http://www.thenourishmentninja.com/

The Nourishment Ninja, Norwood (2025)

10/06/2024

Iatrogenic harm is real. The impacts of medical negligence are real. The impact of feeling trapped, voiceless and in excruciating mental pain may never leave me but it drives me to be the best healthcare professional that I can be. I never want to be the reason any of my future patients feel the way that I have felt.

I hope that I can overcome it again soon by focusing all of my energy on the future. Time only move forwards. It can be hard when your body and mind drag you to the past, feeling like you’re in a hospital bedroom when you know you’re on a sofa. The dizziness from stress making you go to bed for your own safety because you just need to feel safe. The emotional outbursts that cause panic attacks and crying until you nearly throw up are all valid even if current healthcare professionals are dismissive. Despite all of this, I am discharged from the CMHT that caused it all.

I hope I never have to go back there. I hope I never have to go back to the Ladywell Unit. I hope this combination of medication keep me well for a long long time, if not indefinitely. Fortunately if I get unwell there is a back up medication plan for a drug that works exceptionally well for bipolar - and that brings me some peace of mind that if I do go back, there will be a quick exit from reliving the trauma. You’re not alone even if it feels like there’s no support. I am very privileged to have a solid support system. Sometimes I need to remind myself to lean into that for fear of “bothering” or “worrying” people. I am so grateful to not be alone on this journey. Thank you thank you to everyone who is in the background holding the pieces of me together when I can’t.

For now, forwards motion as much as I can. Focusing on my work is really cathartic for the pain I feel. If there’s a reason to become a healthcare professional it is surely this.

08/06/2024

Sometimes people talk about the trauma of a mental illness episode. This time around, I have been really affected by my admission and care. It has triggered things I really believed I had left behind. Mostly experiences of bad care triggered by particular healthcare professionals from the past being involved in my current care. I now believe this wasn’t an intentional impact but at the time I really believed a particular doctor was trying to destroy me again.

It’s hard when I thought I’d left 2011-2014 in the past. It’s over ten years ago now but apparently ugly things can re-emerge and knock you sideways. I haven’t been diagnosed with PTSD but there are definitely trauma symptoms. The best response is to keep in living, to continue to show them that I always wanted to be well. I wasn’t well because I didn’t get the right care for a long time but wellness is my version of revenge. If you can be anything, be who you needed when you were younger. There is power in that.

03/06/2024

I was initially advised to take the whole summer off and return to uni in October. This presented me with the opportunity to have complete freedom over my time for the summer months, but I denied the opportunity.

To me freedom isn’t just about free time. I have had plenty of free time from being unwell iver the years. You soon lose your purpose, your sense of self and direction. You soon lose a part of yourself Before COVID people thought I was chatting nonsense but when everyone was furloughed and trapped at home, people began to understand the detriment it can have on your mental health.

I’ve lived years like that so for me freedom is being able to do things I love, spend time working and enjoying free time and being able to delve into studying dietetics. Freedom is having the opportunity to do things with my life that I’ve wanted for a long time but have been restricted due to the nature and severity of my illness.

Freedom is living. Studying for me, is freedom. Hopefully one day working as a dietitian will be my freedom.

02/06/2024

It's the last day of my holiday. I feel happy and sad about it. I am looking forward to coming home and seeing my cat, boyfriend and friends. I am sad to not be able to spend to much time with my mum for a while, probably until the end of the year now. I am grateful for the time we have had together. I am grateful for the opportunities I have been provided with, such as diving, snorkelling, seeing a different part of the world. I am relieved in some ways as I have, for the first time in my life, had a bout of homesickness. Weird and I have no idea why.

Just because I have been on holiday does not mean my troubles were also left at home. I have had a few crying spells, intrusive memories and all that jazz to deal with. I have dealt with it and I Have made it to the end of the holiday in one piece.

We've made another chapter of cool memories together, and had a giggle. I've lost count of the amount of times I have said "I'm having such a good time": a good sign of a good time for me.

29/05/2024

What is recovery in bipolar disorder?

Recovery in a general sense to me used to mean getting completely better. For example, recovery for my leg injury is probably as good as it is going to get. I can run and jump and I can trust my leg to carry me through my days now.

Bipolar recovery is a big different because there is no such end goal where I no longer have to deal with it. It will always be there and I will always place limits on me because to be well, I can’t skip sleep, do an all nighter or take on too much.

I have to be mindful at all times about my choices. I have to keep track of where I am at day to day, and be mindful of symptoms rearing up. Often the big relapses apparently come out of the blue but there is always something I was pushing myself to achieve and yet, we cannot accomplish anything without pushing ourselves.

Recovery is remission rather than a full recovery. It is a remission to a stable mood, clearer thinking and being able to do the basics: sleeping, eating and day to day activities without as much conscious effort. There is always conscious effort involved though.

09/03/2023

Made a pizza including the dough. It was a ready mix, just add water pack but I think it still counts. I was initially a bit disappointed when I took it out the oven because it didn’t look great but it tasted banging. Now I’m going to chill and try to get some proper sleep with my full tummy.

Toppings: tomato purée, some grated cheddar, roasted aubergine, goats cheese and red onion chutney. 😋 Delicious.

05/03/2023

Mona and me up to our usual antics of spreading our gear all over The Reach. We practiced some falling on lead because we both have the same mental barrier blocking us from climbing harder on lead because it’s scary. It was a great session and we also figured out how to improve our lead belaying technique which was good fun.

03/02/2023

⭐️⭐️GIVE AWAY! ⭐️⭐️

📖 Reading is powerful. Reading helps me to escape the world or learn more about parts of the world we live in. I love it and I don’t do enough reading. I am working my way through my books currently, most are on Kindle but some are hard copies.

❤️ So I’m the name of caring is sharing and knowledge is power I’m giving away my copy of ‘The Brain: The Story of You’ by David Eagleman.

🧠 It’s a great read. It’s super interesting and very accessible for a neuroscience book. Bridging the gap between the cutting edge of science as we know it now and popular non-fiction.

If you’re interested either drop a comment or DM and we’ll figure something out so you can read it too.

😛 There’s one catch though.

🫶🏻 Once you’ve read it you have to pay it forward. Write your name, or a nickname, the year and city that you read the book in the inside cover page.

🥰 Then hopefully there will be a little list of people who enjoyed the book before the next person.

🤗 Feel free to share this post with anyone you know who might be interested in reading this book.

* Cat is not included she stays with me 🐈‍⬛

30/01/2023

This Thursday is Time to Talk Day.

Time to Talk Day is an awareness day to get people talking about their mental health. So to honour the day I will be doing an Insta Live with Bethan to talk about our mental health.

Bethan is a runner, a mother and a mental health advocate with lived experience of suffering from poor mental health.

In particular we will be talking about perinatal mental health, entering a pregnancy with known long term mental health issues and about the help she has found beneficial. We’ll also talk about how we have both gone about asking for help in the past and covering some of the struggles in accessing the right support at times.

Join us on LIVE this Thursday at 8pm. Looking forward to it and hope to see you there! 🙌🏼

06/01/2023

Had been nervous about this run because the number of minutes are increasing again in the running plan. I’ve been having some knee pain in the usual culprit so I wore my leg brace for this one. Also I’ve felt my gait get wonky when I’m tired which is no good. I thought about stopping because I built the 8 minutes up in my head because my leg hurts sometimes. I think it’s the weather as well so I was cautious and wore the leg brace.

Glad I went. I felt a million times better afterwards and the next run is running for 20 minutes solid. My plan is to repeat this run a few times until it feels good in my leg without the brace before jumping up straight away.

Gosh, so sensible (but I really don’t want to make more problems for myself!)

31/12/2022

Happy New Year!

Saw this beaut of a complete rainbow at the beach the other day and we were this close 🤏🏼 to not going because it had been raining.

The lesson, do it anyway. Just do it. F**k it and do it! It could be magical and rarely does magic happen sitting on the sofa, 90% of the time it happens when you go out and just do it- whatever it may be.

Have a good one. A bye 2022! You may have been a mo********er but you’ve been a mo********er full of lessons.

#2022

28/12/2022

Had a lovely meal out yesterday at Doxford Hall. Hijacked the Christmas tree and the Santa, naturally!

It’s been so lovely up here and I’ve been having a great time. Often the week between Christmas a new year is a bit of a non-week because time gets skewed. It’s been different for me this year because I’ve been out of the loop of time for a while since the end of October. Getting up here and resting with my family has really helped me settle even more, and get a grip on reality and time again. It just feels so normal, everything feels so normal and it’s actually amazing.

25/12/2022

Intention were to be a run in the morning kind of Christmas. Ended up being a champagne for breakfast kind of Christmas. Having a great time chilling out, laughing, being silly and resting. It was SO needed after the last couple of months! And I’m excited to get back to business in January. I feel I’ll be fully ready to take on a new year by then. For now, I’m gonna be a lil Christmas pudding in my Christmas hat knitted by my Aunt, drinking, laughing and eating plenty.

Merry Christmas to everyone!! Whatever you’re doing I hope you have the Christmas you want, enjoy time with the people you love and enjoy the annual down time.

✌🏼🎄🥂

23/12/2022

Couch to 5k Running Thoughts:
We’re at the time of year where many of us reflect on the year and make goals for the future; some realistic and some wildly unrealistic. I really need to focus on small things that I’m a bit s**t at, like brushing my teeth twice every single day, making my bed, getting the 3 runs in a week for couch to 5k, making healthier choices for feeding myself more of the time, and making myself do things.

To sum it up, I’m working on making myself so things even when I don’t want to and can’t be arsed. I guess that’s discipline right? Taking my inhaler twice every day, doing emails, having a shower after a workout in the evening, washing my hair.

These are all small things that I have been letting slide for a long time and I realised if I want to meet some of the bigger goals I have set for myself, I need to focus on the small things first.

The leg was a bit unhappy for the last 5 minutes of running, another small things that’s a big thing, doing my one legged strength and conditioning and stretching more often.

All the small things add up to be big things. I’m pretty grateful for the small moments by habit now, so time to work on discipline.

19/12/2022

Restarted Week 4 of couch to 5k again because I’ve not been doing the three runs within one week. I have been a bit all over whilst settling back down into my life and that’s ok.

It was unrealistic for me to expect to be fine straight out of discharge. Did I still expect that? Yes, of course! Have I made this mistake of expectations in the past? Every time. Do I then have to reassess and figure things out slowly, yup, that’s the one.

So here I am, glad it’s 14°C warmer than earlier in the week. Glad I can run with less fear of slipping, still have to watch out for those wet leaves.

I’m currently waiting for my meds to arrive before driving up north for Christmas and I’m really looking forward to getting into the countryside for a bit over the holidays. In the meantime I’m held at random of The Royal Mail and Lloyds Pharmacy 👀

I’m so relieved to finally be feeling more like myself. Slowly slowly I’m getting there - just in time for Christmas. 🎄

15/12/2022

The Government don’t want us to support the nurses. If they did, they’d have engaged with their talks and negotiations much better. They want us to turn our back on the very backbone and central nervous system of the NHS.

Whenever you need care in the NHS, most often it comes from the nursing team. I’ll never forget the hug from a nurse when I was on the floor and despairing because I felt so suicidal and saw no way out. I’ll never forget the hugs I’ve received when I’ve been at breaking point. The chats, the care, the relating information to the doctors. The nurses who just took my hand to help calm me down when I was agitated and about to lose it, the nurses who mopped my tears and told me to keep going. The nurses who administered pain medication when I was in agony with my leg, the nurses who helped me bathe and wash. The nurse who told me that she gets it and that she was living proof that it gets better, I don’t remember her face but I remember her voice.

Nurses are good people doing an extraordinary job in increasingly impossible conditions. They’ve been overworked, underpaid in real terms and are now in the firing line of the government’s propaganda machine to dismantle the NHS for privatisation. The NHS works when we support the staff, the services and the funding. It doesn’t work when people are burning out, no longer able to give the care they signed up to give, and are facing systemic failures in every shift.

They are the backbone and central nervous system of the NHS, but without the support of the public, the government and those in charge, they can’t work miracles with nothing. The NHS isn’t funded by claps for “our heroes”. The way the government are addressing this is honestly insulting at best.

We must not turn on the nurses or blame them for saying enough is enough after a decade of austerity, inadequate and inaccurate funding. The government aren’t listening, and the only way to force them to listen is by striking.

12/12/2022

I’ve been really wary about running in the cold for whatever reason. It’s taken me a while to accept it is this cold and that I can still do things that involve leaving the flat when it’s this cold. I literally had to have a word with myself like, people live in countries with loads of snow and still function, it’s ok!

I was also nervous about running in case I slipped. So I took it steady and careful for this one. Feel better for it, which is nice because last week I just felt agitated and all this inner discomfort, like I had stoked the flames of an inner troll or something. This week, I don’t feel that way. Yay!

The Nourishment Ninja