Time for something a little different.
I haven't written anything on this blog for a long time, this was because of a number of reasons. One was a comment from a colleague concerned about my being so emotionally open on such an open forum, but, more importantly, because in terms of the depression, I've been fairly stable and not needed the catharsis of a blog post.
In the last few months, however, I have been through some stressful situations, but I seem to have come out of it with a smile on my face. The conclusion I have drawn is that my emotional spiral at the end of the summer was likely to have been caused by my body coping with being completely drug free. It was no surprise that I had the depression at the beginning of the year with everything I have been dealing with for my father, but it's nice to know that I am now coping and my body has once again decided to produce it's own serotonin without the need for medical intervention.
So, what have I been dealing with - well, I did imply that this blog was going to be about the many strange and wonderful occurrences in my life so let me tell you about a few of them:
In the last 3 months, with my father firmly re-homed in a lovely nursing home, it fell to me to empty his lovely, little cottage and make it tenant-ready. This was not the most fun task I've ever completed and it was fairly stressful. My lovely other half helped me with heavy lifting for the first two days but on the third he had to work (from home) on his laptop and then catch a train back to London and I was left to finish up myself for 2 days. When I described my dad's house as a cottage, I actually meant a 3 bedroom former cottage that has been extended to make a family home so it wasn't an easy task to clear it, but by the end of my 5 days I had done most of the work. Sadly, the tenants moving in didn't want the furniture left so my brother and sister had to call in over Christmas to sort that out, but fortunately it's all sorted now and they moved in yesterday.
A consequence of this was that I had to apply for power of attorney for my dad's financial and property affairs. When I used to work in a bank, occasionally people had power of attorney over someone's account, but I never really knew what it entails - I did the majority of the process online, then had to get various people to sign it and then send it off and register it with the office of the public guardian. Now, 4 weeks after it was first registered, I have the form back and have begun the process of registering it with various agencies.
OH MY GOD
So, it turns out that after my parents divorced, my dad squirreled his share of his money away in various savings accounts (I think he originally had it invested in Iceland, but after the financial crisis he brought it back to the UK). When he bought his house he emptied these accounts, mostly and seems to have randomly closed some of them, but not others so I have spent my last week registering power of attorney with various agencies and have actually resorted to walking into banks and asking if my dad has an account with them. So far, apart from the two banks I originally knew about, I have discovered 1 open credit card at a third bank, 2 open savings accounts at 2 further banks, one of which is based in Ireland (sadly with only £6 in one and £26 in the other), both of which were only accessible via the telephone or internet. Two other banks I visited today, he no longer had open accounts with which was a sort of success and I have two more banks to contact - the worst thing is that of these banks, I'd only heard of 4 of them!
I also went to Vodafone to register the power of attorney because he set up a mobile phone account for my brother through them and they wouldn't let my brother manage his own account because my father did the initial paperwork. It took fifteen minutes to even be seen in Vodafone, but it *seemed* rather quick and easy. When I went into o2 to register the power of attorney in order to close my dad's account and cancel his contract, the really unhelpful kid at the counter explained that he couldn't close an account and then handed me a phone saying I had to speak to someone over the phone. By the time I'd sat listening to hold music for twenty minutes I gave up and walked out, frustrated that aforementioned youth behind the counter didn't seem to understand when I told him quite slowly and clearly that he needed to take a copy and register my power of attorney form on the account before I could do anything over the phone.
I suspect I've got a few more frustrating days ahead of me - one of the banks I spoke to has said it's sending me paperwork to register power of attorney - I just want to close the account, I actually couldn't care less about the £6.50 in it!!
Fun start to the new year eh?
Ok, so what else have I been dealing with - ah, cancer scares. If you are uncomfortable hearing about lady stuff, turn away now. A few years ago I had my first smear test and was immediately sent to hospital for a colposcopy (NOT FUN). The hospital I went to was fairly atrocious and the elderly, male gynecologist didn't seem to know what he was putting where. After burning my insides with silver nitrate and then not really explaining or giving me the literature you're meant to have to accompany this procedure, he sent me on my way. Since my fun first visit I have first been given the all clear, then sent back to a much nicer hospital for further treatment, at one point the implication was clear that I was at risk for cervical cancer. This was something I'd put behind me and had just had to deal with 6 monthly colposcopys as a sort of just in case. I had to rearrange my August appointment because it coincided with a trip to America so I moved it to October half term, then I had to cancel the half term appointment because of a, er, spontaneous lady problem. This meant the hospital discharged me because they couldn't book me in again until January and so they told me I had to go to the doctors for a smear again within the next two weeks....all fine and dandy, or so I thought....imagine my surprise when I got a letter through from the smear saying I needed to go for an urgent colposcopy for one week later because I was at high risk for cervical cancer. Talk about stress! Good news is that the smear people massively over reacted and nothing was actually wrong - the hospital were rather surprised to see me. It seems that the reason I'd been going so often previously was to monitor and ongoing issue that was nearly cleared up and so there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, but I had a week of fearing the worst and panicking.
I also finally saw an ENT doctor about my ongoing voice problems - I've been taking a lovely drug called omeprazole, which the doctor suggested might help as it stops the body producing excessive acid. I've previously had it suggested that part of the problem might have been acid reflux while I slept. Anyway, the ENT confirmed there was indeed damage from acid reflux even with the omeprazole, but clearly that was helping so I should keep taking it, but he also confirmed that I had small lumps developing on my vocal chords - not quite enough to be called vocal nodules, but almost certainly what was causing the problem. This was no surprise to me as it was exactly the same thing 6 years ago before I moved to London. The next step is going to be speech therapy, which really helped last time and I hope will help again since I really miss singing.
Oh yeah, I also directed a play.....nothing major, but it was quite successful and my cast were absolutely wonderful...
So, the new year brings with it plenty of promise - I hope in my next post I will still be able to talk about positive feelings and also positive events in my life, but who knows.
Thank you, as always, for reading and for being so supportive.
