palicedotorg

So the story goes like this

Anything but tranquility or bliss

I had a third admission

To reference the date

4am 1st February 2008

And met a good friend there

They’d never understand her state

I thought to myself

A spiritual illness

She was jumping souls

Past lives and time

A good friend still now

But to help her

I didn’t know how

Because I knew these doctors

Weren’t schooled in spiritual thought

Their knowledge was limited

Not what they had been taught

I was sectioned for the second time

The only way they could get their drugs into me

But what they had underestimated

And failed to see

Was that I was well educated

And had a sharp mind

I learned the system

The research wasn’t hard to find

I puked up and spat out the Abilify

It tasted acidic but had given it a try

I was told it won’t affect my weight which was important to me

I needed my body, my tool, free to be

My psychiatrist was mean

Howlett, she’s known well

Kept me locked up for almost three months

And put me through hell

Not allowed to run or swim

Or even go outside the ward

An anorexic control freak

It was written on her beak

She tried to hide all her issues

Being the professional

I just wanted to pass her the tissues

I wrote poems about every bird

The sequel to Cats

Inspired by TS Elliot

I wrote to Andrew Lloyd Webber

And got a reply

He was busy with something else

So I put that on the shelf

I won my second free tribunal

With a lawyer who tried to postpone the date

He didn’t have much confidence

But I knew my fate

At 12noon 28th April 2008

I walked out of there

And started to really care

About all who’d come before me

And all who were yet to come

I didn’t want to become a revolving door patient

How was I gonna learn

Find my art, music and writing

I’d never felt such a yearn

So a few months passed

And I decided to get a degree

Medicine no less, I needed to learn their education

Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Maths

Lambeth College Access to Medicine

September 2008

Get my brain engaged

I was taking Abilify to appease the shrink

But as I started to study

I realised I couldn’t think

I lowered my medication from ten to five milligrams

My boyfriend at the time didn’t really notice a thing

I was going a little faster

But what I needed to bring

From the help of an educational psychologist

Who taught me to study

I have comprehension dyslexia

And had struggled with exams

Getting As and Bs

But less than teachers had expected

I was a scholarship student

And in the first stream for maths

I needed to learn how to pass

And excel with a Distinction

I did just that in every subject

Getting 100% in maths

My tutor gave me an excellent review

My personal statement was controversial

But who knew?

I described the importance of allergies, intolerances and nutrition

Helped save my house lady’s child

From a disastrous allergy to dairy

What I didn’t know and it was in their fruition

They didn’t teach much about food

How could you not study what goes into the body

How useless and basic was every case study

I didn’t hear a thing and my tutor didn’t know why

I waited and waited

Eventually plucking up the courage to ring

Kings College London

What had I done wrong?

Applied to 101 course when I wasn’t allowed to study that extended medical degree

Why had I not done my research

And learned to see

That due to my education which was first class

I was only allowed to do a five year course

The correct code was 100

So what to do now?

Apply for medicine through ‘Extra’

And learn how

But my confidence failed me

And I didn’t think I’d get in

So I applied for Pharmacology

To see what that might bring

The intention was to study that

And move on to Medicine

Then to Research

Having learnt every medication

I applied through ‘Extra’ with fierce

Dedication

I got an Unconditional Offer

Probably due to my tutor’s review

And Distinction

So here’s to Kings and what ensued

September 2009

So you know the time

I was in the lab

Learning chemistry and the rest

I got distracted by hockey playing for every team

I felt like they’d lost track

I was losing my dream

Medicine is not an art

It’s a science

Maybe my brain’s not wired that way

I went to hockey and continued to play

For the 1st’s and the 2nds

Every team when they needed a player

I was a committed sportswoman

And determined to be a stayer

But the amount of time spent on nutrition

It was a joke

I thought to myself

Decided to change courses

To Nutrition or Psychiatric Nursing

It was early 2010

Having just witnessed a recession in full flow

There were medic protests on the go

Due to their underpay

I started to think about my course

If I was to do Pharmacology then Medicine then Research

I’d be £100k in debt

A life full of hospitals

Would I be inept?

And I was losing faith in their medicine

This was not Primum Non Nocere

What I was learning

My story inside me was totally burning

So I left Kings College London

After only a year

And I went to Spain with my niece

And friends of my brother’s

But having hard stopped the 5mg of Abilify

I wasn’t giving myself a chance

I had forgotten the Diazepam

Which helped me sleep

Went three sleepless nights

And started to see double

Played tennis with George

Debated with Zac

Trying to keep it together

How were they to know

I was totally losing track

I got back to London as high as a kite

My mother saw it in my eyes

As she always does

I was determined to go off and see Sophia

But with very little sleep

I was losing my mind

Lack of it affects us in different ways

But if I don’t sleep

My mind will certainly stray

It starts with daydreaming

And then I start to go

Up to the heavens

No longer on earth

My family try to reach me

But I’m not in my body

Once I was catatonic

And I can tell you

It wasn’t funny

So back to Queen Mary’s it was time to go

I hadn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks

Skinny eight stone

I went down on the scales so low

01:47 13th September 2010

My fourth admission

And my third section

How else were they to get their drugs in me

I would simply still never let them

Give them voluntarily to me

So back to the drawing board

What was I to do?

Take them to tribunal

Or commit to Abilify?

I had my reservations

But was willing to give it another try

So I ripped up my section

So they changed it to three

Did I care?

Not at that point

I just returned their stare

Dr Howlett

Academic but limited in thought

My gift taught me she’d passed

But couldn’t see outside the box

She’ll never understand any of us

That’s the key to our locks

You see to understand madness

Takes a certain type of mind

A bit like a method actor

You have to stand right beside

Learn all of their mannerisms

Childhood and genes

There’s a spiritual aspect

Past lives too

But if you don’t believe in those

You only get one life

If you’re one of those

Then don’t just stare down a test tube

With chemicals

Learn from the indigenous

The ancient, the wisdom

The forgotten medicine

You really need to observe and listen

Without judgement

Doctors are taught they’re God’s greatest gifts

But the best ones you’ll find are humble in thought

For the medically unexplained symptoms

What you were not taught

Is where you’ll find the answers to

The body and the mess

The world’s gone insane

Are you surprised

The sensitive have a delicate brain

They’re all different

Unique in every way

But like something I wrote

‘Every Combination’

I was determined to find the answers

Through no less than meditation

Channeling wisdom but still reading books

There are forgotten methods

We learn from one another

Western medicine with all its greatness

Has a lot to improve on

We have a lot to learn and remember

A little humility and thinking outside the box

Will get you a lot further

Than selling lies like Abilifies

I waited out the section

Doing headstands and yoga all the time

Decided to take Abilify

Just so they’d let me out

Went to my friend’s wedding

And put on a pout

Tati and Sophie were there

Having visited me on every admission

True friends are the best and I never forget

Those who followed me or put me on a pedestal

But the ones who are there for you when your chips are down

You’re lying in the gutter

You know who you are

And I’ll stand by you forever

No matter what journey my life takes

I know my true friends

And I know the fakes

So the story continues

I trained hard and got a job at a sports club with a pool in Wimbledon

Taught aqua aerobics, aerobics and took an Evergreens class

Training ladies over the age of seventy

I loved that generation so full of vigour and verve

The most qualified personal trainer on the floor

I built up my personal training clients

Kept an eye on the score

Working out holistic individual a programme

Including nutrition, cardio and weights

I certainly gave a damn

Making little tweaks to suit their individual bodies and metabolisms

Psychology plays a big part

There’s a sensitive key to that art

I helped one guy gain the weight and muscle tone he desired

And another American lady lose twenty pounds

Job satisfaction

With interaction

Shone through

I started doing massages

At the property company I used to work for on Fridays

I had come off the Olanzapine after six months of being prescribed

I felt like some part of me had died

But continued medication free

Completely free to be

Gaining my figure back, my selling tool

To do my job and what was required

No longer cloudy or mired

To be successful

Plentiful in numbers

I sorted my hours to be consistent every day

12-4pm

And trained my PT clients around that time

To be honest I felt fine

So as not to disrupt my sleep cycle

Fall off my bicycle

So to speak

No early starts or late nights

I ate six small meals a day

Little bites

Got my metabolism to work quick

Sped up my running, tick

So that went well

But then a friend of mine who can be up and down

Encouraged me to quit my job and travel through Africa

It was tempting and I should have carried on

But after a few years I was done to move on

I left all that I had created and worked for at the sports company

But never went to Africa to travel the land

I think the Gods had something else planned

I lost my way

Needed to pray

But the symptoms were returning

And my poor parents couldn’t cope

They tried everything and continued hope

But I fell to my feet with the illness

Needed confession and a church I remember saying

But little did I know the powers at be and what they were playing

So to my first voluntary admission

They tried to drug me and make a commission

Without diagnosis yet

Please don’t forget

You can’t leave these wards without a diagnosis

What a pathetic prognosis

But SchizoAffective Disorder seemed to fit

I didn’t like the bracket one little bit

I met a guy named Noel

Who is still a friend to this day

Just spoke to him on the phone

I learn from him

And he’s never one to moan

He was like a pharmaceutical dictionary

Knew every medication under the sun

I’d never quite come across a brain like this

Always drawn to scholarly intelligence

He was studious, academic

From the school of hard knocks

Known to his friends

As the come back kid

There’s a song in there

Just due to everything Noel did

So in Laurel ward, Queen Mary’s

They pinned me down for the first time

After spitting out their poison

Someone had reported my crime

So they told me to lie down and stay calm

I lay on the ground and said I imagine I’m on a beach

Something in an acting class that came later, the coach would teach

It wasn’t good enough for the nurses

I can see why they were riddled with curses

What came next is not for the faint hearted

Five of them holding me down

One on my left hand

And the other holding my right hand down

There was a metal chain around his wrist

I felt like using my fist

But with my inner Buddhism I would resist

On my delicate bodied stomach

I cherished like a crown

I’d worked hard for my health

What they didn’t understand

It was pure stealth

One on my left ankle and

The other on my right

One pulling my trousers down

The violation is explicit

A patient stayed in the room trying to show his support

What I didn’t realise is, it was Haliperidol

And boy it was foul

They injected me in my buttock and

I tried to pretend it hadn’t happened

I got up quick and ran to the outside space

Jumped on the bench with the patients around me

I went into full pace

I quoted Muhammad Ali

‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’

Moving my feet back and forth

‘No one can touch me’

I declared

All these drugged zombied faces looking up at me

How could I help them?

What the fuck have they done to them?

It was truly plain to see

So I said, I’m gonna pretend that didn’t happen

Nothing went into me and nothing’s in my blood stream

But as the hours turned to minutes

I was losing control of my body and mind

Internally I wanted to scream

The side effects were a devastating mess

My parents came to see me

And couldn’t understand what I was saying no less

My speech was so bloody slurred

My head was to the left twitching

And I dribbled like a baby

‘What have you done to our daughter?’

They cried

Lamb to thy slaughter, I’d metaphorically died

‘She reacted badly to the medication’

They replied

Not seeming to care or be concerned

I learnt over time what needed to be learned

For another patient who had met Princess Diana

And dressed me in a Sari no less

Had been injected with Haliperidol when pregnant

She was permanently disfigured

With her neck to the left

Her lifetime flashed before me

And left me bereft

Over the following days the horrible drug left my body

I continued to spit out their poisonous medication

Practiced my stillness for I could not run

A kind of prisoned meditation

And while the minutes passed like hours

And the hours passed like a day

I continued to sleep and fall to my knees and pray

The psychosis or whatever it was, left me

And through time I came out the other side

I left the ward and the nurse said to me

‘See you’re better now because you’ve taken your medication’

As I did not lie and I could see I was free

I turned to her and I admitted the truth

‘I never took that medication

You’re not gonna steal my youth’

I walked out the ward

Into the freedom

What happened to me there was defining not healing

A bird burdened to flight I had lost my feeling

Damage had been born

And I’d witnessed the greatest tragedy I’d ever come across in my life

Maybe this was my purpose

But the visions told me

This was gonna cause strife

I ran and I ran and I ran and I ran

Gave up smoking which I had started on the ward

They’d taught me to roll

Not something you expect to learn in a hospital

NHS and all its glory

I knew this would be an important part of my story

A patient had also chipped my tooth with a swing

I could have pressed charges

But God knows what havoc that could bring

The two medications that had been in my system

Which I’d come off too quickly

The damage was done

Did I have an illness?

Or had they created a train wreck

After a year I got ill again

And the second admission entailed

Here we go again, completely derailed

A psychiatrist came to our house

And I started to explain the electro magnetic field

He decided I was ill

And against my will

Went back to Queen Mary’s

Rose, an all female ward

This time the only way they could get their drugs into my system

Was to section me

Take away my rights

They didn’t let me be

I quickly learnt about the tribunal

Spoke to my lawyer

And won my case

I could articulate my words

And slow down my pace

So I left again

Hard stopped the meds

A fatal mistake I would only learn at thirty eight

Thanks to my boyfriend and all his research

If you hard stop the meds

You’re bound to get ill

The dopamine blockers and what they do

Mean that if you hard stop them

The dopamine will surge

You’re bound to get psychosis and mania

From the imbalance in the brain

Another admission put me under so much strain

They pinned me down again

This time in my sleep

The laws they were breaking left my

Lithe body shaking

I saw the nurses laughing down the corridor

After injecting a violent patient

Who was carrying her child

I noted their expression

And wrote down the evidence

One day I’ll remind them of their chuckling faces

My word against yours but there are many a patient

Who will support these cases

I’ll finish this chapter there for this rap is long

I haven’t forgotten and I won’t prolong

Remember who you are

And why you’re here

I found my purpose

My story is dear

Heart over head

I can feel it in my bones

The instinct to write

Let it flow from the hands

To the page

And create the iron from the paper

Eminem, Dre, 50, Snoop, Jay

Listening to what they had to say

So here goes

I was born in South London

Went to the local school

No fool

Boarding school at 10 until 17

And then it hit me

All the visions and lack of sleep

To diagnosis

And medication

I swelled up like a fatted pig

With raw red scars on my prized body

Taking my strength, my warrior gene

My brain, my academic ability

I have never felt so limited or so stupid

Olanzapine, what a sorry machine

These pharmaceutical billion dollar lies

Do you not feel or hear their cries?

So powered on

Went to my appointments via motorbike cab

In a mini skirt, I’ll just put it on my tab

Working in a property company as a receptionist

I got the whole company started on recycling

I travelled to work every day bicycling

I turned 18 and got a promotion

But with all the commotion

Going on in my mind and body due to these

Useless drugs

They created an anger and resentment I never had

But you know maybe I was glad

That I had something to fight for

Something to focus on

A massive injustice in the world that gave me a purpose

With no one speaking about it

Because they were all drugged to the eye balls

No steal, no zeal, no feel, many a meal

Do you even know what they do?

Do you know who’s on them?

They don’t even know how the brain works

Thinks it’s separate from the body

What a criminal story

In all their moneyed glory

Running every morning with a fight I’d never felt

Having to continuously increase the holes on my belt

But this fire that I walked with

The working class, the poverty, the black injustice

The unfair trade

The mess that you’d made

Carefully listening to a politics I didn’t agree with

The climate crisis

The drought coming, the fires and the tsunamis

The insanity of their actions

The boardroom meetings and the interactions

I enjoyed my job and the work

Never followed the crowd

Because I was allowed

To think for myself

Follow my dreams

Running through the streams

Of consciousness to the next chapter

I got another promotion to the house department

To be a negotiator and follow my mother’s path

Be the personal trainer or cut myself in half

So to the goals and checklists

It was: write my book, write my album, get my driving license

Get my body back and get that diploma

So I left my job and did an advanced diploma in

Personal training and sports massage therapy

Covering nutrition, pre and post natal, obesity,

Arthritis, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and I got

My distinction

The highest mark they’d ever recorded in the final exam

When you put your mind to it and focus and work

The rewards speak for themselves

But I didn’t do it alone, my aunt tested me and trained me

How to win and pass that anatomy and those case studies

And learn how to find success and truly be

The person I wanted to see

My grandmother cried

And I flied with pride

So here’s to the first chapter and rap song

Boy, why did it take me so long?

To fly, cry, heal, feel, pray, lay, chase, embrace

Scream and dream

Maybe life is an Everest and we need to climb

Listening to the songs and hear the clock chime

Flip it, skip it, trap it and crack it

The whip, the drip, the fright, the flight,

The cage, the rage, the stage and the page

You can all rhyme

It’s not hard to find the time

Resurrection, past lives and incarnations

Infiltrations, destinations, revelations and levitations

If you truly want it

Become it

Without fear

Every year

It’s crystal clear