Free to Be Me: A Story of Sadness and Tragedy But Also of Laughter & Humour

By Fiona H. French

This book is the story of my life. Just a shy Scottish lass, I did well at school. At 21, I was diagnosed with myoclonic epilepsy, prescribed nitrazepam and had to give up teacher training. The next 40 years were marred by depression. After taking early retirement in 2012, my GP suggested I stop taking nitrazepam. This left me extremely ill and bedridden for two years. However, I am now free from epilepsy, depression and prescription drugs for the first time in my adult life. I am looking forward to the rest of my retirement. I hope others will be inspired never to give up. You just never know what might be round the corner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781326414405

Book preview

Free to Be Me: A Story of Sadness and Tragedy But Also of Laughter & Humour

Free to Be Me

A story of sadness & tragedy

but also of laughter & humour

by

Fiona French

Copyright

Copyright © Fiona French 2015

Category: Memoirs/Life History

eBook Design by Rossendale Books: www.rossendalebooks.co.uk

eBook ISBN: 978-1-326-41440-5

All rights reserved, Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention and Pan American Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author. The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

Dedication

Mum

&

Dad

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword

The Importance of Roots

A Sickly Child

A New School

Planning My Future

Leaving Home

Benzodiazepines and Psychiatrists

Back to College, Then University

Life Begins At Forty

Growing In Confidence

Moving Home

Travelling Abroad

Researching My Family Tree

Memories of My Dad

Retirement Approaches

Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Symptoms

Depression-Free After Forty Years

Recovery Is In Sight

Foreword

I was born and brought up in the north east of Scotland, a shy and studious young girl.   From a typical working class family, I excelled academically and achieved the accolade of being Dux (best student) of the school. The transition from school to university was fraught with difficulty and my first attempt lasted only a matter of weeks.

There followed a year working in London, before deciding to attend teacher training college back home. At the end of first year, I was diagnosed as having myoclonic epilepsy. It was 1975 and I was twenty-one years old.  The neurologist prescribed nitrazepam, one of the benzodiazepine class of drugs which has wrecked so many lives.  Within two months I had lost two stones in weight (8.5 to 6.5 stones), returned to a state of pre-puberty and tried to commit suicide.   No link was made between my sudden decline in health and the drug I had started taking.

The next ten years were sheer hell.  Diagnosed as having depression, I spent most of the time either in bed at home, in hospital or attending day hospital.  Just trying to function was a daily struggle.  Agoraphobia, monophobia, paranoia, compulsive eating were just some of the symptoms.  Several more suicide attempts were made, one so very nearly successful.  Anti-depressants appeared to do little to help although they did seem to temper my suicidal thoughts.

The psychiatrists had theories.  It was the close relationship with my mum, the sudden departure of my elder sister when I was eight years old, my immaturity, my fear of pregnancy and childbirth.  When depressed, one will believe almost anything about oneself especially if it is negative.  I had my own thoughts on the matter.  My paternal grandfather had committed suicide, my mum was often depressed, perhaps it was just genetic.  Whatever it was, I realised it was not going to get better, I would just have to learn to live with it, whatever the cause.

In 1984, I started to claw my way back into life.  I went to secretarial college a few times a week, then progressed to a full-time secretarial course.  Four years of  stable employment followed and my confidence grew.  In 1985, my mother died and in 1987 my ten year marriage to a  fellow patient came to an end.  Children had not been an option due to our mental health problems.  

I bought a studio flat and returned to university for my third attempt at gaining a degree.  This time I was successful. Graduating in 1992 with upper second class honours, exactly twenty years after leaving school, I was very proud at my long awaited achievement.  I was spurred on by my success and joined the high IQ society, Mensa.

Twenty years of continuous employment followed in the National Health Service.  However, I was never free from depression or from prescription drugs.  Every single day was a struggle to function. As I grew older, my physical health and cognitive abilities declined.  My work in research required a great deal of intense concentration and ability, and these were both diminishing by the year.  I managed to cover up these difficulties most of the time.  Ten years after graduating, I started to experience stomach problems.  These were diagnosed as irritable bowel syndrome.  I tried many pills and exclusion diets to no avail.  At age 59, I was forced to take early retirement on health grounds with a modest pension. 

Soon after retiring, I consulted a chiropractor about my stomach problems.  Within six weeks I was completely symptom free and this has continued to the present day.  I had endured ten years of misery for no good reason.  My spine had been misaligned and pressing on nerves leading to the gut.  No GP seemed to have any idea that this was the case.  

At this point, I decided to change GP practice purely for reasons of convenience.  At my first appointment it was suggested that I stop taking nitrazepam.  I was upset, frightened and angry.  I knew there were very good reasons to come off the drug but after forty years, who knew what would happen.  Against my better judgement, I decided to give it a go.

I started tapering in January 2013.  One quarter of a pill each month seemed reasonable.  By April, I was finally off the drug and had had no withdrawal symptoms.  Even better, I had no symptoms of epilepsy.  I was ecstatic, or at least I would have been if I had not suffered from depression.

The next six months were bizarre.  I became sexually aroused most of the time and guessed this was due to the cessation of nitrazepam.  I started to contact men on the internet and arranged to meet a widower of similar age to myself.  All went well and I visited him several times.  He lived 200 miles away.  I was also very weepy, crying myself to sleep at nights.  By September I was confined to bed, extremely ill physically and there I remained for the next two years.  The most astonishing development was the total absence of depression for the first time in almost forty years.   

It is impossible to adequately describe my feelings at finally being released from the prison which had surrounded me for the whole of my adult life.  I could feel my emotions again.  I no longer felt cut off from everyone, I no longer felt alone.  For forty years I had wondered where this feeling of aloneness came from.  Now I knew.  It came from a little white pill called nitrazepam.  I was free at last, I was free to be me, I was once again that person I had been forty years before.

The Importance of Roots

Illness and doctors were part of my life from the very beginning.  My mum had already lost two babies, the first as a young, unmarried woman in the 1930s, the second in 1947, a year after she married my dad.  She wasn’t capable of having a natural birth but in those days home births were the norm and no account was taken of her inverted pelvis.  Neither of her sons survived and the second loss left her deeply depressed and in despair.  She had been advised not to see either of her babies and she never knew what happened to them.  This was just the way it was in those days.  She was informed that it would not be possible for her to bear more children because of the internal damage that had been caused.

My sister

Adoption seemed to be the answer.  So often did I hear the story.  One day mum and dad went to a children’s home and were shown into a room full of babies.  They walked round the room separately in opposite directions and each was captivated by the same baby, the one gurgling and kicking her legs, my soon-to-be big sister.  The adoption process was fairly swift in those days.  Within three months of losing their own baby, they had a little girl, then aged three months, who was to bring them great joy.  All however was not plain sailing.  The little girl’s birth mother, unmarried, did not want to give her up and it was to be a whole year before she finally agreed to sign the relevant papers.  My mum and dad decided not to change my sister’s first name as often happens when children are adopted.  I always thought this was a good decision and surely must have been appreciated by her birth mother when they were reunited many years later.

In the meantime, several more foster children came to stay but unknown to my parents, these children had learning difficulties as well as psychological and emotional problems.  They were eventually returned to the care of the social services.  Six years after my sister joined our family, mum realised she was pregnant.  Not possible said the doctors but they were wrong, very wrong.  I am living proof of that fact.

The greatest of care was taken to ensure I survived.  Mum was admitted to Aberdeen Maternity Hospital ten weeks before her due date under the care of the well known obstetrician, (Sir) Dugald Baird. He had graduated from Glasgow University in 1922 and was appointed Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Aberdeen in 1937. In 1951 he set up the Aberdeen Maternal and Neonatal Databank.  The Dugald Baird Centre for Research on Women’s Health at Aberdeen Maternity Hospital is named in his honour. According to my mum, the patients had to make their own porridge in the mornings.  My big sister had to live with family friends and go to a different school.  Dad was a baker in the nearby village, cycling to work every day in the early hours of the morning.  He could not look after a six year old.