the way back - nervous breakdown and all that

It’s been a whirlwind weekend. I got here yesterday afternoon. More or less straight to Dad’s hospice. He is comfortable. He is on morphine. He cannot hear my sister and me. He cannot see us – his eyes open occasionally but do not focus on anything. The nurses tell us he showed some reactions – they put some football on TV. He seemed more alert. When they washed him, he stroked the nurse’s face. But by the time we go there, he was away. Occasionally, his eyes would open, and he would start to convulse for a minute or so. But no more meaningful interaction than that. We played some of his favourite music. We talked to him. We told him we were there. We told him we loved him. We said that if he wanted to leave, no one would hold it against him. That was yesterday. Today, everything had changed. He was no longer with us at all. Sleep. Death rattle. And yet, it has been a privilege. We played a lot more of his favourite music: Frank Sinatra, Ella, Neil Young. Even Phil Collins ma...

As I type this out, I am on the Eurostar on my way to say goodbye to Dad. He is now in a palliative care hospice. It looks lovely from the photos I have seen and means there is no more pain for him to suffer. In my mind, I had grieved the passing of my dad. A while back, he stopped recognising us. For months now, and he has been fading away and spending most of his days asleep. He has not been in the distress I have seen other Alzheimer’s sufferers have to cope with: a saving grace. But, all that seemed to be left was his cage of a body. And yet, the closer I get to him, the more I am grasping that we are really going to lose him. It will be a relief in many ways: especially for him. But it will mean be a new wave of grief. I naively had persuaded myself that this would not be the case: that I was over it. I was trying to kid myself that I could take a Buddhist-style approach of accepting the situation. I do not possess that level of enlightenment or intelligence. It fucking h...

It's all very surreal. Especially from a distance. My father is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s. As far as I can tell, he has been for the best part of five years.   He was a rock to me: an intelligent and wise man. Complete integrity and an impeccable sense of fairness. Alzheimer’s took away his mind. Slowly, scarily, ruthlessly. All that remains is the shell of the man I love and respect so much.   He lives in a specialised home near Paris. I live in London. He cannot communicate. We are strangers to him, albeit harmless strangers. I cannot say for sure if he still has any ability left to string ideas together or if it is all a jumble of feelings and fleeting shadows of memories. I just don’t know. The saving grace for us is that he has not been in pain or distressed.   Until now.   On Valentine’s Day he broke his leg – his femur. It took three days for him to be operated on. Three days of pain during which it would appear he was only allowed f...

My friend and erstwhile colleague Kirsten has been in touch with me. She worked at my previous school’s office. She was one of three from the office team who left after being treated appallingly – all suffered mental distress, all were signed off with work-related stress issues. You would think that such a pattern would cause alarm bells to ring out. The board of governors and council have done nothing. Not in the public interest apparently. K has allowed me to paraphrase a disciplinary letter she was sent; and to share a comment she posted online. _____________ Firstly, the letter: on 04.03.22, K returned to work after an extended leave of many months after a breakdown caused by the head’s treatment of her. Sound familiar? Later on that day, K was hand-delivered an ‘Informal Disciplinary’ letter . The onus of the letter was the fallout of an ‘unauthorised absence from work’ on 20.05.21 (ten months earlier…) On that day, K had walked out in a high state of anxiety after being spoken ...

On January 21 st in a post called ‘Public Interest’, I mentioned that I had been in touch with the council linked to the previous school I worked at. The Services for Schools Communications Support team had seen fit to include the following on their website:   The service received from the (…) comms team has been hugely professional and supportive at a time when the school was subject to false allegations with the potential to cause significant reputational damage to our community. They worked closely with us to negotiate an extremely stressful and time-pressured period and were very generous with their advice and knowledge. They were calm, knowledgeable and reassuring, and provided much-appreciated direction through the entire situation. Nice… On 21.01, I sent them this:   Dear [Schools Communications person],   I was shocked to see a testimonial from [my previous head] on [weblink].   In the interest of transparency, I wou...

Three years and three months ago I had a nervous breakdown. It left me with post-traumatic stress disorder and caused lasting damage. Two years and a half ago, a large group of ex-colleagues and other school community members (who also suffered from/or bore witness to mental distress caused by the same person) attempted to blow the whistle on this person. This is usually the remit of the board of governors. However, the chair of the governing body claimed that the accusations that were being made included too much criticism of them – I maintain that they are in cahoots with the head. Therefore, the council asked a supposedly independent party to investigate it. Despite a lot of evidence proving the opposite, they claimed that this was not in the public interest. Recent developments have caused me to ask the council to reconsider. So far, they are trying to cling to the initial decision of the ‘independent’ investigator. However, both my union and Protect are of the opinion that t...