The Great Pretender

Sometimes when you are blogging you can feel like you are living a lie.

There is a life  that I share with you through my blog and then there is the

private life that I share with my nearest and dearest. Just recently I

haven’t been sharing the whole truth with anyone.

As my regular readers will know Mr Myasthenia Kid and I have been

through some pretty traumatic times of late. We lost one of our beloved

dogs just before Christmas, then my Grandmother passed away, then my

dear friend Pam passed away and then a school friend passed away. At

the time it felt like I was just coming up to the surface to catch my breath

and something else happened. There was no time to process anything at

all. I knew that it was affecting me as there were days where all I would do

was cry but I also knew it was having other effects on my mental health.

I have always been a really anxious person, I have spent years  in therapy

learning how to do CBT. The problem this time was no matter how rationally

and logically I could see what I was getting anxious about was ridiculous,

I still ended up diving down the rabbit hole. I was waking from what little

broken sleep I was getting in a state of absolute panic - usually clueless

as to what had set it off. My anxiety was reaching proportions I had never

experienced before. I felt constantly as if I was in flight or flight mode,

all the time pretending to everyone around me I was ok. I didn’t see the

point of bringing up my anxiety because I knew it was irrational and there

was nothing for Mr Myasthenia Kid to fix. I just thought I would try to

soldier on. At some point it had to get better right?

I tried bringing up my anxiety with my hospital consultant. I explained to

him what had been going on and he responded “well it’s early days,

give it a few more weeks and see how you feel”. The problem was he

didn’t realise that if I am bothering to bring something up in an appointment

it has got to the point where I can’t cope with whatever the issue is anymore.

I don’t bring up all the different things that are wrong at every appointment,

as we’d be there all day. I only bring up the most pertinent issues. If I am

bringing up anxiety, it’s a big issue. Especially with my previous issues with

mental health which are almost 20 years ago now.

Although the hospital consultant never meant for me to take it this way,

I am sure, I felt like he told me to pull myself together and stop making a

fuss. So I continued to solder on, with the trip to Birmingham only a week

away I knew I had to hold it together. My anxiety was going crazy, I was

barely sleeping but I just had to keep going because it would settle down,

it would get better. The problem was it was just getting worse. I wasn’t

sleeping and every waking hour was filled with fear over the slightest

thing. I had permanent butterflies and I was close to tears constantly.

Anything at all was making me burst into tears, which wasn’t me.

Last week it all came to a head. On Monday after my fall I kept bursting

into tears. Initially I put it down to banging my head and the stress of the

boiler not working. However as the days went on I was still crying at the

drop of a hat. I had to face facts that things were not settling down, I was

feeling worse than ever. Jay had noticed that I had become incredibly

quiet and continually distracted (staring off into space), to the outside

world it was still business as usual but even that was becoming hard to

do. I am a great pretender but I was even beginning to struggle coping

with the outside world. I had started to withdraw from my friends and

just hadn’t bothered to message them as I just couldn’t cope with the

thought of having to maintain a conversation and pretend that I was ok.

I managed to get the Duty Doctor to ring me as all appointments until

after Easter had been booked. When the receptionist asked what was

wrong and I replied anxiety and depression, she immediately put me on

the duty doctors call list. I am eternally grateful that she didn’t think that I

could wait for a standard appointment. I wasn’t at risk of doing anything

stupid, I wasn’t feeling suicidal, I just felt like I couldn’t cope with everyday

life. The doctor rang me back in a few hours and I explained what had been

going on. She was so kind and understanding, she didn’t make me feel like

I was overreacting and that I should be able to cope. She told me most people

struggle with one bereavement to suffer so many in such a short amount

of time would knock anyone. I was prescribed diazepam to use on the days

when the anxiety was at its worst, when I just couldn’t calm down. To help

me sleep she doubled my dose of mirtazapine.

I am slowly starting to feel a lot better, I seem to have had a break in the

constant feeling of panic that I couldn’t stop before. I am still anxious but

its at a more normal level. I am however exhausted constantly, my sleep

is still hit and miss. Some nights I am out like a light but others I am still wide

awake hours after taking my meds. I am also feeling very groggy the following

morning and it's taking me a bit of time to wake up. All of which I can live with

if it continues to improve my level of anxiety as I don’t want to end up with

the situation where the anxiety eventually causes me to become depressed.

So that you can appreciate how bad things had become I had got to the

point where I had become frightened of using my sewing machine. Now

anyone who reads this blog or knows me in real life knows that my life

revolves around Jay aka Mr Myasthenia Kid, Mollie, Frankie and Sewing.

I live to sew, when I am not sewing I am planning my next project. So for me

to suddenly become frightened of my machine, was just bizarre. I can’t tell

you exactly what it was that was frightening me but I just felt like a complete

failure and that nothing I did was good enough…….a great pretender.

A few days after I had been on the meds I got my sewjo back. I decided

to tackle my subscription box project which I hadn’t even had a proper

look at since it had arrived at the start of March. It was really complicated

but I just took it very slow and steady. This was the result

Dresden Plate design cushion cover in the newly launched Liberty
Quilting weight range of fabrics.  I was so proud of it I posted it on the
Sewing Quarter Fans page on Facebook.

Then on Sunday morning this happened:

My Cushion was mentioned by Jenni Smith who works for Liberty of London
on their fabrics. I was so chuffed, it has given me some confidence back again.
So much so that I made another Dresden Plate cushion cover design on the Sunday.

So I am hoping that things just continue to improve now. I still get anxious,
I always will but I no longer feel like I have to pretend that everything is ok. I
(well we, me and Jay) have suffered a huge loss in a short amount of time
and it’s ok not to be ok sometimes. You don’t have to pretend that everything
is going well.

Injury time

My plan to tell you more about our visit to Sewing Quarter

HQ in Birmingham has had t be put on hold. Over the

weekend we had more snow and on Monday morning

our boiler stopped working. In an effort to get it working

again, I tried defrosting the condenser waste pipe in case

that had frozen. Unfortunately on around the 7th trip out of

the back door the snow and ice got me. I ended up falling

badly and hitting my head on the doorstep.

I probably had a mild concussion, I was left very upset for the

rest of the day. I kept bursting into tears which I hate doing.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I was in agony with my legs where I had

fallen very hard onto patio slabs. Today (Wednesday) I am still

quite sore but I am having to sort the house out as we

(fingers crossed) are having a plumber out to look at the boiler.

We've been given the run around by two plumbers, countless

others are apologising as they just can’t get to us as obviously

the cold weather has sparked lots of boilers to misbehave

and this is on top of their normal work load.

We are lucky in the fact we live in a small house so a little

halogen heater is making the world of difference and we have

an electric shower so we aren’t reliant on the boiler to wash. It’s

just a massive pain in the arse and just another thing for my

anxiety to take hold of and keep me awake for hours.

The fall has left me feeling very vulnerable, I could have

knocked myself unconscious and no one would have known

I was there. I hadn’t even taken my mobile phone as I was

going 4 steps from the back door. I am still really sore and

just fed up with it all. Hence why I can’t give you a decent

post which would follow up on our visit. Hopefully next week,

if things have gone a little smoother…..for a change.

The Secret

For around a month Mr Myasthenia Kid aka Jay and

I have had to keep an enormous secret, I won’t lie

it’s been incredibly difficult. Some of the first people

I wanted to tell were you my blog followers.  We

had been sworn to secrecy and we didn’t want to jeopardise

it, so as best we could we kept the news to a smallish

group of people. However now the secret is out and

I can share it with you.

In the UK there is a channel called the Sewing Quarter,

you can check them out on YouTube as the 4 hour

show is downloaded daily. Jay and I have been watching

it since it started being broadcast by Sky Television in

January this year. The channel sells fabric, sewing

machines, quilting accessories anything really to do

with sewing by machine or hand. It also however has

excellent hints and tips for people of all abilities and

I have learnt loads from watching the show, much more

than I could have done by reading books as you have

things demonstrated in front of you. The main reason

I think a lot of viewers watch though is due to the main

presenters John Scott and Natasha McCarty, both have

very different presentation styles but they are equally

enjoyable to watch. They also have a guests on that

demonstrate the items that the channel is selling that

day. It is after all a channel that exists to sell products,

it has no outside advertising so to exist it must make

money, that is the way of the world.

Back in January Jay and I were decorating the lounge

and whilst we were doing that we had the sewing

channel on as it was their birthday week. They had

lots of special offers, competitions and a sew off

between Natasha and John - hilarious. Well whilst

we were painting Jay must have been listening quite

intently to John, as a few weeks later I was sewing

in the kitchen and jay piped up “ As Rachel is finishing

off her Easter wreath, I will take you through today's bundles”.

I had to stop sewing I was laughing so hard. I mentioned

it on the Sewing Quarter fan page and people started

asking for a video. I posted something along the lines

of if John Scott mentions Jay on the show then he will

do a video. So this happened - sorry for the poor quality

of the sound and shaky camera work, I have recorded

it using my phone straight off the TV.

We were mentioned a few more times during this

week, much to our delight so on the Sunday Jamie

decided he would do his first video.

It went down exceptionally well with the fans of the

show, to be honest it went a bit crazy! Later than

evening whilst I was in bed Jay came rushing in to tell

me the head honcho at the channel Neil Garratt had

sent him a message on Facebook and what should he do?

You see Jay is not brilliantly tech savvy, he can operate

Facebook but he had no idea he would have to accept

a message to be able to respond to it etc. I was in

shock and looked at his phone to see that indeed

Neil had messaged him. I accepted the message

and then handed the phone back to Jay to let him

read it. It said that they wanted Jay on the show to be

alongside John and that we had to keep it quiet as

they wanted it to be a surprise for the fans. Jay had to

email him and one of the members of staff form the

show would be in touch with us.

Within a few days it was all set in motion that Jay and

I would travel to Birmingham and visit Sewing Quarter HQ

and that Jay would be on air on 12th March. It was all very

exciting but oh so difficult to arrange and keep a secret.

Especially when Jay had to organise time off work and

I had to organise a dog sitter for Mollie and Frankie.

Hayley the lovely lady that we were working with offered

us a hotel room for the Sunday night but as we had never

left the dogs overnight before ( and they are old doggies now)

we didn’t feel comfortable doing that. We decided we would

travel up that day and do it all in one as we had when we

went to the Emma Bridgewater Factory in October last year.

When Jay did the first video and I posted it onto the

Sewing Quarter Fans Page on Facebook people had

asked for more. Even people who had never seen the

Sewing Quarter but were friends with us on Social

Media asked for more when I posted the video to my

Facebook timeline and Instagram. So to keep Jay

relevant and the fans happy, we recorded another video,

plus we had been mentioned a few times on the show

by John Scott ( which we always got an enormous kick out of).

The second video went down as well as the first,

which was a huge relief!

My planning and organising went into military operation

mode, my anxiety has been up through the roof since

suffering a series of bereavements at the beginning of the year

/ end of last year. My need to control everything as much as

possible was in overdrive. I am sure Jamie must have got

sick to death of my ever-growing to do list that seemed

to cover every minute aspect of our lives! New shirts for

Jamie had to be bought as John is famous for his flamboyant

shirts, Jay couldn’t appear in his usual conservative style.

Thankfully my best mate from primary school Sharon,

offered to look after the dogs as soon as I told her

what had happened. She like everyone else that

knew what was happening said it was about time that

we had something nice happen after all we had been through.

Ellie offered us a car to use should something happen to

ours, she also said she would be available to assist Sharon

should she need any help. So many people offered us so

much help and support it really was amazing.

The time between knowing that we were travelling to

Birmingham and getting there seemed to at the same

time to pass very slowly but also very quickly. It was

so exciting but the excitement was stopping me from

sleeping. From Monday night onwards this week I have

been out for the count before 7.30pm. I am totally exhausted

and in a lot of pain but it has been worth it.

Jay made a final video before our trip to Birmingham

When this one went up, so many of our friends and people

on the fans site were saying “when will they be on the

show together?” and that kind of thing. I just kept saying

nothing that would give the game away, although it was

getting harder and harder to keep this secret. I will

admit on Friday last week I did message a few people

and let them know that Jay was going to be on the

show. People were beside themselves with excitement

and were so happy for us. It was really lovely to know

that all these people were delighted for us.

There is so much more I could tell you, I will probably expand

more on the experience in next weeks blog post but I am

aware this post is already getting quite wordy and its been

the most I have written in months.

So from the Sewing Quarter Monday 12th March 2018

here are Jays appearances:

This one is my favourite, its Jay closing the show with John

We would both like to say a massive thank you to everyone

at the Sewing Quarter HQ, especially Hayley Marshallsay,

John Scott and Deborah Simms.

The Sewing Quarter is on Channel 678 Sky Tv, 78 Free view, online at www.sewingquarter.com between 8am-12pm and YouTube from the afternoon on which the show aired.