"Feeling forgotten and misunderstood"

It's been a long 3 years since I had an accident at work that put me on sick leave. I worked in care, 40-50+ hours a week (usually over 4 days) and my husband would work the other 2 days and we'd manage our 4 children between us and have 1 day off a week to spend together. We'd go to the gym together when we could and go swimming, walks and days out as a family. It worked alright for us.. difficult at times but manageable until my accident.

What initially appeared to be a back injury steadily grew over the past 3 years into what's looking like FND and I can now barely walk around my own home, hold a meaningful conversation without my words becoming a garbled nonsense or sit in peace without constant spasms all over my body. It's affected every aspect of my life from the relationships with my husband and children to just doing the things I love (like painting, cooking and craft work as my hands don't do what my brain wants them to anymore!).

A family day out now means making sure the venue has disabled access, making sure wheelchair batteries are charged and limitations on what we can do as a whole family. Without going into much further detail (there's a list of 40+ symptoms to go off). Life has drastically changed and as you'd expect it has taken its toll on my mental health.  But it's not just the change in health that's had such an impact but the whole process of diagnosis and inadequate mental health support which has exasperated the toll on my mind and in turn my body.

There has been a 2 year wait for an NHS neurologist (after the GP suspected MND and with the possibility of being dead by then I decided to pay privately as 'hanging around' didn't seem a viable option).

Going back on the NHS I had an MRI which I then had to wait 6 months to find out the results of (via a GP appointment at my request but she couldn't go into detail as she isn't trained to interpret) despite frequent attempted emails and phone calls to the neurologist's secretary and as I write this I'm still waiting (24wks)..

Consistent mix up of appointments at the GPs, cancellations, re bookings without informing.

Multiple lipomas growing (Benign tumours) which I don't feel have been examined thoroughly and have been dismissed with the fun fact that -humans weren't designed to walk on two legs- so I guess I should start crawling?

A few months ago it all got a bit too much, I felt I wasn't being listened to, helpless and that my family would be better off without me. I started my attempt at an overdose, the children were at school (all young teens) and my husband was at work and would be till the following morning. I panicked.. it would be the children that find me and so I decided to get a taxi to the local hospital where as nice as there where (very observant to the condition I was in having taken a dozen high strength painkillers) they clearly felt under qualified and unable to provide me with a private space. I was sat there for the usual 5 hours before hospital transport took me to the more major local hospital.  This was awful.. busy (as you'd expect), I was sat there waiting (feeling more and more insignificant as time went on), I was eventually called through to triage (after already being triaged at the first hospital) where the nurse had a very challenging attitude and due to my speech difficulties ( not just due to FND but repeating my 'story' over and over was so demoralizing!) and her impatience she saw fit to put words in my mouth and finish my sentences (awesome for self esteem!) phrases like . Eventually I was seen by a mental health nurse who went through a series of questions (AGAIN!) and told me that staying in hospital was for more serious cases, she called my husband who could get out of work but it may be a couple of hours before he could to get me and so she directed my back to the waiting room to wait for my husband with a referral to 'The Haven'. The waiting room was the last place I wanted to be so I sat outside in a wheelchair in the car park, in the early March rain for 2 hours until my husband came for me... 

The Haven is another joke.. after all that as you can imagine, my mind was a mess. I was told some dates for appointments at The Haven but I lost the email so a few days later my husband called them to enquire when these dates were.  He was told that I'd missed them all and that I was at risk of being discharged so my husband arranged some new dates with the individual at The Haven. A few weeks have passed and I have just done my first appointment with them.. turns out I haven't missed any appointments and they've admitted they've made a mess of things on their side. Just to add to all this.. when speaking to someone about your mental health you'd expect them to be receptive, understanding and judgemental. This wasn't the case, whenever I attempted to talk I was just reminded that this person was not qualified to talk about certain subjects (which just adds to those pointless, helpless feelings) also being told that by receiving PIP was potentially restricting my recovery I feel in my circumstance is totally irrelevant and is a very judgemental and unfair statement for someone who is not adequately trained to discuss ALL aspects of my health or history and should not be handing that advice out so 'lightly'. Handed yet another phone number to try... Let's see where that goes!