I’m very happy to say that the majority of us are feeling a lot more positive! We went 16 days on only 14 hours of sleep and finally for the last 3 nights we’ve slept about 10 hours every night! It’s going to take a couple more days before we feel back to normal but I’m already feeling the effects. I can focus more on the good things going on rather than the bad. That’s always the way I prefer it to be! I think it finally hit the point where our brain just crashed and I’ve gladly welcomed it. I haven’t even come out at 3am like usual as I don’t want to be the cause of another sleep deprivation episode. I understand why it’s used as a torture technique. It’s horrible. At least it’s over for now and hopefully the next episode won’t be for a very long time! I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I’m going to delay my night time walks until we’re back into a proper routine again. Delaying my walks is a small price to pay and I’m happy to do it as long as I can keep doing my writing.
Keri spent the evening with her best friend last week. She lives in the same block of flats so it’s quite handy! They spent the evening watching a movie. I don’t know what they spoke about or what they watched as I wasn’t really around but I do remember hearing Keri and her friend laughing. Even if Keri is feeling really depressed, her best friend always gets her smiling. I’m glad they have each other. They’re a good influence as well. Keri’s friend knows about her problem with alcohol so that’s never an issue and if Keri needs to talk about something her friend is always there, even if she has her own stuff to deal with. And it works the other way around too. It makes me happy when those times come up when Keri is happy. Or happyish. Even a few hours is brilliant!
Keri’s eating disorder has been pretty bad, along with 3 other alters who also have eating disorders. It’s got worse over the last week as Keri’s daughter’s anniversary is coming up so Keri has had a relapse with her alcohol. She wasn’t eating solid food anyway without purging as soon as she can but now she’s drinking all her calories are being reserved for alcohol. That’s why my post has been delayed. I usually write it Sunday night or the early hours of Monday morning but writing while drunk is very hard. I started writing this post Sunday night but the amount of mistakes I keep having to correct is really annoying me. Yes, I admit that Keri’s alcoholism is causing problems but I’m a kind of person that likes looking on the bright side. The bright side is that Keri hasn’t attempted suicide and that Sally hasn’t started trying to kill people (I wish that was an exaggeration and that Sally just had a desire rather than acting on it).
Keri’s been referred back to STEPs again - Specialised Treatment for Eating Disorders Programme - and has an appointment next month. The initial referral was because Keri can’t eat solid food without purging. Now the issue is that Keri is saving all her calories for alcohol. We’re hoping that her alcoholic relapse will set itself right after her daughter’s anniversary though which is September 3rd. Even if that happens she still needs help getting back to managing solid food again without feeling the need to get rid of it. She has an issue at the moment with chewing and swallowing which immediately makes her feel sick. I don’t think it’s a biological thing, I think it’s psychological. But her doctor at the eating disorder unit is very experienced and will hopefully help ease Keri back into eating solid food again. I’d rather she ate solid food and focused on calories rather than have only liquids and need to purge ASAP whenever she eats something. A couple of us have been trying to come out and eat every now and then. I had a pot noodle a couple of days ago. I know it’s not the healthiest but it’s at least more than coffee and milky drinks. Plus, I miss eating. I don’t understand the fear of chewing and swallowing that Keri has but I can still try and sympathise with it. What I hate more is the whole alcohol issue. I hate feeling drunk. That can’t be a surprise to anyone considering me and Clari are polar opposite twins and she lives for feeling drugged or drunk!
We had a huge scare this week with one of our gerbils. He started falling over constantly and walking around in circles. The vet said on the phone that they might have to put him down. We all felt heartbroken. Luckily, Keri and Nat took him to the vet with one of our support workers and found out Ian has an infection deep in his ear that will take a while to get better. Poor Ian had to have an injection at the vet and he was so well behaved. He sat so still and only flinched a little bit when the needle went in. He’s also been taking his antibiotics straight from the syringe. The vet said it was rare for a small animal to willingly take antibiotics so Keri and Nat Both tried to tempt him with a treat and dilute the medicine in squash. Neither worked! None of us thought to say “Give him the syringe!”. Turns out Ian is an angel when it comes to taking medication. He’s even better than most alters taking their meds! Tonight was the last night Ian needed his antibiotics and we’ve all noticed a difference. Even after a few days he’d stopped falling over and was walking less in circles. We’d have all been so upset if we’d had to see Ian put down. The vet even made an appointment for the evening so that the vet practice would be quieter just in case... well... you know 🙁. Nat said that while she and Keri were sat waiting, they saw a woman rush out of one of the consulting rooms in tears. I’m guessing she’d just seen her own pet euthanised and I’m glad I wasn’t there to see the devastation she must have felt. The same devastation we would have felt if Ian had something untreatable. Did you know that besides Keri and her best friend, our gerbils have lived in these flats longer than any of the other residents?! They’re old hands in this place! And hopefully will be for a long time to come! If you want to follow Tom and Ian on Instagram they have their own account separate to our account: @tomandiangerbils 🙂
There’s no improvement with Keri’s current episode. She’s still having severe difficulty in speaking, writing and thinking properly. She’s also still convinced she’s being taken over by a demon. I can say with pride that she went to the community centre last week with a support worker and her best friend. I don’t think Keri would’ve had the courage to go if her friend hadn’t gone with her so I’m very proud she went, and very happy Keri’s friend went with her too. Keri managed nearly an hour before she needed to chat to her support worker as she was getting very overwhelmed with the wall people talking to her and she thought she was making everyone ill by “spreading the demon around”. The community centre is open every Wednesday for females only so the staff try to persuade Keri to go each week. It was the first time she’d gone since she started feeling this demon thing so a lot of us were very proud of her. Hopefully, because of last week, she’ll get herself to go this week too. Her usual support worker should be able to take her. This is going to be a key point in Keri’s state of mind. Since Keri started believing she was being infected by a demon, her usual support worker hasn’t seen her since she told her about the demon. This has had nothing to do with Keri. Her usual worker has been training, at meetings, on annual leave and, during one week, she was off sick. Keri has been convinced that the reason her usual worker hasn’t been with her or gone with her to the community centre is because she’s infected the support worker with the demon. I truly hope her usual worker makes it on Wednesday otherwise it’s going to continue feeding into Keri’s delusion. In fact I’m going to be extremely annoyed if her usual worker doesn’t make it again as it’ll be at least 4 weeks in a row since Keri had the courage to go to the centre with her.
I’m planning to see our parents soon (to specify, I mean foster parents, not birth parents). It’s around the time now when Keri would ring them to see when she can visit and I plan to spend some time with them myself! I actually spoke to our mum a few weeks or so ago as I needed her advice but it would be lovely to see her face to face. By ‘spoke’ I mean texting as obviously I’m mute. Our mum was really helpful when I needed advice as there’s some things I can’t wrap my head around that somehow she manages to! Maybe to do with her psychic thing going on. She always knows when something is wrong even though we don’t live at home and haven’t done for 6 years. Some alters, including Keri, call it creepy but I call it intuitive! You know, since I started regularly updating this blog, I’m happy to say none of the other alters have been reading it! It gives me more confidence to write honestly about my feelings without worrying I might insult another alter!
We’ve started another puzzle as we’ve been trying very hard to stay distracted. We have a 500 piece puzzle and a 1000 piece puzzle finished that David has glued together. The frames for them have been ordered and we are now starting another 1000 piece puzzle. We used to decorate our hospital room with puzzles we’d done but we can’t find them anywhere. That’s not very surprising though. Unfortunately a lot of stuff went missing through all the moves we had in different hospitals and through stuff going missing while supposedly safe in storage. I don’t mind though. It’s a fresh start in this flat and because I’m feeling fairly positive at the moment I’m not really lingering on the things that could dampen my mood. There’s always a silver lining and I wish most other alters could see that!
I’m looking forward to another week which I’m hoping will be positive. Remember that if you message us on Instagram then please say who you want to talk to as some of us have answered messages that aren’t for us and it’s all got a bit muddled! Even if you’re meaning to talk to Keri, please state that! Thanks 🙂
Until next week!
- Fox 🦊
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