks of agony and broken sleep, I started getting some answers to my crippling situation.  After speaking to the meds man on the ward it became apparent that I’d had a severe adverse reaction to my recent jab and it was called, akathisia.  Yip, never heard of it either, but by God I new I had it!   

Okay, how long was this debilitating side-effect going to last for, I asked?  Well, certainly no longer than 14 weeks!!!  I was given an extra tablet to take with my usual medication to help the crippling effects of the akathisia, but what I hadn’t anticipated was that the so-called anti side-effect tablet had a side-effect all of its own.  Three days later I found out what it was – constipation!   

A week later, I was still having problems sleeping and was given another tablet to take.  Guess what, I now had a new side-effect to cope with, blurred vision, mostly with a tad of extra lethargy.  If I wasn’t walking the corridors or circumnavigating the hospital grounds, in small circles I might add, I could be found propping up a wall in the corner of the day room.  You couldn’t miss me.  I was the blind, bearded, stationary alien with a packet of Ex-lax sticking out of his top pocket!  If there is a God, I just like to say, yeah thanks for that…

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 11th, 2011 at 3:24 am and is filed under Neils Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.