When lightning strikes...

Just before Christmas, Niall Breslin, more commonly known as Bressie, the heartthrob and generally nice guy from The Blizzards and more recently a judge on The Voice of Ireland, broadcast his new series aimed at getting people to focus on their mental health by overcoming physical fitness challenges.

‘Bressie’s Ironmind’ is precisely the kind of programme that is needed on mainstream State TV to remove the stigma, across the age groups, around the topic of mental health, depression and those who are at risk of suicide.

Ireland is a terrible country for fostering the mentality of ‘If I don’t mention it, then it’s not happening and the problem will simply go away’.

This couldn’t be further from the truth – just like a harsh word can mutilate into a cutting monologue if left to fester, ill feelings can manifest into depression, mental ill health or even suicidal ideation, if they are left to bubble away under the surface.

This is one of the things that Bressie aimed to address with his new series and his frank and open way of talking about his own difficulties is honestly quite refreshing, not only on television and in the media, but in a new series, aimed at people of all ages from all walks of life.

The first episode introduced us to Jade, Colm, Mark and Orla.

“This challenge was one that I took on myself [...] it’s not a physical challenge but a mental challenge,” Bressie explained and the idea is to arm people with coping tools for life’s more difficult moments.

Using the expertise of health and fitness experts, as well as those who specialise in mental health, mindfulness and wellness, Bressie pushed people to their maximum without going too far or risking injury, while also using exercise and physical fitness to combat the onset of mental problems and issues.

The stories of the four people who took part in the show are very real and quite raw and they will no doubt have helped people to relate to the show and will perhaps help them to shine a light on a problem they are having themselves that they hadn’t given due consideration to before now.

The hope is that this will get people talking openly about their feelings, emotional well-being and to talk to people if they are struggling. Suicide is something that can be prevented, but that cannot be done if we are not open, transparent and talking to each other about what is going on inside our heads.

Problems will not go away if they are brushed under the carpet – instead they will manifest themselves in physical  symptoms such as bowel problems or IBS, headaches, vomiting, self-mutilation in the form of pulling out hair or mildly hurting oneself, as well as things like putting yourself down, having low self-esteem or even exhibiting signs of self-loathing.

If you broke your leg, you would not hesitate in telling somebody what had happened, how much pain you are in and what the recovery time will be.

On the polar opposite end of the scale, if you were feeling down or were having an off day, a lot of Irish people in particular, tend to hide those feelings and feel ashamed.

As people get older and particularly people of my generation (late twenties and almost thirty, well I'm 28, I’ll begrudgingly admit), they begin to realise that everyone else is the same as them.

Everyone worries, everyone stresses out over ridiculous things and everyone has those irrational fears and woes.

It is how we deal with those problems that set us apart and makes some people the strong people and others those who crumble and fold under the pressure and strain.

Dealing with arthritis at a young age

When people hear the word arthritis, it generally conjures up images of an elderly man or woman with gnarled hands and stiff joints - at the very mention of the word, the mental association is automatically made between it and old people. 

As a general rule of thumb, people don't think of someone young, active and at the peak of their life. 

This is where my story comes in and more often than not, when I tell people that I have arthritis, they are firstly shocked and then intrigued, because they want to know my secret - how do I look so healthy, how did they not know that I suffered from this terrible affliction and why does such a horrible disease affect someone so young?

I am 27-years-old, but my journey with arthritis goes back quite a few years. To start off, I will say this - I have Psoriatic Arthritis, I've had it since I was 18, it's genetic and because of the disease modification drugs that I inject into my stomach each week, it will never get worse, thankfully. 

Because of this, believe it or not, I am quite lucky, because if I had Rheumatoid Arthritis, by now my career would be a distant dream, getting around, either on foot or by car, would be almost impossible, my joints would be visibly changed from, say ten years ago and I would be considering life in a wheelchair with limited mobility, strength and range of movement, as a fate that would be, sadly, not too far away.   

Luckily (and I know that it seems bizarre to say this when I have a terrible, life limiting, auto-immune disease), this is the best of the types of arthritis to have and for that, I am truly thankful and grateful. 

I have had psoriasis, mainly on my scalp and around my ears, since I was about nine-years-old and when I was 18, I started to develop problems when walking uphill. A doctor in my GP's clinic thought it was the way I walked and I was given orthotics, which, as you can imagine, made little or no difference to my arthritis. 
 
Walking uphill or across challenging terrain was getting more difficult and I seemed to get out of breath quickly, despite the fact that I was a weensy size 6  and quite fit (I know, unhealthily small, but I am only 4"10, so I didn't seem out of proportion) and when I was in third year in college in the University of Limerick, my life was forever altered. It is worth noting that all of this started around the time of my Leaving Certificate, so possibly the most stressful time of my life, or at least the start of it. 

I had gone on Erasmus in Norway and just a month or so before I was due to return home for Christmas, I woke up one morning and two of my toes were purple and looked like tiny cocktail sausages (sounds odd I know). Having a history of sleep walking, I presumed that I had violently kicked the wall in my sleep and broken my toes, so I got an X-Ray, which revealed that there were no broken bones. 

A Norwegian girl who I was friends with then mentioned her own Psoriatic Arthritis and after a feverish bout of Googling, I realised that the symptoms were all too familiar and alarm bells were ringing loud and clear. 

Upon my return home, my own GP was quite concerned and I was sent to a rheumatologist, where I was diagnosed and put on a course of treatment. 

They started me on steroids to halt the acceleration of the disease and methotrexate tablets, but I was soon put on Metoject and Enbrel injections, which I had to administer to myself as injections once a week. 

I am a queasy person and the first time I injected, I was alone in the house and I can quite honestly say, it was awful. Thankfully, I am now rather used to it, even blase to be honest and the only major downsides are that the injections make me feel nauseous and now, after years of injecting, I have horrible lumps and scars all around my stomach near the injection sites. 

Because I was so young at the point of diagnosis, unfortunately for me, I seemed to present the consultants with an exciting medical opportunity and for many years, my dosage was toyed with in an effort to study the effects and see how far my disease would spread - I was their guinea pig and the fact that my life had to be put on hold every time they played with my medication didn't seem to bother them. 

This meant that even though the arthritis originally only affected my toes, ankles, wrists and fingers, it now affects all of my joints and is most severe in my spine, hips and knees. 

Five years ago, arthritis was something in the background of my life, now it is to the forefront and is a pivotal consideration for most of my major life decisions and the tiny trivial everyday things, like what size handbag I use and how far I park my car away from the shops. 

When my arthritis flares up (sadly, more often that you'd think and this intensifies if I'm under pressure or particularly stressed), things that people twice my age take for granted, like being able to hold a mug of tea or coffee, opening a jar or carrying a bag, all present themselves as mammoth tasks, that not only seem very difficult, but are often, genuinely impossible. 

Because my arthritis isn't really visible, this has led to awkward public situations where older people, who are often perfectly fit and have better joints than I do, have asked me to give up my seat on a bus or train, give me a dirty look if I take an available seat while they are queuing or even complain if I get table service in a restaurant that doesn't typically offer that service - this is why I will never judge someone without knowing the facts, you have no idea what someone is going through or what kind of inner battle they are fighting. 

Whenever I am going through a flare up, I feel useless, pathetic and feeble enough without someone I don't know making me feel worse. 

Sometimes the pain is so bad that I can't untie my own shoelaces, I can't open a bottle of water or even hold my own book to read a few chapters - this is the reality of having arthritis - it is horrible and demeaning and I genuinely wouldn't wish it on my own worst enemies. 

Luckily, I have a fantastic support network around me, with wonderful friends, family and my boyfriend - without them, I really don't know how I would manage and even from a mental health point of view, I think it would be impossible to stay positive without their kindness, support and help, with even the smallest of things. 

They are patient, understanding and loving - sometimes it's driving me somewhere if I'm too sore to get behind the wheel and other times, it's just giving me a hug when I'm a bit down, but no matter what it is, it's knowing that they are there, behind me, to catch me if I fall (literally or metaphorically) or knowing that they will wipe away my tears when I can't muster up the energy to smile and the tears flow relentlessly. 

I am quite open about having arthritis, I mean I don't make a huge deal about it, but I don't hide it either and what I've noticed lately is that my openness has spurred other people on to talk about their own diagnosis, because sadly a lot of people do associate the disease with a deep rooted shame. 

I hope that this entry makes people think before they judge someone, that they might find out what's going on before making assumptions and take somebody's inner battles into consideration before making what they think is a light or witty remark, which could really hurt someone who is already feeling vulnerable.

Five little words...the impact of online bullying

I love you so much, you are everything to me, will you get milk please? These are all simple examples of small sentences of just five words, which might make you feel loved, happy or useful, but recently, I saw the impact that just five words can have, when I was a victim of online bullying, as I was trolled on Twitter. 

I entered a Ryanair competition to win free flights and had to post a picture of myself with my partner and where we wanted to go. 

Even though I use social media a lot and have quite an active online presence, I thought about this competition first and made sure my boyfriend was comfortable with it, but once the possibility of a free flight was put out there, he was grand with it. 

Naturally, I chose a photograph where we both look nice and I happened to have one that had been taken at a family barbecue by professional photographer Eddie Hennessy in Cork. 

Within minutes of posting the entry, a Twitter user @celticpaddy2 had commented "@quinnsandra go to Weight Watchers first" - it's worth noting that he had just 13 followers and I have more than 1,200, but as soon as I read the comment I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. 

I didn't even know how to react, but I immediately blocked him and reported the comment as abuse to Twitter. As the day wore on, I felt worse and worse - I had a pain in my chest, I felt sick and I kept crying (almost hysterically). 

For anyone who knows me, they know that these are not my usual reactions if someone says something a little harsh to me. I come from a big family and would consider myself to be quite thick skinned and resilient, but I was shocked by how much those five little words had affected me. 

In the photo I chose, you actually cannot even see my body, so I realised pretty quickly that he had made the comment simply for the purpose of being nasty and cruel, without any true cause or justification behind the remark (not that a mean comment is ever justified). 

A quick perusal of his Twitter page also showed that he had gone on a spate of hurling abusive and mean comments at people he didn't know, who, like me, had innocently entered an online competition. 

Quite often when I put things online, I am not only expecting interaction and engagement from the public, but I invite it. This was different – it was a personal photograph and was, quite honestly, one of the most innocent online interactions I've had. 

I've been working as a journalist for the past five years and as someone who has covered court, personal and neighbour related disputes and a number of controversial issues - I have been on the receiving end of my fair share of abuse, but it was the unexpected nature of this comment that got to me. 

It was cruel, nasty, unprovoked and unwarranted - I think I would have been less shocked if someone had actually walked up to me and slapped me across the face. 

While I got over the comment itself quite quickly, as I didn't think he put all that much thought into it, what got to me was that this one comment had deeply affected me. I’m a self-assured and confident young woman, happy with my own self-image and it made me consider how someone more vulnerable might react to such an attack. 

What if it had been said to someone with low self-esteem issues or someone who was on the cusp of a mental breakdown - those five words could have been the catalyst to tip them over the edge and cause them to do something drastic.  

The other side of this incident is that because it was online, there was no recourse for me, aside from blocking the user. If someone said something nasty to my face, I could just turn around and tell them that it wasn't acceptable for them to speak to me like that. 

It was a classic case of a 'keyboard warrior', where someone made a comment from behind their laptop or smart phone and knew that there wouldn't be any consequences. 

Following on from the comment, that night I contacted every radio station, television show and newspaper I knew and by the next morning, my phone was on fire with people hoping to talk to me about it. 

I spoke to Patricia Messinger on C103 about it on Wednesday, February 11 and was really impressed not only by her empathy, but the way she dealt with the topic, as the incident had ironically happened on Internet Safety Day. 

I then spoke to Neil Prendeville on Red FM on the Thursday, there was a front page article in The Avondhu, my own paper on the same day and The Evening Echo ran a story on it on the Saturday. Then I was in Dublin speaking to Matt Cooper on The Last Word on Today FM about it on Tuesday, February 17. 

I felt sick, couldn't eat and didn't sleep for days - I was quite thrown by the physical manifestation of the emotional turmoil that one comment had caused. 

It was a horrible thing to happen, but it was just one comment – some people have to cope with this kind of abuse on an ongoing basis, which I can only imagine eats away at them and breaks down their resolve piece by piece. 

On the other hand, in a way I'm kind of glad, in a weird way, that it happened to me, because I became quite pro-active and used the incident, vile and disgusting as it was, as a catalyst to prompt discussion about online safety, cyber bullying and what can be done to get people to stop and think before they post something online. 

Hopefully nothing like this will ever happen to me again, but I feel like the experience has made me stronger and it is something that I will probably draw upon at other points in my life. 

I will not let someone I don't know make me feel worthless or small – I am a strong, successful professional and I do not need to let a stranger impact negatively on my life.