OK, so a quick update for those of you who may have been missing me (and for those of you who haven't, here it is any way).

As I explained in my last post, my mum went missing the night before last. She went because she is ill with this Manic Depression. She's had it most of her life. She lives in an almost constant state of illness, and this is how I have always known her. The illness means she doesn't have a stable emotional state (hey, who does?), but in particular she will swing between extremes of depression and mania. When depressed she will have little or no motivation to do anything. When she goes into mania, or gets high, she tends almost to go into a fantasy world; experiences delusions of grandeur and can become intensely happy or upset. That's the clinical analysis of my mum's illness, though it doesn't go any way to explaining what this means in reality.

Because of my mum's illness, she has been in and out of mental hospitals for most of her life. She despises them, so do I. Usually my mum is in a state of depression or - as her doctors have accepted when I've questioned them - suppression due to her drugs. However, part of her illness means that she won't always stick to her medication. And when she doesn't she can go very high (she can also have absolutely no change, her illness responds in a very strange way to drugs - the doctors themselves don't even understand it). When she does go high, things go mad. My family will get upset, arguments will break out and my mother will not sleep. Things usually stay in the mad state for a couple of days until either she goes missing (as happened the other day) or me and my dad agree that we have to call in the authorities and ask for her to be admitted into hospital.

Last time she was in hospital was around three years ago. Before that, she was in hospital for a lengthy 20months non-stop. When in hospital, she is usually 'sectioned,' which is medical administrative garble for locking her in a mental hospital. Her last stay in hospital was her longest ever, and the last three years she has not been in hospital has been her longest time that I've known her as an outpatient. My mum's illness is cyclic (ie she gets ill, then well, then ill again and so on). However it appears that these cycles of illness and wellness (well, I should say 'suppression so she's not too difficult to handle') have been getting longer. I fear if she is sectioned this time she might have a huge stay, longer than anything before. She's 57; she shouldn't have to suffer that.

When my mum went missing two nights ago, we had no idea where she had gone. Every time she goes missing we have to report her missing with the police, as she is a vulnerable person. She was found by the police after around 18 hours, during which time there was a report she was seen in Battersea police station, but then we were told at about 6pm yesterday that the police had picked her up and taken her into the North Middlesex hospital. When she arrived they found she had gotten a respiratory virus that they were treating her for. Earlier today they transferred her to our local and her frequent haunt - the Waterlow Unit of the Whittington Hospital. She's there now. I don't know if she's been sectioned yet - the stupid ward nurse refused to tell me over the phone. Idiot.

My dad's been married to my mum for the last 20 years. In the last two I have seen him get really old with the stress of coping with my mum's illness. It's not fair, but its something we live with. And despite the problems, you wouldn't be able to find a family unit closer than ours. Illness tends to make you closer, and this is certainly true of my own family.

I'm not sure what happens next, we'll see in the next few days. It may be that the doctors will be able to control my mum's illness enough for her to come straight home. I really hope that happens, but I'm not sure that it will.

Moving on, I'm focusing less on the conflict in Iraq, though my opinions on it have not changed. To be honest, I feel as if news about the conflict has got to such a level that it feels like I can't get away from it. It's adding to the weird sense of weirdness I'm feeling generally at the moment. I hear that civilian deaths on the Iraqi side are mounting massively - it's sickening. Please God let it stop soon.

steven

Me, tired? Ha!