00:00What, so talk me through Kim, the condition that you've got, if people might not understand it.
00:06There's 12 people on the island that suffer with the severity of the condition that I've got.
00:13Most of them are, they react to the medication.
00:18I react to the medication for the schizophrenia, new for the psychosis.
00:23I had the psychosis for a year and a half, they changed my meds and with 14 weeks I wasn't psychosis anymore.
00:30But with the bipolar and the catatonic, they can't get it under control.
00:35So like literally every day I will go catatonic multiple times a day and I can't function day to day.
00:42The only time I can function is if I don't take the medication and I don't go to bed and I stay awake all night.
00:49Basically catatonic is like, you know when you overheat a laptop and it says shut down, restart?
00:55Yeah.
00:56That's what my body's doing.
00:57Like even though it's so debilitating and it's so horrible, it's shutting down and restarting because it needs it.
01:04Yeah.
01:05And there's nothing I can do about it.
01:06I can't fight it.
01:07Once it happens, it happens.
01:08And it could last to two and a half hours.
01:11It can last, the longest it's lasted in this episode is eight hours.
01:16Wow.
01:16Solid.
01:17And do you know, do you know when it's going to happen?
01:21I can feel it coming on you.
01:22What does that feel like?
01:24Like a tiredness that you never felt.
01:26Like your eyes just roll.
01:28Like I used to, when I first went into it, I used to just freeze sitting upwards.
01:34And then now I've kind of got into a routine of like relaxing back into a chair and just going into it naturally.
01:41Well, I will be very open and honest about the illness and how crippling it is and how crippling it is on carers.
01:46Yeah.
01:47I mean, Tim cares for me day in, day out.
01:50I mean, it's not, it's not a part-time job, it's a full-time job.
01:55Yeah.
01:55You know, I might look fine, I'm not fine.
01:58Yeah, I can, from what we've spoken about and from what you've told me, I can empathise with you that it must be horrible.
02:05I cry all the time.
02:06Yeah.
02:07Like people don't know, I post on Facebook and I pretend everything's fine all the time and stuff like that.
02:13They don't know that I've been sat in a chair catatonic for six hours or two and a half hours or five hours.
02:19I want to raise awareness, one, about mental health.
02:21Yeah.
02:22I don't want it to be a stigma anymore.
02:24No.
02:24I am sick and tired of people stigmatising people for being mentally unwell.
02:29You know, and I'm not talking about, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not putting down somebody with anxiety.
02:35No.
02:35I'm not putting down somebody with anxiety.
02:38But there are people that suffer very serious mental health conditions.
02:42I mean, if he wasn't my stay-at-home carer, I would have to be in a facility, locked up in a facility for two and a half years.
02:50Over two and a half years, nearly been three years, I would have had to have been locked away.
02:55What fairness is that on me?
02:57Mm-hmm.
02:58Because I've been traumatised.
02:59Yeah.
03:00And I've been born into it.
03:01I should be locked in a facility when I do nobody any harm.
03:05Mm-hmm.
03:05I just go catatonic every day.
03:08Yeah.
03:08You know, and then if I'm not catatonic, I'm manic.
03:12And I feel really let down by the system because they left me psychotic for a year and a half without medicating me properly.
03:19If you are struggling from a severe debilitating illness or you do feel unwell or you don't know who to call or sometimes, I mean, I'm not going to say bad things about CRT.
03:31I know they're busy and I know they have, you know, other things to deal with, especially at the weekends and stuff like that.
03:37But the Samaritans are always there.
03:40They are there 24-7, every day, day and night.
03:45And they're lovely.
03:47There's no problem with them.
03:48They are lovely, you know.
03:49And that's why I did that gallery in Honor Rhythm.
03:52They are just gorgeous.
03:53They're gorgeous people.
03:55Like, two and a half years, I've never had one bad call.
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