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I visited my Psychiatric community care nurse last week as I have done for the past two years since I was diagnosed with a mental illness, cyclothemia they told me I had. My psychiatric community care nurse tells me I look well and she is discharging me from the mental health service.
” What the hell” I wanted to scream ” You can’t discharge me, I need you”.
Instead I say …
” But I thought someone like me with a mental illness needed to be supported”?
She explains to me that over the two year period I have been her patient I have shown incredible strength and dedication to live with my mental illness and I no longer need her. Cyclothemia is treatable as such with medication and as the dosage has been monitored carefully and I am able to live normally without having to visit a member of the mental health team, that my mental health will always remain somewhat different yet I manage it well.
“Manage it” I wanted to scream ” I don’t manage it, it controls me, I don’t want it, take it away”.
Instead I say …
“Are you sure I am normal”?
She laughs at me.
“You could do my job Emma with a blindfold and your hands tied behind your back”.
I think being a psychiatric community care nurse could be a possible career move for me, you have to be nuts to work with nutty people right?
I am normal. I have waited a lifetime to hear those words, but now I don’t want to be normal.
It has never dawned on me that having a mental illness such as cyclothemia would mean I was going to ever be discharged from the mental health services. I thought it would be there a life time. My psychiatric community care nurse has become a regular in my life, each fortnight I visit her for an hour. I can rant, let of steam too , unload my problems onto her and she listens. Who will I moan to now?
I have become dependent on the mental health team, my psychiatric community care nurse and my psychiatrist, what will I do without them, how will I cope? This is a frightening thought. I am now alone.
A Personal Post By The Real Supermum
