I had a mental breakdown

[robvalue]

I've had a terrible last couple of days, and I thought it would be therapeutic to share it with you all.

I have ME (also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) which leaves me very short of physical and mental energy. I've had it for some 8 years now. I've spent a good deal of that time wanting to die. It's only been my promise to my wife that I won't hurt myself that has stopped me from killing myself.

I also have Chron's Disease which has been screwing up my life in lots of different ways for the last 25 years. Dealing with just one of these conditions would be bearable, but both at once is really horrible.

Thanks to an excellent specialist I've recently started seeing, my Chrons has been reasonably under control for the last 3 years or so. But it's now making a comeback. I've developed a very narrow part in my intestine, which seems to slowly get blocked up over time. Once it gets almost completely blocked, my guts go into spasm. After about 8 hours of pain, it normally resolves itself either by forcing itself through or by me being violently sick for an hour or so. Obviously, that is bad enough.

Two days ago, I got the spasms starting again. But this time, they didn't stop after 8 hours. Or 16. They were still going over 24 hours later. I got absolutely no sleep and I felt I was beginning to lose my mind. In the end we decided to get me to A&E, because we've been told these blockages can be potentially life threatening (they can cause a rupture). As it happens, it appeared that after wretching in the car on the way there, the blockage finally passed. But I couldn't be sure, so I continued in to A&E.

Even though the pain was abating, I felt ridiculously uncomfortable waiting there for a doctor to see me. Not just irritable, but actually feeling unstable. I didn't know why. As time passed, the feeling got worse and worse. Eventually, I had what I can only assume is a mental breakdown. I felt like I lost control of myself. I was in extreme mental torment like I'd never felt before. I usually want to die, but now I was begging to die. I begged them to sedate me. The nurse I had at the time was really nasty and treated me like I was "being naughty". She kept telling me to calm down and smile in a condescending way. My wife was trying to calm me down any way she could.

It got worse and worse, and if there had been a cliff for me to jump off, they would have had to restrain me to stop me going over it, even after my promise to my wife. I would have begged her to let me jump off the cliff. I started making incoherent wailing noises, moving around randomly, grabbing onto things... I honestly thought that this is it, I've cracked. I've lost my mind. I'm not coming back. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a psychiatric ward.

My poor wife went through hell seeing me like this and tried everything she could think of, showing me pictures on her phone of our happy times, and even phoning my mental health support team. This all helped in a small way, but it couldn't bring me back.

After what seemed like hours but my wife tells me was not actually that long, it passed. I got control of myself again. After everyone in the ward who watched must have thought I was insane, I had a perfectly normal, relaxed conversation with the doctor about the condition of my blockage. We agreed it had passed, and I could go home.

This scared the shit out of me. It's hard to say what caused my breakdown. A combination of relentless pain, no sleep, years of suicidal thoughts ready to pounce on any opportunity, being cooped up in a noisy ward and the nurse treating me like a petulant child... It shows how strong my depression is. My therapy has been going great recently, and I appear to have the depression "in check". But this is a clear warning of how strong it is, and how eager it is to jump on any opportunity to take me down. It nearly succeeded. I wanted to run from the hospital, and I probably would have run into a road to try and get run over.

I hope with all my heart this never happens again. It was the worst experience of my life. It feels like a horrid nightmare now, but also shockingly real. I appear to have regained control since then, and haven't come close to losing it.

Thank you very much for reading

[Longhorn]

Jesus....I'm so sorry Rob. That's horrible. I don't know what to say. I wish I could give you a hug

[Bob Kelso]

Really hope things go better for you, Rob, I'm with Neim on this; wish I could give out hugs over the internet.

[robvalue]

Thanks guys, I appreciate it a lot

Just being able to think somewhat straight today and not feel like someone else has remote control over me is a relief. It's an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone. My therapist is going to be shocked, we were talking about bringing our sessions to a close. I hope this is a one-off that I can put behind me however, and still stay on course.

It was probably the culmination of a lot of factors and my mind had to go ape shit for a bit just to let off some steam. I don't know.

[Ashground]

The way the nurse treated you was fucking awful. Forget a lack of decent mental illness training, that was just a lack of empathy.

I'm glad you survived what sounds like a despair driven breakdown. Frankly, I'm trying to think of something that isn't a clichéd platitude. Something that helped me survive was a logical argument put to me by an old pen pal, "If you kill yourself today you will never know if you'd feel better tomorrow, if you don't kill yourself today you can always change your mind later".

And obviously *hug*

[ignoramus]

Rob, does your depression stem exclusively from your physical pain...?
Do you ever recall having depression issues prior to the physical symptoms...

I just can't fathom how "our" chainsaw of logic can be tormented so badly emotionally from physical pain...
The pain alone must be horrendous!

Hang in there matey! Mind of matter!? (probably not...)

[Bob Kelso]

On the nurse thing; a lack of empathy is one of my biggest pet peeves in healthcare.

I work as a security officer in my local hospital, and generally have to watch psychiatric/unstable patients, and I can't tell you how many times a nurse has exacerbated a situation by either being a condescending/uncaring twat or a total antagonistic douchecanoe.

[robvalue]

Ash:

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Thank you. Yes, I can't believe the way she acted. I'm on the verge of lodging a complaint. My wife overheard her say to another nurse, "He can't be seen sooner by the doctor because he's throwing a strop." She actually thought I was putting it on to get seen quicker. But I wasn't even asking to be seen, I was just losing my shit. My wife and I both told her that I have serious depression (as far as I could communicate during this) but she just ignored us. I really think that with a more sympathetic nurse, my breakdown would have been at least shortened.

Am I glad I'm still here? Not really, but it's bearable again at least. That's all I can hope for at this stage in my life. I'm still extremely ill and I may never get better. But one day I might, and that's what I would have lost. I would still stand by my decision to end it though at the time, because it's still fresh in my mind the level of mental anguish I was feeling. And it honestly felt like it was the beginning of the end.

Now I'm back in control suicide is off the table as per my promise In some ways I often feel like a very weak person, but when I look at what I've endured in my life I feel like I must have a lot of strength.

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Ignor:

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Yes, I highly suspect I'm genetically vulnerable to depression. My family tree is riddled with it. I had a suicidal bout of it when I was younger, in my twenties. I was still living at home and the way my parents were treating me had slowly marched me to the edge without me realising it. One day I cracked, but not quite in the same way as at the hospital. I found myself paralysed. I couldn't find the motivation to move at all. I couldn't see the point. Not just philosphically, my body actually refused to believe there was any point. It took me half an hour or so to be able to move again, and I realized I had serious problems. I had therapy for a year and a half, during which I uncovered the trigger for my depression, my parents. By realising I was the victim rather than the cause, as my parents would have me believe, I was able to recover.

When I managed to move out, the depression virtually disappeared overnight and I felt in paradise.

It kept away since then, until I got ME about 8 years ago. Then it returned with a vengeance, and put me through hell. My life had been shattered, I was left with clear memories of all the things I used to be able to do that I no longer could, which was pretty much everything. I've been fighting it ever since, and it's only made worse by the Crohn's. Depression and mental anguish I can only describe as a kind of pain which digs deeper than any physical kind, right into your brain.

As logical as I try to be normally, when depression grips me that hard, I'm powerless. Thankfully this incident was a blip (albeit a massive one) in my recent battle against depression which I feel I have been winning thanks to my therapy. I haven't ridded myself of it, as is quite apparent, but just managed to keep in control.

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[Fidel_Castronaut]

Stay strong Rob. You have friends here and in RL, and a loving family.

[Longhorn]

Hopeyoureoknowimsosorry waffles?