March 15th

I spoke to the doc end of last week. She was very sympathetic. But had few answers beyond the immediate anxiety. I told her I was suicidal all week. The first time I have actually admitted that to a health professional. I was beyond caring if they would throw me in the nut house. Norfolk is incidentally a terrible place to be mentally ill. I have been there for some friends who have been through the system, visited a good friend in mental care when he was placed there. Norfolk mental health has been in "special measures" for years. Meaning it sucks. There is no space, and pretty much no help. Which means you dont get a lot of response for serious mental health stuff.

The doc issued me with some anti anxieties. Which another good friend was kind enough to go and get. I am burning so many favours and I feel horribly guilty. The doc is away this week, but has made a note to call me the week after. It is a huge relief that someone is trying to keep track of me. She asked if the "urgent CT scan" appointment had come through yet. No. Of course not. That was requested some 2 weeks ago. This is the epitome of my experience. Seriously ill. Every answer is just wait another week, 2 weeks, a month, and nothing happens. The implication is just, please go and die and stop bothering us. I understand everything is busy and jammed. Its not much of a salve to my suffering every day since December.

Anxiety has lessened in mornings to merely debilitating - although tbh I am not using the anti anxieties much - I am wary of them. Mornings and the day are very hard to get through both mentally and physically. I feel better during the evenings usually - but not always. As the anxiety comes down once again the problems underlying bubble to the surface. Left arm continually weak, tingly and dead this morning in bed. Vague pains in chest from time to time. Tingles in back return with an ache there too. Looking in the mirror this morning two very black eyes look back at me. They sometimes fade a bit now during the day. I am still concerned something is up with my cardio. It doesn't seem right.

The last two days I have roused myself to join the dog walk if not actively participate. On the first day, within 200 yards, I started to get a few chest pains. Wonderful. I ignored them, they went. Walking seems ok. My legs are sometimes weak. But if I stop in the walk. It's unpleasant. My internals screech and I begin to feel unsteady and ill. After both walks I am wasted. I zone out, my insides "fizz" and I am very off. Yesterday I returned to bed.

I am pretty sure at this point I have both a stomach ulcer and something going on in the upper tract and or pancreas or somewhere around there. I have become sensitive to meat ( and possibly sugar ). I am not eating a lot of meat at all ( and just about zero sugar other than apples - although apples seem pretty benign on my system ). But when I do, I get problems - not with my stomach, but with my upper tract. It quivers and pulses, and at times is very bad. Fish seems to be ok, vegetables, some dairy. But meat is an issue. Its not the fat either, I have had lean chicken caused me all sorts of problems. Perhaps interestingly it is after eating meat that I get the back tingles on the left hand side. Makes me think pancreas. But I dont know. I need the experts to tell me.

Anything even remotely spicy or problematic will set my stomach off. If I sleep on my left side, something inside will start "fizzing" then trembling, then getting slowly worse. A few days ago I had taken both a sleeping pill and an anti anxiety on the advice of Hazel - just so that I would know what their effects were. I slept deep and well... on my left side. I woke up with my entire left side ringing like a bell. Buzzing. Fizzing. My entire left side trembling in response. And I felt like utter garbage. It took half a day to calm.

Despite the last couple of days endeavouring to actually stay up once up, I have not made it through a day without spending large chunks of it in bed for several weeks. I cannot maintain and have to return to bed. I am not working. My money is bleeding out.

Everyday the left side of my face tingles. Not a single day goes by without the ants marching along my left eyebrow, down the left side of my eye socket and into my cheek. Sometimes it spreads. Sometimes it remains as a tickle around the eye. Everyday I space out. Thoughts can become elusive. I am quicker and better of an evening. Almost back to my old self. During the day I vary. Staring into the sky is hypnotic for me. It is very weird. I used to do it as a kid. In school. And get told off for it repeatedly. John is staring into space again. I would look out the window and just zone out. Age 8 or so. Its a similar feeling.

My eyesight has got worse this last few months. Perhaps because of lack of screen time or something. I find it impossible to short focus now. Reading prescriptions or letters is a challenge not least because 1 my eyesight is iffy, and 2 I have trouble processing it. There are times it leaves me feeling a little... isolated.. and out of control. 

I have had people suggest to me all manner of things. Have I been checked for Crohns disease ? Lyme disease ? Gallstones ? But the one that keeps cropping up from differing people is long covid. It sounds a lot like long covid they say. I have no clue. I am exhausted. I just want a professional to help me, keep track of me, get somewhere. Or just put me out of my misery if thats too much effort. Leaving someone to suffer in the middle ground, not really progressing, but not putting out of misery just seems horrifically cruel.

Suicidal thoughts have moved to the background. They are still there. And serious. I have realised how hard it is to check out - society would rather you suffer endlessly than do that. It seems horrifically cruel and to what purpose I don't know. Why endlessly extend a life not worth living ? I have gained a horrible insight into the problems around assisted suicide now. That it is not available is monstrous to those that suffer.

I have focused on my mental health of late. Another false hope. Oh. Once I feel better mentally, I will get better. As my mental health has improved from suicidal to not good, it's clear that I am still seriously ill. Something is very wrong. It is yet again a case of me having a little false hope only to have the realisation that it's not going to be that easy come into focus.

If I could take an easy way out, I still would at this point. I am done at this point. Sick of being sick. And I have nothing left I want to do. I have talked to people, and said goodbyes, my affairs are in order. I have no hopes or desires for the future.

Money and good will from people will bleed out whilst I lie here suffering. I can see people get on with their own lives, of course, and I slowly fade into the background. A cautionary tale. But one that isnt allowed to finish. Just dwindle to misery.

Scan this Friday. I am worried I will not make it. I am worried I Will be too ill to lie there and get scanned. I am worried I will be to freaked out to sit in the coffin like MRI for 40 minutes. I am worried I wont even be able to make the journey. And then the results. All clear ? Then what is wrong with me ? Not all clear ? Is it fixable ? Am I on a timer. Ah Mr Rice. You have 3 months left to live. 3 months of suffering waiting for the end ? My god. I cannot imagine worse. Friday seems to not offer much salvation to me. Answers perhaps. I know from everyone elses perspective its a positive move. A possible diagnosis or at the least, crossing somethings off the list. It's rather different for me being at the center of it. I am pretty sure they will find something - if it can be found with an MRI. Not everything can. They already stated they would not be able to see ulcers or the like.

I asked my friend this week a terrible thing, if he could help me die. He of course refused. I apologised for placing such a horrible question on him. But what else can I do. If someone could shoot me in the back of my head whilst I sleep, that would be perfect.

Ares has been grumbling a lot last evening and this morning. I have not taken him back to the Vets, he seems, kinda ok. Just old. But. It seems clear he is in a final decline. Under ordinary circumstances his loss would devastate me. I have thought in the past about how or if I could handle it - I have a tenous grasp of life at the best of time. But now ? In the midst of horror myself. I don't know. It will be one more pain on a pile of pain. Terrible.

A plan has been made this week. On Friday when I have my scan I will not return home. Instead I will go stay at my brothers for a couple of days. This will give Hazel a break from my misery and give me a change of scene. Hard to say how I will be. I worry about Hazel and her ability to cope. She has her own issues and she didn't sign up for this. I am not her boyfriend or husband or family member. Just a friend who is there for me. We have been there for each other multiple times. I have dragged her to get mental health support when she couldnt herself. And had her stay last lockdown when her then relationship(s) collapsed and she was struggling. But I feel worried and a burden to her. She struggles in the afternoons herself. Warms up in the evenings. But she is my only life line at the moment. I try to get people to help her walk the dogs and such to take the pressure off her, give her someone normal to talk to. But I am so often out of it, its hard to manage. She does talk and play games with her bf every evening which is a relief to me - normality for her. I often make myself scarce and retire to bed.

I dont know. Last evening I felt somewhat better. I had an almost normal conversation with my brother. I thought perhaps I was slowly improving over the last few days. This morning has slapped me back down again. Fool. How dare you have hope.

My family. Sigh. My Sister and Brother have both voiced support. But as my Brother pointed out everyone has their own lives. Their own stuff to deal with. And people dont want to hear me suffer. And I am far away. The feeling of being nothing but a burden looms large, and I understand that we have always drifted some ways apart. Ironic really. When I was a kid I idolised both my brother and sister. It feeds back into making me feel very alone. It is something I have dealt with most of my life. Of being isolated and alone. For the majority of time I dealt with it. Or ignored it. Or suppressed it. Or just gone on with it. Which one is hard to say. But at times it would bubble to the surface, how very alone I was. I think once you strip me to my core its a pretty wide wound, of being alone. And being afraid. And now in my present vulnerable state, its all the more apparent. Such is life I suppose.

Someone please end me.