Thursday 3 June 2010

Total (Non) Recall

The issues with my memory are getting worse my haphazard attempt to bluff my way through my medical history with my therapist has now led to me having to take one of my parents into my next session to fill in the blanks. Can you imagine, at twenty eight years of age needing to have your Mum or Dad go to see the Doctor with you? The word "embarrassment" does not even come close to covering it but hey at twenty eight years old and having to still live with my parents embarrassment comes very regularly to me.

To catch up any new readers here's the situation as it stands, I currently do not have a cast iron diagnosis for my current medical condition(s). I was diagnosed as suffering from epilepsy for about four years until tests proved otherwise. The current symptoms are as follows;

1. Seizures
2. Severe back pain
3. Loss of feeling in hands and feet (which makes walking great distances or even not so great distances a struggle. Also makes writing difficult as I can not tell how hard I am holding anything in my hands, so a pen is out of the question.)
4. Memory problems ( can't remember when past events in my life happened, forget words I should know, call things and people by wrong name etc.)
5. Suffer from depression, anxiety
6. Hands shake badly from time to time
7. Bouts of insomnia usually followed by days of not being able to stay awake
8. Feelings of Deja vu/ paranoia
9. General feelings of tiredness
10. Stomach Ulcers (due to previous medication)
11. Frequent headaches

Nice little bunch of aches and annoyances that put all together make me basically not want to leave the house or my bed if I'm truly honest. These problems have been with me since I was around nineteen, twenty years old and have basically stopped me from existing outside of them, no job, no leaving the house unless to go to hospital or doctor's surgery and basically no life. This hit home hard this morning when I found an old college communications essay of mine where I had been asked to write what I would be doing in ten years, my answer? Was not still living at home it was in fact writing for a living, screenwriting to be precise.

I have had a love of the craft of screenwriting since I was about thirteen, I even sent one of my scripts which was as you can imagine poorly formatted and about fifteen pages to short to the BBC at that time. They sent it back with a surprisingly blunt but fare evaluation of the subject matter, It was a cross between the X-Files and that old sixties show Invasion and not a very good one but I was informed that my eye for scene description and scene length was very strong. May not sound like much but to a thirteen year old from Scotland that was all the encouragement I needed. I had amassed a collection of about fifteen finished scripts and multiple more that I gave up on half way through with maybe four or five of them being what I would consider good enough to be sent out on my old computer before it died on me last year leaving me with only some printed out outlines, treatments and one screenplay I wrote to amuse my brother (cursing, daft humour aplenty).

Now I'm considering where to go from here, with no apparent cure for my illness in the pipeline a career in screenwriting seems as dead as a Dodo but when one door closes maybe another one will open. I've been giving a lot of thought to creating an E-Book and Audio book store with an emphasis on new writers and of coarse selling my own work. Only problem with this is I can't find a lot of good info on the web about how to go about setting it up, there are websites dedicated to setting up online stores but they all seem to specialise in other merchandise.

Anyhoo I've written far to much already on this post so

Thanking You

The Housebound Writer

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous03 June, 2010

    It really sucks about your medical issues. I vote you keep going for the online store, if there arnt a lot like it out there then mabye you can secure the market

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  2. I work in the human services field and see a shrink myself regarding anxiety/panic attacks.... I have noticed that it has almost seemed like a fad for shrinks to encourage you to bring your parents in for a session. Of course this is in the states....

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  3. Andrew-I really admire your courage and perseverance in the face of all these health issues. I hope there's more clarity soon as to the nature of your problems so that you can gain some relief from them.

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  4. Hi Andrew, sorry for the disappearing. Since we're worlds apart it may happen whenever my computer suffers from any nervous breakdown. If we lived closer I could always come to your house and see you... we'd definitely laugh a lot together. =)))

    I missed you.

    I make Marty's words my own, hope you discover the nature of these problems and come out to play. =D You're such a nice person and a cute man, it sucks that bad things happen to good people. =/

    I'm sending all my love and good vibes. Hope to hear you received them. Take care and keep smiling, sweetheart.

    Kiss your cheeks. =*

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  5. Hi Andrew

    You keep so positive, that takes real courage, You are so right, you know, when one door closes, we can usually find a window still open.

    Regarding your writing. The definitive resource you need in the UK is The Writers and Artists Yearbook 2010, Amazon has it. It lists every agent and publisher in the UK, gives detail of how to submit work, the format and everything. It covers full length books, ebooks, screenplays, TV submissions, magazine articles etc etc. You don't need any of the 'how to get published' books, the yearbook is the one and only.

    I left the full time day job six years ago and now work professionally just 2 days a week, the rest of the time I enjoy life and write. Had all sorts of pieces published in magazines, local papers, case studies in text books, even got a pantomime published! . If you want to email me Andrew would be really happy to discuss this further.

    I hope your health issues do get sorted, as that must be so miserable. But keep focussing on your writing talent, your ability to communicate with others.

    kind regards

    Juliana


    have you checked out the Open University? www.open.ac.uk they may offer courses that could help you - they do some really upbeat stuff. My husband did a great course that was linked to the Coast series on TV.

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  6. Hey Andrew,

    I'm a healer, and from the symptoms you describe, I guess that it's a neurological issue. I'll just say a couple of things: the brain is the control organ of the body. It is NOT the seat of consciousness as many people think. If you have a neuro problem, it's 99% likely that it's caused by CONTROL ISSUES.
    How do you feel about control - how do you feel about being OUT of control. These are questions that you should very seriously investigate if you want to regain your health.
    Whatever path your life takes you on, I wish you happiness and joy. Keep up the blog - you write well mate
    Love,
    Ben

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