I feel I ought to say something about 1997. It was a bad bad bad bad bad year. I was being treated for major depression and an anxiety disorder. I was regularly self-harming. I was miserable. I was too young to understand so much of what was happening and I didn’t feel any sense of control or order. That was the year I wrecked my car. It was the year I almost managed to kill myself [suicide not the car wreck]. I got to the hospital in time and from there to a mental health centre where they changed my medication and assigned me a new therapist. I got released into my parent’s care again on Halloween.

Looking back at my journals and notebooks from that time is a curious and embarrassing experience. I feel bad for my young self. I wouldn’t wish my path on anyone else. I cannot regret it though because I really really love where I am now. I wouldn’t be me without those experiences.

10 years certainly fades the memories.

I very often grab lyrics in passing when titling a Debbie. I’ve had so much choice for this one I couldn’t pick just one. So hats off to Depeche Mode, Simon & Garfunkel and Björk.

Leave in silence
Sound of silence
It’s all so quiet

I’ve been thinking a lot [it is all I have left]. Especially about silence and quiet. I love quiet. I love peace. Nothing overwhelming, the chance to enjoy any sound there is without conflict. Like if I’m listening to an album, I’m not going to have the TV on and I’m crap at conversation. Ask any friends/family, if there’s the music I want to focus on it 9 times out of 10 – usually sing along too.

God I miss music.

This silent bubble with only my heartbeat for company that I’ve existed in for a month is a struggle and I don’t think I’m winning.

In fact, I’m barely holding anything together. Everything makes me cry. If I think about how wonderfully supportive Weasel has been during this month I cry. If I think about how much I’ve let Horatio down this month I cry. If I think about my dog I cry. If I think about my parents and how mad I was over her behaviour and how I didn’t get enough of him I cry. If I think about my in-laws and how kind they’ve been [lending DVDs, bringing flowers and food, supporting Weasel and driving me to appointments] I don’t want to cry right now though because it fucks with my head/sinuses and makes me feel physically worse.

My heartbeat has started to sound like other things to me. I caught it being a guitar riff, a techno underbeat and conversation. At the moment it likes to go into The Lion Sleeps Tonight ["Wemoweh, wemoweh, wemoweh, wemoweh"] so then my brain sings the proper lines over the top. It’s driving me nuts.

I love quiet, I do not like silence.

Yesterday I actually felt pretty good. I managed to get some sleep [although the waking up at noon thing kind of sucks], I thought I had a few ‘easy’ things planned that I could do and feel good about without hurting myself. Like grooming; I shaved everything and clipped my nails. I went for a short walk instead of the longer ones my brain was suggesting. I was cautious and careful. All was okay until the evening. Around new-midnight [yay day light savings] my head exploded. My entire face was in agony. I tried my toast trick and it worked, I felt better. I was feeling sleeping and since I was maxed out on pain killers I decided to take my sleeping pill. I tried for ages to fall asleep and ignore various poundings and throbbings. No luck. Finally I think around 2:30 I had a shower which relaxed me enough to try sleeping again. I fell asleep until 7 then did all my usual breakfast, drugs, douches and drops and fell asleep again until 12. Felt very fragile all afternoon. I managed to read for a couple of hours which was nice.

I just feel like last night was punishment for trying to do something yesterday. I thought the grooming was a good idea, it would make me feel better, be useful and not hard.

So today I’ve sat around a lot and tried not to move my head too much. I’m not in any pain at the moment, but I’m sure the feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach isn’t helping.

I forgot to say. Our plugs have decided that they are unhappy and will randomly trip the breaker. All the computers, TV, fridge, fans and humidifiers all shut off and poor Weasel has to run around unplugging everything and flipping switches and then she gets everything going again. I don’t understand what’s happening and when she didn’t want to explain it to me in my current state so I can’t really help either. We had an electrician here last week while we were at the hospital and he thinks it is the broken heating timer. So hopefully when he comes to replace it tomorrow it’ll stop. He is also going to test all sorts of things and was very kind on the phone [or so is the impression I got from Weasel].

I guess I’m bored. I haven’t been bored since I was a kid. I can think of all sorts of things that I want to do but I can’t do them. So it is a strange sort of boredom.

I’ve been talking to Weasel, Horatio and Blanketgirl on Windows Live Messenger and I’m not sure I like it. I get easily confused and overwhelmed and I don’t get some of the cooler chat phrases because to be honest the last time I chatted online with any regularity was 2002. Before that was the 90s. Incidentally, this month is my 12 year anniversary for being on the internet. We had a 14.4kbs modem and AOL.

I’ve had a few more doctors appointments.

• I have an anxiety disorder, that’s what caused the high blood pressure. I’m on beta-blockers to mask the symptoms. They have advised that I think about anti-depressants as a more long-term solution.
• I’m up to 12 courses of antibiotics for 2007 now. I haven’t finished 11 yet, I do on Tuesday, which is when I’ll start 12.
• My ears are both still blocked and leaking. I had photos taken of my ear drums on Friday at the hospital, my right one has the hole from the grommet and my left one is getting ready to burst. There’s a bubble on it and everything. I have ear drops to help.
• I have discovered that a bit of toast with butter and jam does wonders for the extraordinarily painful headaches I’ve been having.
• Endoscopies hurt when your nose is as upset as mine.
• I’m still deaf, but the hospital has given me a box with headphones and a microphone that allows me to hear a little. Unfortunately, my ears are so sore that I can only wear it for about 10 minutes at a time.

I have had very painful and very nasty dried blood clots and other awful things coming out of my nose for some time. The last time I saw my GP I asked if there was anything I could do to soften them or make it less painful. He said no. But when I saw the ENT on Friday he gave me a sheet detailing how I could douche my nose with water/salt/soda bicarbonate which softens the painful dried mess in my nose and allow me to breathe for a little while. I’ve done it a few times now and although sniffing water is a challenge and uncomfortable, the end result is more than worth it. I couple this with my humidifier running constantly and I actually feel a little better.

Weasel and her family have been so wonderful to me over the course of this. She and her Mum spent hours on Friday cleaning and I feel so much more comfortable in the house now. It made a world of difference to me. Stoat has given up two Fridays to drive me places. They have come round for dinner the last two Fridays which has been so nice. I can’t hear anything and I tend to fall asleep, but they are wonderful and they keep Weasel company, I know she has been lonely since we can’t interact like we usually do.

This month has been the second most difficult part of this illness. April, the month of labyrinthitis was slightly worse.

I took Fergus McFeets [stuffed dog of fantastic footed fame] to hospital with me on Friday. He is the only thing that makes me feel better when I’m laying around in pain. His fur is so soft and he is just the right size and shape. Plus, he is used to providing medical care. I bought him for Weasel when she was in hospital in 2004. He has made us both feel better hundreds of times.

Sleep is still very difficult for me. At the moment I’m lucky if I fall asleep before 2am. I usually wake up sometime between 5 and 8, medicate myself [pills, drops, douche], wash and feed myself then I am so exhausted by the whole process I fall asleep again until noon. At least that’s true for the last three days. At this point I’m trying not to get too worked up about the timings and just be grateful for any sleep I can get, but it is hard.

My life is pretty boring at the moment. There are doctors appointments, pill taking, laying on the sofa, watching Gilmore Girls [thank god for subtitles] and feeling generally pained, frustrated and useless.

So following two very uncomfortable nights where I didn’t get to sleep until well into the next morning coupled with the fact that I needed a note to excuse me from work meant that I was seeing my GP again today.

I came away with ear spray, more painkillers and that’s right – my ninth course of antibiotics for 2007! She suspects I have an ear infection and that’s why I’m in so much pain.

Note excuses me for a month starting from the 2nd. Not sure if that puts us at the 30th or the 6th. We’ll see how we feel I guess.

Nothing else new to report really; still in pain, still deaf, still grumpy and still ill.

If you haven’t been enjoying Debbie for the last few months, you won’t enjoy this one. I’m still ill and still all kinds of grumpy about it.

They decided that it is Wegener’s Granulomatosis so I’ve got my steroids, immune-system depressing drugs, folic acid and chewable calcium with vitamin D. I have to have regular blood tests so I’m going back in two weeks. I also had a CT-scan which was only difficult because I was feeling so very ill.

When we got home on Friday afternoon after I took the first lot of steroids, I got a awful headache. I went to bed and managed to sleep it off. I got up around 8. We’d arranged for a friend to come do Indian Head Massages at 5:30 and I guess she did Weasel then they just talked and chilled until I woke up. The massage was great and she’s coming back in a couple of weeks. I almost felt normal [bar the deafness] on Friday night.

Then, last night around 6 I felt some pain coming up. I took some paracetamol [which had been very effective] and waited for them to kick in. They didn’t so I took some strong painkillers. Nothing. I tried taking a hot shower. I tried lying in the dark with many pillows listening to the Cure. I tried that all night, only moving to take more drugs. At 6:15 this morning I finally broke down and went to find Weasel. She told me to take one of my sleeping pills, the doctor told me not to take them every night because they can be addictive and last night was an off night. So I took one this morning, had another lot of painkillers and managed to get some sleep. I felt so very strange this morning. I really don’t want to repeat this experience again.

I’m going to go to bed ASAP tonight and god I hope the pain is less and I can sleep.

On top of feeling so ill that I plea with god to please just kill me now I worry about work, about my course, my parents and the strange conversation I had with my Mom the week before last, that yesterday was my niece’s birthday and I didn’t acknowledge it. I’m snappy at Weasel because I feel so very crap and there are some things she just cannot do for me [like remove the pain].

I have to see my GP at some point so they can sign me off work officially and I’m not delighting in the prospect. Work really really doesn’t like me being ill. I think they think I’m doing it on purpose to hurt them and I’m just being mean. This year has been absolute hell for me and I’ve spent every single day struggling to fulfil some obligation to someone somewhere which has made me even more ill. No one thinks about the effects on me, just the effects on them. My parents asking me to look up all the stuff for their stupid trip when I was so unbelievably exhausted I just wanted to sleep all the time. Me beating myself up mentally for not going to the gym when I know that exercise made my teeth and nose hurt. Making myself choose between cleaning and exercising because I didn’t have it in me to do both. Me crawling my way into work two hours late because I was so exhausted I just couldn’t get myself there any faster. Trying to have some semblance of band practice because I don’t want Doodle to feel unwanted. I haven’t been able to hear properly since January, music is a little lost to me at the minute. Plus this whole pain business sort of dampens the creative spirit.

So I’m giving up. Little by little. I’ve frozen the gym membership. I’ve told Doodle band practice is off for the foreseeable future and if I can handle a visit on Friday then I’ll let him know. Now I just need to figure out what to do about visits with Horatio. A three hour train ride seems beyond me at the moment. I’m not sure how he’ll cope if I have another night like last night and frankly, if I have another night like last night, I want to be home. It probably isn’t much fun seeing me right now anyway, I’m all ill and grumpy.

Now if I could just get my brain to default to some happy thoughts instead of worrying about work every time the pain clears a little.