The End Of September Has Got Me Sitting Prettier With My Life As I Get In A Healthier Daily Routine
Well here I am finally getting back to writing my blog again, did I ever slack of doing my blog as I was kept busy with other things. With the start of September I began school again at Concordia University here in Montreal. The course I am taking at the moment, is a creative writing course that is keeping motivated and stimulated. It has also proved its self beneficial by giving me my life challenge back. The course has also given me a certain direction in my creative writing and has got me reading other writers to expand my horizons. With getting used to being a student again and getting my home work done, at times I wonder where the time goes, I really feel for students with a full course load. I do have a full slate all the same, with the other activities I have committed myself to.
I attend the Stress Management Group with the Adult Educator at the Hospital on Monday mornings. I really enjoy our Adult Educator, for she puts a lot of effort into her courses and she has a very positive way of dealing with people with her French Canadian background. The group lasts an hour and we review various aspects of how stress is part of our life, for the positive or negative, along with how we deal with these stressors in our daily routine. It gets me interacting with other out patients and I learn different perspectives on my own character that I had not really noticed. After group we have a lunch break, I take my own lunch and indulge in filling my belly and having a cigarette break before the gym class right after lunch. At the beginning of the semester when I met with the Adult Educator, she offered me three groups to be part of, the gym class was one of them. So after lunch between one and two o'clock the Adult Educator make full use of the gymnasium by giving those interested a bit of a physical work out. We start out with simple stretching exercises, along with some crunches and push ups etc. Once we are limbered up some what, we take to jogging around the gym, frontwards, backwards and side ways. At this point with my smoker's lungs, I always take to hacking something up and clearing out my lungs a bit. Once we have done with the jogging exercises we play some babmiton or volleyball, depending on the number of people present for the group. For the last legs of the hour in the gym, I usually set up two exercise mats with a distance between them, and jog back and forth between them while doing more endurance exercises on the mats. By the time I am starting to work up a sweat, the hour is just about over. After the first gym class, I almost completely died the next couple of days. I knew that I was out of shape with week lungs but I never realized how badly out of shape I had become. I do feel energized after the gym class and head off to work afterwards to clean the building where I hold down my part time job. Feeling good after the work out has given me a more positive attitude to doing my job. I have not got a whole to do on the job, just basic cleaning of the building but I just feel a whole better doing it after exercising in the gym for a bit.
I have Tuesdays off and I find myself doing some of my University home work on this day while I have the break. Wednesday morning gets me up and going to my guitar lesson and music group at the Hospital with the Music Therapist. My guitar playing has come a long way as I learn new styles of playing. Recently I have been directing my energy at finger picking on the guitar for I find it relaxing to play with all my stressors I am getting over. With being used to doing things with my fingers as a trades person, finger picking comes easily to me. Last session with the Music Therapist, he had me jamming with him on guitar. There we were, playing away and I was keeping the beat with him while finger picking. I really have to catch up on some guitar playing, during my mini mid life crisis during the summer I really slacked off practicing guitar. Then with the start of University I had no time but I am finally getting into a good healthy routine of balancing my interests that I cover all the necessary ground to get ahead. The Music Group its self proves to be rewarding with some of our musical improvisations we come up with. I usually hold down the beat on the conga, which I am getting pretty handy at. Sometimes I will be creative playing a melody on my mouth recorder as part of an improvisation. The Music Therapist is trying to get me to play more guitar during group and I promised him I would spend more time practicing songs that he leads the group with, Beetle songs are quite popular with us. After the Music Group, I head home to later return to the city core to go to my class at the University come evening time. It makes for a complete day!
It is late by the time I get to bed after getting home from my class and I get to sleep in a bit before getting up to attend the Art Group at the Hospital Thursday afternoon. There are not many people in the group but we are well animated by the Hospital's Adult Educator. I recently have been taking my own art supplies to group and started producing in art, one of my apparitions/hallucinations I had during the summer. The medium I am using to create this piece of art is oil pastel, it is a great medium to learn how to use. While producing the art, we get therapeutic conversation with the Adult Educator and other group members. It is kind of a place where we get to voice our complaints about the mental health system to one another and share the positive and not so pleasant experiences we have gone through. The Adult Educator gets to learn more about a system she has become part of and her sympathetic ear is comforting, sharing experiences with other patients proves rewarding as well for we all help each other with our own personal insight about the mental health system.
Friday is another day off for me but I have no time to slack as I keep my healthy routine going, between University home work and preparing for my Saturday Writer's Group which meets in a Cafe on Saturday afternoon, it keeps me busy. The Writers Group has been good for me with learning how to effectively recite poetry or read a short story so all can here. The feed back and constructive criticism on our work is helpful in guiding our writer's hand. Patrons of the Cafe seem to enjoy hearing our words of creativeness and we are often given positive feed back from strangers who have enjoyed our recital. We are putting together a chap book of some of our creative works and I am eager to have the publication completed. It will be neat to see my pen name in print along side other poets. Going through the motions of putting the chap book together has given me a foundation on how to go about putting out my own chap book with some of my creative writing, it will come in time.
As to my relationship that was falling apart with my Psychiatrist, we are in a bit of fence mending right now. I did have to go see her to continue my follow up, did I ever let her have it from what transpired with me being in her research. I think the whole hospital heard my complaints from her office with how I felt I was being mistreated. I did feel like I was a human Ginni Pig and my own personal needs were over ridden by her drive for her research results. Where the inter muscular medication she had given me, which hampered my sex drive severely and threw me into my mini mid life crisis this past summer, some things have been rectified. I am on the pills again instead of the injections and my manly blessing seems to be as operational it can be for a man my age. (age 47) The Doctor even sent me for a blood test so she could have lab results from a blood test indicating my testosterone level, I think. (What ever gives me my sex drive) Then while waiting around the Hospital hallway for the blood clinic to open up after lunch, I ran into a Psychiatric Nurse I know from way back. He ended up having his lunch standing talking to me in the hallway and he has taken an interest in my case. Apparently he is hooked up with my Doctor now and offered to arrange for me to be able to talk to him in regular sessions about my anger with being a mental health consumer. It should prove to be interesting for apparently he has his Masters in Nursing now, at least I will not be alone with my male aging process! So my Psychiatrist and I are in a stage of her earning my trust again, I do not naturally trust Psychiatrists and having a female Doctor play with my balls through medication levels did not help our patient/Doctor relationship any. The counter balance of possibly having a male Nurse to relate issues to, has given me hope that somehow the system does work for the patient and not just for a pay cheque for Hospital Staff. It is a case of plugging away with sheer determination as a person with schizophrenia, in a system that is not always so pleasant.
