The Psychiatric Day Hospital in Review...

So, I guess it’s time for an update on the hospital stuff, and the depression stuff.

Hard to pin down how I’m feeling and what’s been going on. I guess first I’ll tell you what it’s like.

I show up at 9, then we have group sessions, kind of seminars, but honestly, not that educational, mostly I think they’re just to pass the time. During the sessions people are pulled out to see their nurse and doctor and discuss progress and status of meds and so on. Two sessions in the morning, an hour of lunch, one more session, then head home at 2pm.

It doesn’t sound like much, but god, does it ever wipe me out. And it’s bloody hard for me to make myself go. And, well, it’s just bloody hard.

Hard to explain what is so hard about it. It’s a variety of things. The first thing that’s hard is the getting up and leaving the house, going out in public thing. Then there is the being in a room full of people thing. Then there is the having to interact with said people. And there is the fact that there’s no quick escape, I’m at least half an hour from home, from what feels like safety, when I’m in that room.

The end result is complete exhaustion by 2 pm. So exhausted I can’t do anything, not even email – when I can’t do email you know I’m tired.

The good side is, well, all the scary things – the fact that it gets me out of the house, the fact that it gives me practice being around and interacting with people, the fact that it pushes my boundaries so that I can see that I will in fact live through being outside of my safe zone.

The other really good side, in a very practical way, is that there are medical professionals to monitor my progress and my meds. It means that I don’t have to try and determine those things on my own in my inability to make decisions and inability to trust my own judgement. I have someone else, someone who’s not depressed, to watch that for me.

Also, I think that things are improving. I don’t know that for sure, because it seems that when I’m feeling a bit better I end up slamming back down and crying my way through the rest of the day. Friday was a particularly bad day. But I do seem to, I don’t know, seem to have a bit more hope or something.

All that said, I am of course, terrified of going in tomorrow morning, of going in for the rest of the week, and for the week after that, and the week after that…