Back in accident and emergency

I was in London today, at the library, and it occurred to me that it would be easier to go to my old GP in Islington than to try and see someone where I'm staying with me parents. So I made a temporary resident appointment and popped in because I'm worried things have been on the decline recently.

I had been worried about seeing anyone at all, and trying to avoid it, but after agonising about it at a friend of mine agreed with her that I would go, and that I would take their advice (after all, if you aren't prepared to take advice you shouldn't ask for it...), but the advice was to go straight to A&E at UCH and ask for the duty psychiatrist.

I've managed to never go to A&E on my own before, so I was pretty nervy but there was no one around. In the end I did go and managed to explain to the receptionist what I needed. Triage was pretty easy. 4pm on the Tuesday before Christmas turns out not to be the busiest time to show up in hospital, thankfully.

The duty psychiatrist saw me at about 5 and she was really nice, worked really hard to understand what was going on, where I'm living when and why, etc. She wanted to admit me at first, but I wasn't keen so she said if she could find my local crisis team (UCH isn't in my local PCT) and get them to agree to see me, then I could go.

So, after a two-hour discussion with her and an hour waiting for her to arrange everything with my local Crisis Team, I'm finally home and under orders to phone the local crisis team if I hadn't heard anything by ten. For some reason I'm nervous. It's not like I've not done this before but I'm nervous. I'm relieved I didn't have to be admitted and surprised that I was taken so seriously. After all, I showed up without having done any major harm to myself. Last time I was at UCH I had taken a fairly large overdose (or two, one in the evening and one in the morning) and all I got from the duty psychiatrist was the following interview:
"Do you feel safe at home?"
"Not really."
"Are you alone a lot?"
"Yes."
"Are you likely to try again if we let you go?"
"Well, I don't feel any better, so I might."
"OK, well I can't see any reason to keep you here...."

So I suppose today was a positive experience, as much as these things ever can be.