My week

4 days of not getting to sleep until 6am. Failed potato cakes. And an evening out with colleagues.

And it's mothers day tomorrow, this will be interesting. There's always the dilemma of which mother to go and visit first in our house. Our parents live very close to each other which is handy, but means if we're seeing one set of parents we always have to see the other set. So as a married couple with parents to see, who do you choose to see first, they'll both want to feed us too. I think we may have to settle on our Christmas strategy, each go to our own mothers, as to not offend, then meet up somewhere in the middle. That sorted then, gifts? I ordered some chocolate truffles with our online shop for the purpose of giving a box each to our respective mothers, we got the delivery today, having not been to sleep at all yet, I checked over the receipt and noticed I'd only marked that I wanted 1 box!! Damn it, a trip to the shops early doors me thinks.

Last night I attended a retirement party for a surgical consultant who I knew of but have never really spoken to. It was a free ticket a colleague gave me as she thought I needed some time out. My boss was going along too, which I was a little apprehensive about having been off "sick" for the last two weeks. But I later found out my boss had told my colleague to invite me. Very nice thought for someone who people often judge as extremely strict and often cold. I work in a relatively large hospital, which is expanding all the time, she's been there for her whole career and retires next year. Lot's of people comment to me about her strictness and cold attitude. Something which thankfully hasn't been directed towards me. But I have seen it towards others. She gave me a lift home too and was compassionate towards my current situation. The party was good, lots of faces that I knew, an Irish folk band and a chocolate fountain!

Dexter and I have been very much in our heads recently trying to form opinions on a mass of information. I hit a point where I started to get concerned about Dexter's perspective of his illness. I was worried he was starting to loose his way a little. This particular day he was writing a lot, we haven't had much sleep as mentioned. This is down to Dexter experiencing a lot of noise and confusion at the moment and I just haven't been tired until 6am. I realised my concerns about Dexter were because I didn't know what he was thinking or feeling. He could see I was consumed with thought and asked me what was wrong, so I told him that I was worried. He said he couldn't answer my questions just yet because he had been writing the answers down and wanted to finish whilst he was in the train of thought. Later that night he showed me what he had written, it all made perfect sense. He's essentially a born writer, added to that we're married, his writing made a lot of sense to me. I felt enormous relief reading his opinions. His main point was that when experiencing mental illness and all that comes with it researching and trying to find a path is valuable but to some extent pointless. This condition is something you can't cure, it's being human and what may work for someone else might not work for you. To take all opinions with a pinch of salt, especially when experiencing psychosis. Although this sounds obvious, when there's a fine line between madness and reality it's something I was extremely relieved to read. It also pulled me back again, regained some of my focus this week back to really understanding how hard this is for Dexter. I see his exterior, we always talk to each other but since this began it has been hard for him to tell me how he's feeling and what's going on in his head. Sometimes because the voices tell him not to, other times because he's scared he'll be inviting them to peck his head and also because it's hard to express something that no one else around you can see or hear. We still have a very close relationship and he goes beyond expectation with trying to communicate with me. It seems like his exterior is 3 times removed from his interior, there's confusion, disjointed thought patterns and tiredness on his exterior at the moment, take a step back in his head I think there's voices and visual hallucinations, another step back emotional turmoil with more voices, another step back Dexter trying to work it out whilst dealing with his other layers. It's heartbreaking to see because you just wish there was something you could say or do to help him but he can see it himself and he's already on it. But still suffering. I admire him for his resilience and strength.

And yes my failed potato cakes. We had some mash left over, which I decided I'd have a go at making potato cakes with, hmmm. I've never made them before so looked up the basics and they were rubbish, so bad in fact I couldn't continue cooking them and had to throw them away, but I tried and will probably try again in the future. Cooking isn't a strong point of mine, I make an awesome roast chicken dinner though, good mash too. I could eat that now!