In Which I Had a Bit Of A Breakthrough in Scottish Meanderings

At the moment I have to say it doesn't feel like a breakthrough - I had a rotten night’s sleep last night and feel a bit sick today so I’m not in the best of moods☹️ And my ancient monitor is finally giving up the ghost which has contributed somewhat to the delay of this entry getting done in time so I don't know whether to splash out on a proper Mac because I'm not sure I use it enough to justify the cost or update the Mac Mini I've got and get a newer version. Or just keep this one and get a new 'ordinary' monitor. Decisions decisions.

Anyway - the breakthrough.

When I started this recovery thing last year I was on two prescription drugs from when I got ill 7 years ago - Subutex and Mirtazapine (an anti depressant). Both horrible drugs to come off but I thought Mirtazapine was probably worse so decided to tackle Subutex first, the plan being when I began to feel better to do a long, slow taper off the Mirtazapine - even if it took years. The problem was I never was feeling better and had no idea why. I honestly have no words to describe how bad I felt - almost like someone had poured a vat of treacle over me and I was having to wade through that each day and every tiny thing was a huge effort to endure and just 'get through'. I knew I couldn't keep living like that but didn't know what was causing it to be able to do anything about it.

I was also in a vicious cycle of trying to keep my weight stable - I had intense sugar/carb cravings pretty much every week which I seemed to have no control over and my metabolism appeared to have slowed down to a ridiculous rate - when Nikki was musing over how many steps she'd done one day, she said she'd burned up 3,000 calories - and she'd only done like 12,000 steps or something. When I looked at mine I'd done 4,000 steps and only burned up 100 calories!! The ratio was nuts.

I'm still following the NA programme and doing meetings on Zoom etc and if I was feeling particularly awful in the evening I would go on a meeting with my camera off and just listen. So I was doing that one night and this guy came on and, out of the blue, started speaking about Mirtazapine and wondering if anyone else was on it? He was struggling with the side effects, the weight gain, the sugar/carb cravings, the slowing down of metabolism, putting fat on in places you wouldn't normally. My ears pricked up. Thing is - this wasn't new information - I knew all this about Mirtazapine already - a lot of people had put huge amounts of weight on it - but I didn't think it had affected me too much that way.

Now I wondered if maybe the drug was having more of an effect than I thought? Or was at least contributing to the problem?

But what to do? I couldn’t face another withdrawal the way I was feeling and I knew there was likely to be horrible symptoms if I started reducing as I’d tried before. So after a lot of thought I decided to try and shave off a tiny bit of the tablet each night, however small, then keep the shavings so that I could see a visible reminder that I'd at least started the process.

And that’s what I did and amazingly, some of that awful fog I'd been under started to lift - just ever so slightly - but enough to make me wonder if this had been contributing in a big way to the way I'd been feeling? It’s really too early to tell but I'm now down to half the dose in six weeks and if you'd said to me in the middle of June that I'd have cut my dose of Mirtazapine in half in six weeks' time I'd have honestly laughed in your face!!

It's not all been plain sailing - I'm still having quite a few bad days - and sleep has definitely been affected - have had a fair few sleepless nights and the sleep I do get is much lighter and restless but I knew that would happen. But there have been differences in certain things which have led me to believe I'm on the right track. I've been able to do tiny tasks which were just impossible before - buying a new mat for inside the front door for instance and a new rug for the hall - the doorwell is a weird size so any mat I get I have to cut which involved looking for my Stanley knife which had gone AWOL - and I knew it would take a lot of energy because I wanted a coir mat and they're difficult to cut.

I have 80 tabs open in Safari and they're pretty much all connected to little tasks like this - I get as far as starting to search online for what I want then give up having run out of energy. But after I started the reduction - on one of the days I felt better - I looked for a mat, bought it, looked for a rug, bought it, went to B&Q and bought a new knife then also found another mat in a store nearby, realising the back door one needed replacing as well. When the new mat arrived the following week, I cut it and the other one to size in one afternoon and got them fitted.


That's been waiting literally years to get done!

So stuff like that is happening and then there was another area which turned out differently this month. Remember how disappointed I was after my journey to Blairgowrie for our family get together because I had been ill for a good chunk of the time away?

Well Nikki told me she had booked two nights in a yurt about 2 hours’ drive south of here this month and there was a spare bed which hadn’t cost her anything extra so if I fancied a night away it was there. I knew part of that was the fact she knew she’d struggle on her own with the 3 kids and the dog and could use a bit of help and although I would have been delighted to be able to go, after Blairgowrie I was very wary understandably.

So I compromised and said I’d try and come through for the day.

I was absolutely dreading it but it was fine! I wasn’t able to go until lunchtime so didn’t get there till late afternoon but I felt ok and was able to stay until 11 pm before setting off for home again - quite different from the experience going to Blairgowrie. And the great thing was I would have been ok to stay the night - I felt well enough - but there were other factors which put me off. And which Nikki agreed with after spending a night there.

This is the yurt. The thing on the left is a small hot tub just for that yurt and there’s a horse box just out of sight which is the toilet.


This shows the horse box/toilet beside it clearer.


You see the white bit and the circle at the very top? There’s no way of shading any of that so it remains light as long as it’s light outside. Which means as soon as the sun's up at 5 in the morning it's flooded with light. I need a blackout blind to sleep as I’m a light sleeper so knew that would be a problem.

The toilet was nice but there was a dangerous ramp up to it with bumps which I didn’t fancy negotiating 3 times in the middle of the night - and there were also uneven wooden slats outside the door of the yurt in the gaps of which Nikki and I both twisted our feet. Again didn’’t fancy negotiating them in the dark. Plus going to the toilet out in the cold in jammies would definitely have woken me up properly.

Apart from that though it was really nice for those who like the outdoors but not completely roughing it. Plenty of seating space -



A hob, fridge freezer, cupboard space. Beds were quite comfy I'm told (apart from the hairy caterpillars) - Nikki had a double although it was one of those round ones so maybe not much good for tall people.



She'd been delighted with it all when they got there on the Wednesday (and it was gorgeous weather which helped) but by the time I got there 24 hours later she was completely stressed out and wanted to go home (Ruari had diaorrhea, there was no fence to stop Alfie running away, she couldn’t get the hot tub to light, there were huge hairy caterpillars in the bed, the list went on!). But she'd promised Boyd & Bev she'd go down and see them on the Friday as they now stay in Ayr (about 2 hours south of the yurt) so didn't want to let them down as she hasn't seen her Dad for years. She was literally looking up hotels nearby to stay in that night and I did seriously consider staying just to calm her down but I managed that before I left so she decided just to hang on. And with me there to look after the kids and keep Alfie secure she was able to do most of the packing that night and get stuff in the car so that they could leave first thing in the morning. (She did end up getting a much better sleep that night and they had a successful trip to Boyd & Bev's arriving earlier than planned so she was able to drive back home again on the Friday night).

Nikki’s not one for outdoor life so I’m not quite sure what she was expecting - I think it was one of those ‘it seemed a good idea at the time’ things!

All ready for the hot tub!


Lovely views over the Perthshire hills.


They had a set of swings just down from the hot tub for their use too so that went down well.

I'm glad they got away for a few days - Joel was going to take the girls to Spain for a week but Nikki wouldn't let him - I didn't agree with that at all - so at least they had this. And Joel organised a surprise daddy/daughters weekend for the girls and took them up to Aviemore (north west of here) and out on paddle boats on one of the lochs there then they stayed the night in an hotel and next day went to a safari park so they were soooo excited at that.

And I was chuffed that I made it down to see them for the day (Nikki didn't tell them I was coming so they ran and enveloped me in excited hugs when they saw me coming up the hill🥰) and felt well throughout and could have stayed the night - that reinforced the fact that the Mirtazapine was likely causing a lot of this and also gave me so much hope and encouragement for the future.


I’ve been able to join them in a few of the things they’ve done in the school holidays so that's been good - the glamping obviously, we've had days out to places like Wynford Farm (outdoor farm and indoor soft play area), gone swimming, been to the circus, done numerous walks along the beach, I've done some babysitting and I still go out once a week too so I’ve seen quite a lot of them.

Ruari has a thing about benches. If we go anywhere there are any he has to sit on Every. Single. One. Along the prom at the beach there's one every few yards so it takes ages to get anywhere!


It's also very cute :)

He did end up getting chickenpox but wasn't too bothered with it and didn't have a huge amount of spots and he was past the infectious stage when they went away so I was glad it didn’t affect that.

It’s great to see they can still have fun with ordinary stuff - they were all at mine on Friday night till late and a bin I’d ordered got delivered during the day while they were there. It was in a big box which was in an even bigger box and they played with both of them for ages! Lily got creative with scissors and made a house then they took turns being robots and Lily made Ruari a king’s crown with the bits of cardboard she’d cut out - he was chuffed to bits!

They were also making us laugh raiding my wardrobe and dressing up as Granny!




You should have seen him trying to walk in those shoes!


Ian (my eldest brother) is not really any better - tests haven't shown up anything and his balance continues to be a real problem. As far as I know he hasn't had any more falls but he's very frustrated at not being able to just get on and do stuff or even drive. He's still not doing his exercises though despite a fair amount of cajoling and bullying from his sisters in our weekly video chat but has a physio appointment next week so hopefully they'll badger him into getting going. I’m wondering now if it's maybe long Covid but I don't suppose they'll know until they've eliminated everything else. The 'can't seem to find anything wrong' is just horribly familiar. He's still doing the slight slumping to the right thing in our chat but doesn't seem to be quite so fatigued at least. Just very glad Margaret is there for him.


I did get in touch with the Landscaper for the back garden and he said he could possibly fit in doing the fence in October/November and then do the rest next year. I asked when next year and he said around March/April so I'm just going to go with that - if I leave it it's entirely possible I could get to springtime next year and be no further on so at least this way it'll be done. And it gives me longer to clear the shed. He sent me a quote for the fence which seemed reasonable so that's the current Plan A.

Nothing much else to report really - we didn't get the awful heatwave everyone else was experiencing - we had one pretty hot day but that only got up to 26 degrees and there was a nice breeze running through it - for once I was glad of living on the coast!

Now I'm off to try and get an early night and hopefully a better sleep tonight - last night I was being chased by lions everywhere - I knew it wasn't a case of if I got eaten by them but when and had to keep trying to avoid them. I woke with my heart pounding out of my chest so went on my phone for a bit then drifted back off only to be plunged straight into another nightmare! By the time I woke at 6 I was exhausted!!😁

Thanks for sticking with me even when I'm not reading any of you - writing this monthly and going through my comments for the previous entry seems to be about all I can manage just now. I just really appreciate it though.❤️