The Operation

On Thursday I had my first...and hopefully last...operation. If you haven't heard why, check out my previous blog post "A Bit of Cancer"

So I'd been carrying on with everyday life looking after the kids on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, doing a mosaic in Knutsford on Wednesdays and a mural in Manchester on Thursdays and planning my new comedy night in my spare time (more details to follow when things are more confirmed, but I'm super excited about it).

There's nothing you can really do to prepare for an operation other than not eat from 2am that morning. The night before I filled up on a big carvery and ice cream, before reading that I should avoid fatty food or over-eating. I was allowed my last drink at 6:30am and had to be in the women's hospital for 7:30am. Dan took me in but wasn't allowed to stay because there would be women "in various states of undress". So Dan had taken the day off work - the kids were in nursery and he was back home with his feet up by 8:15am. Jammy.

They told me I was last on the list and wouldn't be operated on until 2:30pm! But I had to stay within the hospital grounds just in case. I'm a creative, inventive person, but let me tell you there is not a lot of fun to be had within a women's hospital on your own when you're not even allowed to eat or drink. I spent a bit of time wandering around and guessing if women were fat or pregnant but was never brave enough to then ask them. So I mainly stuck to reading which I haven't done for a very long time.

I bought a new book because I knew I would have time for silent, still activities for once. "Undivided - by Vicky Beaching". Vicky is a Christian musician celebrity who once *claim to fame* rode my unicycle. I know right! In 2014 she came out as gay aged 35...probably not as a direct result of riding my unicycle. Anyway, she faced a lifetime of not feeling able to come out, and when she finally did she lost all her recording contracts and everything but despite that has remained positive about the church and now she's an ambassador for LGBT Christians. Very inspiring, very sad, and has probably tipped me over the edge from being borderline to more liberal in my Christian theology.

So as I was pondering these deep issues of religion and sexuality, I was called in to answer some pre-op questions. I thought the deep questioning of my inner self would end there. But no, along with questions like "do you have any crowns on your teeth?" I was asked "do you have difficulties being able to express your sexuality?" ....err....yeah probably, like how do you express being straight? I'm not exactly going to organise a straight pride, am I?

I was given some beautiful green stockings to put on along with a hospital gown and told to go commando but then wear a dressing gown. Given my operation was still a few hours away I chose not to go commando for all of that time.

Then the time came for me to go into another waiting room for 15 minutes before going to the anaesthetic room. Several medical staff said "the waiting is the worst part". I disagree - I'd say puking up green water was probably the worst part. It's pretty creepy knowing that you're about to be unconscious and have several people messing with your bits even if it is for good reasons. I had a loop excision which is where they chop away at your cervix, and keyhole surgery to remove the pelvic lymph nodes which is apparently quite tricky, and takes about 3 hours.

Just before I woke up I was dreaming of Paw Patrol, then I realised I was in the hospital, was thankful to be alive and asked for water which I then immediately puked up. They took me through to the ward as it was nearly the end of visiting hours and Dan had come in and waited to see me. It was nice to have him there but I was too out of it to have a real conversation. I had a catheter in which was totally weird because you don't feel yourself weeing at all it just sucks the wee out of your bladder so the bladder is never full. It was kind of nice to not have to get up and go to the loo but I was happy when they got rid of it and I could pee on my own terms again.

I survived!

I was in Bay 1 with 82-year-old Joyce and 75-year-old Val, later joined by Gill and Lorraine in their 50s. The first night I was awoken several times but slept ok in between because I still had sleepy drugs in me. In the morning I managed some toast and my good friend Katie who works at the Women's came to visit me before her shift which was lovely. After she left I got this really intense horrible pain - way worse than it had been earlier - I was told this was "wind pain", basically when they do the op they inflate you like a balloon so they can see all your bits better and then they can't do a completely thorough job of deflating you, you have to fart and burp it out over the next few days. Joyce loved a good old burp.

The consultant who did the operation came to tell me about how it went (she was the slightly unfriendly one from my previous blog). She told me she accidentally poked a hole in my womb but she said that my womb was very small, in a kind of accusing way like it was my fault, and she just wasn't expecting it to be that small when she was poking around. Anyway she stitched it up and also removed the pelvic lymph nodes which apparently didn't look cancery to the naked eye. I'll find out in a few weeks.

good job I don't wear bikinis anymore

my new belly button

The nurses were not especially friendly - one of them (when I was in a massive amount of pain) told me I was not the only one to have this operation and that there were women in their 80s having it, implying I should woman up. Women are pretty hard core, there were loads of older women having much bigger surgeries than me, like hysterectomies which take 18 weeks to recover from. But they just get on with it. Us Bay 1 babes looked after each other; we shared a few stories of our families. I was the only one who still had living parents, and I think half of them had lost a partner. Joyce's husband had died over 30 years ago aged 51. She was a lovely lady apart from being a bit racist in that weird way old people are. "That nurse was as black as the ace of spades" - what does that even mean?! But I feel I learnt a lot from them, although the only bit I can really remember is that "it costs £400 to cremate a dog". #funfact

This is not enough food for an adult right? bloody tories!! this is how much food I'd give to my 1 year old.

I stayed in a second night because I didn't feel ready to go home and have to walk up stairs and stuff. But on the Saturday morning they made it clear I'd over-stayed my welcome and even though I'd puked up a green coloured water that morning it was time for me to get out. Dan came to get me and that evening I was feeling a lot better. It was lovely to see the boys even if Percy was not that bothered because Dan had just put new batteries in the moving Brio train. I've been enjoying all the food people have generously made for us, we are very blessed to have amazing friends. I've now reached that lovely point where I'm sick enough to not feel guilty about not helping out but not too sick to watch Netflix. It the perfect amount of ill.

Job Done!

Last week was my big super fun but slightly stressful week. In general I loved it. I've been working on my show for months and I finally got to do it in front of real people instead of just doing it badly in front of Dan, or doing it in the car while commuting. People were super lovely, over 100 people came over the two nights and they were super friendly generous laughers.

My wonderful sister-in-law took these lovely professional photos from the first night. I mean her camera was worth 2000 packets of baby wipes (mummyshare joke) but she is also very talented, check out her stuff here.

I've decided, after about 6 ish years of dabbling in comedy, that I actually want to try at it now. It's a bit scary to say that because you can't really fail if you don't try. But it was a deliberate decision when I started that I wanted to do it only in Liverpool and not try to make money from it because I wanted it to stay fun and not complicate it in my head with work. After one night at hot water comedy club years and years ago, where my stuff went down ok but not brilliantly, I thought these are not "my people" I'll stick to my crowd, the slightly middle class drama graduates with arty ideas playing for free in dingy venues: they're my people. Not those rowdy mainstream commoners.

But with the fresh sense of freedom that comes from not having to breastfeed anymore, I thought I'd give hot water another try. I needed to practise bits for my show so I signed up to do 5 minutes. The crowd were scary and heckley and loud and I wondered what I was doing there: a mum on her own late at night without her husband or anyone she knew, who now speaks in the third person.
But I met a lovely Scottish comedienne and then it turns out 2 friends did turn up to watch and the loudest mouthiest women got thrown out, and my stuff went well and I loved it! It felt like much more of an achievement to make people that I don't know laugh. So then I decided to do it for real and actually try to be a real comedian even if that means gigging to people who hate me or driving out of my city. I signed up for another set at hot water, this time 15 mins. I can't say I smashed it but I didn't not smash it. I guess I cracked the glass a bit if this is the metaphor I'm still on. But I feel the areas which most need improving are the performance related things, like not saying "err" between ever sentence, and if you forget a bit not going back to it if you have moved on, because unless it's essential to the plot the audience don't know.

So my goals now are:
to improve my performing
to preform my show in another city
to gig at least once a week
to gig outside of Liverpool
to at least break even on petrol costs of gigging
to see a bit more live stuff, especially women,
(I went to see the scummy mummies in Manchester, they were ace)
to host my own night (I'm planning that at the mo: more details to follow)
to let touring comedians stay a couple of night in our spare room (when Sarah moves out)

I was really impressed when I got to the Everyman and the legend technician Kieron had set everything out and it looked amazing. I was stressing about it a bit but in the end I hardly had to do any set up which put me in a super happy chilled mood.

That awkward moment when I tried to breastfeed a snake

I'm probably meant to be making the "oooh" sound here like my sister

What a guy! I did originally try to get the baby boy costume but then this second hand girl one was £10 cheaper.

2 years ago Dan dressed as the Suez Canal for my show about my school days. so this was a step up really: at least he's human.

On the first night my intro to the Bonjela song didn't go exactly to plan. 

*picks on random audience member*

H: Have you got kids? how many have you got?

Woman: 3

H: And can I ask you a personal question? How many times have you been in love?

W: Errr 3

H: Are those 3 children a result of the 3 different times?

W: Yes!!

H: Oh! (awkwardness) well err that's fine I'm happy for you. next question, how many times have you been up in the night with a teething baby?

W: Approximately 245423385 times.

H: And how many songs are there about being in love? and how many songs are there about being up all night with a screaming baby? None! so I've written one cue song:

If you haven't seen it yet, heres 6 minutes of show highlights: click on me!

That is almost the end, other than to say thanks for the overwhelming responses to last months blog (synopsis: I may or may not have cancer). Everyone has been super amazing about offering every kind of help. People are lovely. My operation is next week on 11th Oct so unless the worst listed side effect "death" comes into play, I'll be sitting around watching Netflix and skiving off parenting for most of October.

Love Ya. x

A Bit of Cancer

No blogs in the whole of August and then 2 blogs in two days... I've got a bit of news... I've got a bit of cancer... but don't worry or anything it's only stage one i.e. THE BEST KIND, and it's probably all been removed already so maybe I don't have cancer. So my big "news" is I may or may not have cancer, just like everyone else in the world. Here's the story from the beginning:

In February I was due a smear test. I ignored it for a month or two, life is busy and it's the kind of thing you need to arrange childcare for and it's just not that fun. At the same time I also received a letter telling me to take my car into the garage to get the airbag replaced because it was not safe. I ignored that letter too. Then I spent a bit of time pondering which would be more likely to kill me, not getting a potential faulty airbag replaced, or not going for a smear test. Both were very unlikely and logistically difficult to arrange with kids.

A month or two later I went to the Drs for something, I can't remember what, and the Dr asked if I was up to date on my smear. She told me they do evening appointments or that they could hold a baby while they did it, so I was like "oh go on then" and booked an appointment.

I had an evening appointment while Dan took both kids to Percy's football class. It felt like a mini holiday cycling in via the loopline and sitting in a waiting room on my own. I cycled back wondering whether I was more likely to die as a result of a bike accident or a cervix related problem. I don't know why I was so cocky about the health of my cervix, but it seems to be a common misconception that people that are only having sex with one person will be fine health wise in every way.

So I was a bit surprised when the results came back as "abnormal cells". This meant I had to have a procedure called a loop excision which is a bit like a smear test but more choppy. This was scheduled for when I was on holiday in Llandudno with my extended family which meant I had to tell them all. I felt that telling them in a jokey way over family whatsapp would be the most appropriate way to do this:

So half way through our holiday in Llandudno me and Dan drove back to Liverpool to deliver a new fridge to our tenant, take an old fridge to the tip, and have the "abnormal cells" removed from my cervix. Fun.

A few weeks later I got two letters from the hospital saying I had two appointments on two consecutive days to have a chat with a nurse followed by a consultant. I phoned up to ask about it because it's sort of annoying to try and arrange childcare two days in a row and it's also sort of annoying to talk about your cervix in the presence of a very questioning 3 year old. So they ended up telling me the first info from the nurse on the phone: they had found cancer in my cervix. It was probably already removed but they wanted to do another procedure which I'd have to chat to the consultant about.

So the next week, the day before our holiday, I went for the consultant chat. I wasn't too concerned, it was annoying that it wasn't all sorted yet, but hopefully one more loop excision would fix it. Then the Dr told me they'd have to do the loop excision and removed the lymph nodes which is key hole surgery under a general anaesthetic. I asked if I could still work the day after and she pretty much laughed at me and said it was a 4-6 week recovery time. Then I went into full on self employed defensive mode of "I can't do this I'm self employed don't you know, self employed people work even if they are nearly dead and nursery is £46 per day". I got a bit annoyed. Then she got a bit patronising and explained how it was very serious and then told me a list of horrible side effects, one of which was death. She said the operation would be in about 4 weeks. I counted forward, this would put the operation on roughly the 27th September the date of my comedy show. Then I went into full on drama queen mode (don't judge me, everyone deals with bad news differently). I said "I cannot do it until after the 27th I AM A COMEDIAN, I HAVE BOOKED A THEATRE DON'T YOU KNOW?!" Granted it's only the basement of a theatre but still.

She put on my notes "would prefer after the 27th". She then quickly introduced me to a person with people skills as consultants do not have time to be nice. I had to quickly rush off because it was time for Eric's nursery settling in session, but the nice people skills nurse phoned me in the evening to chat through the practical arrangements and ask me how I was doing emotionally.

Then I went camping for 5 nights and mainly forgot about it. I've started experimenting with telling people and it's a bit weird, it you phrase the lead up wrongly people think you're about to announce a pregnancy.
So I'd rather tell you like this so people know and then I'm happy to chat to people if you want. But the main news practically is that I will be probably in bed for most of October. I need to arrange a load of childcare and Dan will need a bit of help because, although he is totally capable of cooking no one is capable of cooking while looking after a 3 year old and a 1 year old. Also if you wanna come over and keep me company that might be nice. I'm hoping to get through a lot of Netflix and podcasts and maybe even books in this time, so any recommendations send them my way.

Hopefully after this op the thing most likely to kill me will go back to being those faulty airbags.

Thanks for reading. x

The Best Wedding Ever

This evening was a dull evening of hours of unpacking and clothes washing (tues) ... but it was all worth it because we've just come back from our first ever family holiday as a four, and the joint best wedding I've ever been to, joint with my own wedding.

So I'll start at the beginning: when I was about 11 a new vicar and family moved to my church. As children of the church we were forced to make friends with their children. I remember being at the Holt family house with my friend Bex ready to meet and welcome the Findley family. They had one 14 year old boy (yuk- obvs we wouldn't be friends wth him) and then a 12 year old and a 10 year old. I was in between the ages of Catherine and Ruth but as my friend Bex was older we decided between us that I would make friends with Ruth and she would make friends with Catherine.

I have many fond memories of our childhood, especially going riding on her horse. It wasn't actually her horse it just lived in the field behind her house and she had permission to use it. Another memory I have of her were when we had a competition to see who can fit though a croquet hoop. I was so middle class back then.
I remember that she had a really good rope swing. I teased her for having a southern accent (sorry) and we had clarinet lessons together until the teacher wanted to teach her separately because she was better than me. I really had little interest in the clarinet, that was obvious when I managed to smuggle my pet rat into my clarinet lesson. 

Ruth was good at asking me deep probing questions even when we were 12. Unfortunately she was very camera shy so I don't have any embarrassing childhood photos of her, but here's one from 2009.

We've not been that much in touch since I left home, but for a while both of our parents still lived in the same hometown, so we would normally see each other at christmas and whatever. Unfortunately both sets of parents have left now so we never naturally bump into each other. She was a bridesmaid for me in 2011 

 We both share the same terrible middle name, and Percy was born on her birthday.

Ruth meets tiny Percy

Anyway the wedding was incredible; it was a two day camping wedding in Ruth's minted uncle's garden. Ruth's uncle Paul seemed to be one of those rare types of people who is massively rich and also incredibly nice and fun. 

We hired a motorhome to go down in which was super fun and made a 2 day wedding into a 5 night camping adventure. 

So Day One of the wedding was a bbq, a pool for the kids, garden games, dancing in a marquee, a bonfire and fireworks.

Day Two of the wedding was the actual wedding, lunch on the lawn, 4 different kinds of cake, a sit down meal, a spot of stand up from me, speeches, and dancing.

Percy thought the wedding was the greatest thing ever because he was allowed to roam free and play with the other kids. It was nice to be out socialising without a babysitter in the evenings although we had to keep going back to the van to check on them every 20 mins.

It was so nice to catch up with the whole Findley family, I particularly enjoyed talking with James. I remember him as a low level goth (just the black hoodies not the makeup). He was 17 or 18 when I was 14 so I remember him being way too cool to talk to me but now we could have a lovely conversation as peers and parents.

I'd not met Andy (the groom) before but he seemed really nice (phew!). I would love to make the effort to see them again as a couple some time.

Love you Ruth x

Job Done

I've been meaning to blog for ages, but I've been super busy, I've been trying to get enough self employed work lined up for September that I can afford childcare for two days a week (about £400 a month). I get 30 hours for free for Percy (providing I work) which I am really grateful for, but no hours free for Eric. If the government could split those 30 hours between them so that they got 15 each I could just work 2 days a week and not really have to pay anything. It really is a bit of a stupid policy in my opinion. 

Anyway I've managed to set up enough work to hopefully be fine for the first half term, a mural about Peace in Manchester and a mosaic about war in Knutsford. How funny.

But more exciting than work... I'm working on a one woman comedy show in September, I play the part of the woman. I had a lot of fun making the flyer.

but here's the process:

The test shot: this is how much of me and blue background I wanted and the angle I wanted. As you can see this went out the window when I had spaghetti on my face and it ended up being a closer shot than I intended.

After realising spaghetti doesn't stick well on an upright face I tried lying on the bathroom floor. All this could be avoided if I knew how to photoshop.

Awkwardly leaning my head against the wall so the letters stay on.

The winning shot

ewww

Time for a hair wash I think

Now I just need to finish writing it and get some practice in.

Last week we went on holiday with my extended family to probably the nearest place you can holiday from Liverpool without it being a massive dive. Sorry the Wirral did I say dive, I meant DRIVE. We went to Llanduno. We stayed in a cottage called "The Bouys" which had wooden letters which spelled out "The Bouys" and I now know every anagram of those letters. Theres quite a lot but the rudest we could manage was "busty hoes"

good times 

We had our anniversary on the 23rd. 7 years, which apparently is "copper". Dan and I have had this idea for an anniversary tip. You know when you got to a tip you can dump stuff in the different bins like wood and paper and stuff? We thought it would be cool to have a tip organised into the anniversary categories. Here are the first 10:

1) Paper
2) Cotton
3) Leather
4) Linen
5) Wood
6) Iron
7) Copper
8) Bronze
9) Pottery
10) Tin

So you have to put stuff in all year and then on your anniversary you're allowed to pick each other a gift from the appropriate tip.

I can see a little flaw in the business model though. I'm guessing the gold and diamond bins wouldn't be that full. That's probably why you don't see gold and diamond bins at the real tip.

In other thrilling news we got a new carpet this week! I know I'm totally lame, but it's sooo nice its like a hug for your feet, it's like a heavenly lawn. It's like walking on a sea of soft puppies. We made the most of carpet day by hosting an "adult potato printing night" the night before, and mummy and Percy gymnastic time on the new carpet before all the furniture went back.

And last but not least we have a new baby in the family, Dan's sister has had her second baby, the first granddaughter for Dan's parents. Isn't she adorable!

Baby Edie

Jones News

I've not blogged for a while so I thought I'd do a little round up of our news in the style of those awful family Christmas letters, which will hopefully become outlawed now thanks to GDPR.

Dan news:
Dan has a new job! After working in IT for Merseytravel for 2 years, he's now got a job at Riverside Housing that isn't in IT. He only accidentally fell into IT 10 years ago due to a bit of casual sexism and ageism. "Dan you're a young man, any good at fixing computers?"
Dan is very good at IT and has learned a lot and progressed well, but he would prefer a more people based role like the one he has now got, which is something to do with "procedures".

Dan after his first day at work.

Hannah news:
I've been getting back into work. I did a bee mural in Manchester that was really fun. I learnt a load of cool bee facts too, like did you know that the male bees don't have stingers, and they don't do any of the work, their only purpose is mating?

I'm planning to go back to work 2 days a week from September.
But more exciting than that... I'm going to be doing a 1 hour 1 woman comedy show in September! It's going to be in the Everyman Theatre (in the basement not the real theatre). It's mainly going to be about parenting and it will be part of the Liverpool Comedy Festival.

Percy news:
Nothing much, today we went to the skate park and he looked very adorable.

We also had a weird conversation about strawberries and heaven.

Percy: I won't drink water today because it's not sunny.

Me: You still need to drink water every day. If you don't drink any water you'll die. Like, remember that strawberry plant that Mummy forgot to water last summer: they died.
(I'm not sure why I felt the need to bring death into this conversation.)

Percy: Well the strawberries went to heaven though....and when I get to heaven I will eat them.

Me: Oh right and THEN what will happen to them?
(Meaning will they die again? can strawberries die? Will they go to some kind of second strawberry heaven?)

Percy: I'll poo and wee them out, out of my bottom and my willy.

Me: oh ok.

Eric news:
Eric turned one on 3rd May. I'm totally over the baby stage now. Around 9 months I was a bit sad that if I have no other babies then this is my last few months of baby time, but now I'm over that and enjoying him getting more fun. I love the 18 month to 2 year stage, it's so adorable. Not 2 and a half though then they become evil for 6-9 months. I'm mean, this is only based on a sample size of one so don't worry too much if your child is 2 1/4 right now. But worry a bit.


So Eric can now walk a few steps mainly in a sideways crab motion. He might have said words but it's difficult to be sure. He's doing a couple of baby signs (bird and more). Maybe he's a massive player that just wants more birds. He copies sounds though, like I showed him a toy fire engine and said "neeenaaar" and he reapated "neenaaar".

He loves Lola the rabbit, going on a swing, climbing in and out of the sandpit, pulling all the roll off the toilet paper, baked beans, cheese, and blueberries. He hates the paddling pool, despite liking the bath and he can be pretty clingy to me. He absolutely adores Percy, most of the time, until Percy sits on my knee and then he gets a bit jealous.

What a difference a year makes

House news:
We finally finished putting up our tropical wallpaper and we are still married - just.

We've now started digging a soakaway in the garden to stop the grass being so wet. Basically theres a massive hole in our garden and if you're standing behind the swing at the wrong time you could easily get pushed in. Just perfect for little kids to play in.

Mental Health Awareness Week

For the last few years whenever it's been mental health awareness week or whatever, I've thought "shall I write something about my mental health? Nah, why should I, it's just a bit attention seeking, what's the point?" My youngest sister Sarah has been quite open about her struggles with anxiety and eating disorders and has had 3 articles published in "The Mighty" and I know she isn't doing it for attention, she just enjoys a bit of writing and explaining things people might find hard to understand. And I think people appreciate her honesty and her attempt to erase the stigma around that kind of stuff. So I thought I'd give it a go.

(It was quite difficult to choose a picture of me that would go well with this post)

When I was 28 and I had just had Percy I was in that newborn blur of weird hormones and extreme sleep deprivation that was making me go a bit crazy. I remember the midwife coming round and I was in tears and she said "do you think you have post natal depression?" and I said "no" because I knew that I didn't. I had all the symptoms of depression: feeling overwhelmed and helpless and tired and unhappy, but I knew that if I just had one nights good sleep I would be fine. It's not that much help because I wouldn't get that for months, but I knew that my head was fine, and that people could help me practically and then I would be ok. I only knew all that because I had depression from the ages of about 14 to 23 and for some of that time (the student days) I was so happy with life, not at all stressed, but I still had some days of feeling total despair, a weird kind of anger and self hatred. Then the next day I'd be totally happy and loving life again.

In 2016 I did a whole 1 hour, one woman comedy show about my struggles at school, which was quite therapeutic. But, I didn't mention my biggest struggle - depression because it's not really funny.

In some ways this is easy to talk about because all my issues are in the past. But in some ways that's what made them hard because it started while I was a teenager, and I didn't have the communication skills or the confidence or the networks to be able to get help. I'm not friends with many teenagers or people who own teenagers, but if you're one of them this might be helpful. If I had depression now obviously it would be hard especially while being a mum, that responsibility would make it difficult, but I hope I would have some coping mechanism and the resourcefulness to get help.

So Year 10 is kind of a bad time for everyone right? I'm not sure what exactly caused it but I started getting these weird down feelings that I didn't know what to with. I later realised that I probably had bipolar disorder, but at the time I didn't know what was going on and if I was making it up or, what to say to people when I felt like that. So I just started being really weird and going off on my own at lunch times and stuff and then my friends kind of broke friends with me, I think because they didn't get it.

Eventually I realised that something was wrong and tried to get help. I don't know if this was just me or all teenagers, but the absolute worst thing I could think of was being vulnerable. Being in trouble wasn't high on my list of things I wanted but it was much higher than being vulnerable, so I went about stuff in weird ways.  So I decided I needed to see a doctor, but I didn't chat to my parents about it, no that would be weird and awkward, I just snuck out of school one lunch time because getting caught sneaking out of school would be way better than having an awkward chat about depression. It took me 4 attempts over 18 months to finally get prescribed some anti-depressants which in the end really did help.

Attempt 1- The doctors was closed and I think well maybe that was what was meant to be.

Attempt 2 - I asked the receptionist how old you have to be to go to the doctors on your own, they said 16. I was 15. I decided to wait until then.

Attempt 3 - I'm sure theres some lovely middle aged man doctors, but this one was not understanding, and just said things like "teenagers" and "hormones" at me.

Attempt 4- A nice woman doctor finally acknowledges that I actually seem to have a problem and prescribes anti-depressants.

The following 3 months after that I felt loads better than I'd felt for years, but slowly it began to get worse again, I think maybe the effects wear off. But it at least gave me enough head space to think I do want to be better. Every 3 months I have to get a repeat prescription, so I have to invent reasons to get to the doctors. I would often forget to take the tablets in the morning so I hid some in an empty lipstick in my school bag to take if I remembered later in the day. I also started counselling which was the other side of Coventry, 2 bus rides away and quite difficult to make up explanations for every fortnight.

Although I did have the internet, this was early 2000s, I didn't have a phone or computer with internet in my own room and I didn't know how to delete search history. (I still don't.) So basically the internet community which I hope is a massive help to people now, was no help to me then.

After maybe 9 months of taking the anti-depressants the doctor encouraged me to try and come off them. I started taking the tablets every other day but that didn't go well for me, the crazy down days became much more frequent. During one of these days I had a psychology exam which I had revised for the night before when I felt fine. I started off answering the question ok, but then my brain was just exploding so I wrote a load of crap in messier and messier handwriting. The teacher confronted me about it and I mumbled something about dyslexia.  The point I'm trying to make for parents is there could be more to what comes across as a moody teenager.

After a bad day I felt really guilty and embarrassed for some of the stuff I did on a bad day, my boyfriend at the time definitely saw horrible stuff than anyone else did.

Eventually my parents found out when I accidentally left my repeat prescription in my pocket and put it in the wash. They guessed I was on the pill, I'm not sure if they were happy or not that it wasn't. We had a short conversation about it and it was never mentioned again.

It gradually got better as I became a student, although there were still regular crazy days even though in general I was really happy. I had the occasional high too, not in a good way, I guess it's sort of like being a funny crazy kind of drunk but it doesn't feel nice because you feel a bit out of control and a bit embarrassed. I had one week like that when I was away with Rev (a choir) I had hardly any sleep because we were sleeping on the floor, and there was absolutely no time alone. I ended up having a whole week being high and I even had a hallucination at one point. I went again the next year and people commented on how I seemed "calmer" and "more mature".

I had a bit more counselling in the year that I graduated and that was a lot more constructive because I was at an age where I could analyse my past and accept help, and I actually was well enough to want to be well. I couldn't change what had gone on in the past, but now that I wasn't in any kind of education it was up to me to make life work. It's hard to say exactly, but I would say that year when I turned 23 was the last year that I had depression. Now it seems like a weird distant memory that I'm not sure is real because I never really talked about it much. But it was real and I'm so glad that it's not my life anymore.

Thanks for reading. x