The Story Part 3

So I finally got to return home. Battered and bruised, covered in holes and feeling terrible ... but alive

I took it easy for the next few days. I remember pulling up into my street in the mid afternoon, thinking “I hope no one realises I’m home yet”. The police had told me they had gone knocking on doors asking when people had last seen and talked to me ect, so I knew that there would be a lot of hype about me.

Good or bad, I didn’t know.

Luckily no once was outside nor came over. My friend and neighbour asked about me to my mum but I told her that I wasn’t ready for visitors and I would come over to see her soon.

We went out that night to blockbusters and rented a few DVD’s and stayed in as a family. We bonded and just relaxed together.

This was pretty much how the next week went for me. My mum had taken the week off work to be with me. I think she felt slightly offended by my actions and perhaps guilty, but she definitely wanted to keep an eye on me.

We cleaned her car, we went shopping, we stayed in and relaxed. She was nice and respected my decision when I asked to be left alone on Friday and Saturday. I had had so much ‘family time’ in the last week, it was a kind of too much to handle in one go, so I just wanted to be alone for a while.

I needed to process everything that had happened and that would happen from now on. And that’s what I did.

On Sunday (the day I returned home) two of my best friends came banging on my door late at night. They had seen my post and fb messages from people and had immediately rushed to my house to find out if I was ok but we were out getting some films to watch that night. Fearing the worst they then raced to the hospital to find out I had been discharged and were seriously contemplating breaking into my house to see if I was fine.

Fortunately, we were home by now and they were relieved I was alive but angry at me for what I had done.

Understandable.

Anyway, we stayed talking in the kitchen and catching up about everything for a lot of the night, before they left for food and I went to spend some time with my family.

It was really heart warming to find out that so many people cared about me to that extent, and were literally in tears when they saw I was alive and well.

I got placed on anti-depressants as soon as I was discharged and now that I am in uni I have had regular doctor’s appointments. They have recently doubled my dosage because it isn’t taking effect as fast as they would like. I have another appointment tomorrow, to see if they need to increase it again or start a new drug.

 ...

Oh and about that “battered and bruised” comment ... I don’t have a fear of needles, but they can do some serious damage to a person!

In my two days in hospital they took countless blood samples from different veins (apparently I have good veins to take blood from, but they collapse easily) as well as having to have 6 injections to take blood from my arteries.

Now if you don’t know what this entails, it is about a 5 inch long needle that they have to inject into your wrist and jiggle it about to find the artery, then they take a vile of blood and you are left with a mountain on your wrist. No exaggeration!

It is an extremely painful, slow and uncomfortable process, and just to show you how difficult it is ... they injected me 6 times ... and only got 2 blood samples!

This was the end result ...

All the best, and thank every one of you who has been there for me, i really do appreciate it x
Jack xx