'Agony Ali'

I've recently picked up a lot of new followers - which might have something to do with the fact that I mentioned Leeds United and it got picked up by the Elland Road Owl! Here's a brief-ish introduction to me, which will save you the trouble of reading my previous blog posts.

"There's a lot I could say about myself in the past, but I'm going to stick to the last five years or so. As you may know, I'm married to James and we have two sons, Joseph who's 15 and Evan, 13. We live in sunny Leeds.

Roughly five years ago, my youngest son had some routine health complications, which resulted in further investigation. After many months of tests involving the whole family, it was confirmed that the two boys and I have a rare genetic disorder known as Alport Syndrome, in which a particular type of collagen is affected. This collagen is found in the kidneys, the ears and the eyes. The collagen prematurely ages, meaning that people with Alport Syndrome become deaf, experience kidney failure (usually developing over several years) and can have eye abnormalities.

Both my boys are severely deaf and they both have kidney disease, which will progress until they both require transplants. It's not possible to 'cure' Alport Syndrome, but the effects on the kidneys can be slowed with medication. I too have Alport Syndrome and therefore kidney disease, but it's typically slower to develop in women. At the moment my hearing is ok.

Learning that my children were affected by this condition and that I too have it had a massive effect on my already variable mental health. I was studying for a PhD at the time, which was stressful enough on its own. I had a psychotic breakdown in 2014 and eventually had to give up the PhD and the counselling career I had recently begun. I was hospitalised several times during 2015/16 and was later diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder (depressive type). This gave me answers to questions I'd had over the years and explained why my mental health had always been so up and down.

Since my lowest point in 2015, I've been slowly rebuilding my life. I began a full time professional doctorate in Counselling Psychology in 2017, but found this and commuting to university too mentally taxing and had to give it up to preserve my mental health. I spent much of 2018 feeling a bit sorry for myself and something of a failure. I've since turned that around and have accepted that I'm not useless, I'm just ill.

Now that I'm recovering, I'm looking to do something again. I've no idea what this 'something' will be, but I'm hoping I can combine my love of writing and helping people with their emotional and mental health difficulties. I'm already qualified and experienced as a counsellor, but the writing side of things will be a new challenge for me.

Maybe I should set myself up online as an Agony Aunt and charge people a small amount for my services? Agony Ali!

Thanks for reading if you got this far - it's been lovely to meet you!

Ali x"

Goodbye to all that

Well folks, my PhD career is officially over. I'm sorry to say that my wobblesome mental health led to me officially withdrawing from my studies this week. I realised I couldn't give my PhD the kind of attention it required because I was too busy looking after myself and trying to get well. Like most things in life, I reckon a PhD is only worth doing if it's done well and sadly, the standard of my academic work was slipping. I wasn't happy about doing substandard work and decided, on reflection, that I'd rather give it another go at a time when I can give my academic work its full attention.

This decision has been several months in the making and has the full backing of my academic supervisors. It's sad in a way as I started out doing so well but as academics are fond of saying, a PhD is a marathon not a sprint and I just couldn't maintain the high standard required once my health got in the way. 

I realise that many people lose a lot more than a PhD opportunity thanks to ill health, but it's been a significant loss for me and I'm, well, I'm gutted. I'm also a bit confused and bewildered about what to do next - my passion is mental health but I'm unsure about my next steps  in this area.  

On the plus side, taking a step back from academia means I can make my own mental health the priority, along with focusing on family life. (And yes, I realise that I sound a bit like a resigning politician here - "I'm stepping down to spend more time with my family!") But it's true, there's plenty going on with my family at the moment - good stuff, mainly - so I won't be short of things to do whilst I'm deciding what to do next.