Recovery, recovery is to be able to, to live a life that is easy for you. If you views recovery as, when you’ve recovered you’ll be working, that is how Government looks at recovery, recovery is to be able to live a life that you can do and it’s different for everybody. For some yes its working, for others it might not be work, be paid employment it might be voluntary, you know, employment, or for some it’s just about working and living at home.

To be able to get up in the morning, that’s recovery for somebody, it’s not all about going into paid employment to the end of the day that’s not what recovery’s about, it’s about being able to do things so that you can live a useful life for yourself.

And gradually things start to, started to improve on the new medication, but the downside to that was a huge amount of weight gain. But I think, in kind of thinking about weight gain versus possible brain damage, it was like, Well, that’s okay. And after that, that was kind of 98 to 2000, I had a few kind of wobbly patches with admissions to hospital and a bit of medication changes. But then I started to, I think after my last admission in 2000 I felt I never really wanted to go back to that hospital again. I just hated the environment. I didn’t think it was supportive and I didn’t think it was for me. So I knew that I had to be part of making changes if I was going to get better. And I got a support worker from a mental health charity and I started exercising and running. I started to do charity runs, ended up training for a half-marathon and did a couple of 10Ks, 5Ks, and started Open Uni course. And all things, that was kind of over a period of four or five years that that kind of process, that whole process took. And actually the, although it feels as though that’s a long time, I think it, in terms of how long I’d been unwell I think it had to take that long to actually reverse everything that I’d kind of been through. And I felt so much better. And then in 20-, about 2006 I thought about starting some sessional relief work as a support worker. So I did, I worked as a support worker, support assistant, and I did mental health advocacy training, and continued with Open Uni. And just all these things combined with the support of the charity where I’d had a support worker, just things start to, started to improve.

So we had this trip, I mean not far, we went 20 miles down the road and stayed in a cabin that some friends lent us for the weekend, and the build up to going was fraught and really tense and there were lots of arguments about how we were going to get there and when we were going to go, and what we were going to take and [name of wife] was getting very anxious and frustrated about it.

And then just really suddenly, it was really strange, I think the day before, the day before that last ECT treatment, she kind of suddenly relaxed about all the arrangements and we just settled on what we were doing and then we went, and the journey there was fine, and I remember waking up the next day, after we got there, and you know, the kids woke up really early. As I said the kids were three and five by then, and so we were on holiday and so they woke up really early and came to our bed and you know, [name of wife] was just laughing about stuff they were doing and I think they were tickling her, or she was tickling them and you know, she was just in a really, really good mood.

And they went and played outside and she got up and made a cup of tea and there was just something, it was like something had switched overnight. It was really incredible, really incredible. And and after that, I mean that was. I think it took me a couple of weeks to realise that that was only the very beginning of a very slow recovery and you know, kind of in the months after that, every few months would realise that [name of wife] was a bit better than she was, and I kept thinking that shed recovered and then realising that she was still recovering. And it probably it probably took a year and a half after that in total. But that, just that overnight away at that cabin something really clicked and, and again it’s really hard to measure whether, whether that was because of the ECT or whether, because the ECT had finished at some level, at some subconscious level she kind of had to decide theres nothing left, there aren’t any treatments left and this, you know, just have to get on with it.

And she said, I don’t remember this, but she said since that one of the consultants had talked about lithium and that she was so scared of the idea of lithium that she had to kind of make herself recover. So there might have been some of that going on.

But the way, judging by the way, during that first course of treatments that shed picked up, you know, kind of step-by-step, it’s really hard to think that it wasn’t connected with her recovery. And, I think, I think we both now think of ECT as being the thing that kick started her recovery, very much so.

Nowadays I still get ill if I’m not careful about what I’m doing. If I work too hard, too many hours, get too stressed. Then I can become quite ill, quite quickly, but I have an amazing support network around me now. Which I didn’t have years ago.

My husband, he reads me very well and he knows before I do that I’m becoming ill. My daughter whose 18 can read me very well. And I’ve got the Haven, like a drop in where the staff have known me since 1993, so they know, you know, they see me most days and they know when I’m becoming ill and are able to say to me, you know, I think that you should may be slow down in your work or I think that you’re becoming stressed and I trust the staff, the same as I trust my husband, and my daughter, because I don’t always see signs, and I’m usually quite poorly before I realise I’m poorly.

But for all people, if you’ve survived something like that you, you’re looking for answers. You know that spiritually and psychologically you need answers, you need to come to terms somehow and find a way of coming to terms with what had happened to you. And so I turned to religion, which a lot of people do. And it did work, r-, yes, it did really. I found that with dyslectic, for example, I’d read my Bible, I’d study my Bible and I’d read commentaries that taught you how to balance things out with extremes and going down the middle road all the time. And I learnt you had to keep learning to forgive and you had to, And I found of course people who would give me time and be helpful. They loved a sinner that they could sort of, you know [laugh]. They didn’t want sick, normal people. They loved, the sicker and the more mentally ill you were the more they liked it really. And so, yes, for about twenty-odd years I did turn to religion. And I can see now that was quite extreme and quite cranky in lots of ways. But it did work, it did work. It did teach me lots of valuable lessons like forgiveness is a reaction, it’s a muscle that you’ve got to keep exercising and learn to do. Even if it’s only skin deep, you’ve still got to go back to those fundamental issues. And a lot of the Bible teaching is, its fundamental good psychology really. So there was that.