Thursday 22 July 2010

Insert imaginative title here

I'm afraid this isn't going to be a particularly interesting post, just a reflection of various things.

Firstly, I would like to offer those that have read my CFS/ ME blog post the most heartfelt thanks <3 considering struggling with words and thinking clearly is one of the symptoms of the illness that I find the most frustrating, it feels very surreal to have had such positive feedback telling me I've explained the illness really well! You are all more than welcome to share it with your friends if it helps them understand in any way. I'm sorry it's so long, I wish I could have made it shorter but there's so much to say - I could have gone on for much longer as well!

On the back of the blog post and the lovely feedback it got, I am planning to make a YouTube video based on what I talked about, purely as another way of hopefully raising awareness and trying to provide people with an insight into the illness.
I'm very excited about having the opportunity to share it in such a public way, though incredibly nervous because I'm self-conscious and I'm opening myself up not just to potential criticism for what I say, but also for how I say it and how I look etc. Because I was picked on in school I'm really worried about those sorts of things - but hopefully I won't receive any nasty comments so it won't matter ;-)

In other news, I started Duloxetine today. I was on Venlafaxine 150mg. To transfer me on to Duloxetine smoothly, my GP moved me down to Venlafaxine 75mg which I was on for a week, which ended yesterday. I haven't had any side effects from the Duloxetine that I've noticed but obviously it's very early on so my body might not be responding yet. I do think that I'm feeling the drop in dosage of Venlafaxine now though (obviously a delayed reaction). Last time I was reduced to 75mg I felt very, very foggy mentally and felt like I was looking at everything and nothing was registering, that sort of thing. That sensation is back again. I hope it goes away over the next couple of days as the Duloxetine kicks in but we'll see. On the plus side, today's actually been good M.E.-wise. I haven't been as bad as I usually am so it was nice to have a bit of freedom with what I could do.

What is bugging me at the moment is uni work. I have a 5000 word project overdue from May. I can't concentrate for long enough, I can't analyse deeply enough and I can't think clearly enough to grasp the ideas I want to write about, to conceptualise such complicated stuff. I study History, and the question is "how is the body depicted in Leni Riefenstahl's 'Olympia'?" (a film from 1936) so it's even harder - trying to work out how to analyse the film, what order to do so in, what to say about it, what I want my argument to be, which historians I'm going to bring in, and how to make it 'historical' rather than something more suited to film studies. I'm not very good at analysing visual images, especially when it's a documentary about the Olympics :| I also have two completely different opinions about the film but if I write them both I'm just going to contradict myself. What's worse is the department are so fussy and so bloody finicky about what they like in an essay, I have no idea what makes a 'good' essay and am struggling to work out exactly what it is I'm meant to be aiming for. I'm just really hitting a barrier with this and it's very very very frustrating as all I want to do is finish it and have a break, and not feel guilty for not doing uni work. I have two exams in September that I need to start revising for but the longer I work on the project the longer I put off exam revision as I can't cope with doing both at the same time.

Other than that there's not much going on, but eurgh I'm struggling.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Perhaps you could try writing a list of any ideas you have about the essay. Write them all down, as you have them rather than sit and try and think of them all at once.

Once you have a nice list you can then sort them out by putting them into groups where things say similiar things as each other. This should make forming an argument easier.

Hope this helps break it down a little for you so it doesn't seem quite so overwhelming and gives you the chance to relax so that you have the energy to actually do it.

Hugs x