I trust that my surgeon is a good surgeon but I feel I am in the dark about the precise nature of my condition. I feel I have not got very much in the way of answers except generalities. I did not see the surgeon before or after the operation and did not have the operation explained to me. Besides what I am seeing which is the overwhelming cause of my anxiety, the lack of information from the get go has upset me. I feel that a lot of consultants do not take the mental well being of patients into account very much and that the patient almost has no right to have an insight into information that is extremely important to them. It could be that they have been experts for so long that stuff is obvious to them and they’ve forgotten to comprehend that patients need everything ladybirded to them. And there IS a mismatch between the way a lot of medical people perceive success and the way a patient perceives success - particularly in relation to this thing. What a surgeon perceives as success with retinal detachment IS often different to what the patient perceives as success. I cannot perceive success when I feel I’m looking at some things through cellophane. I have trust in medical science but I do not have absolute trust in medical people and what they say, or do not say.
Take care of yourself @Cheasty. Keep the communication channels open with this forum maybe if it is easier than communicating with others in the real world. You are respected and wanted here so just sign in when you are down and we will do our best for you
Look lad, I am nobody you should be listening to. We don’t engage that much on here, I enjoy the fact though that every now and then you pass a little comment about Senna vs Prost, Prost vs Mansell, Schumacher vs Hill etc. That’s our thing. Other fellas wouldn’t get it.
I made bits of my eye a few years back. Got a sliothar in the eye during warm up. I’m lucky, vision not affected, a little bit blurrier, sin é. I peel the eyelid carefully off my eye every other morning now and so far I am in the clear. It could hurt like fuck randomly every now and then for the first few months, no longer though. Anyways, keep chatting to us here lad, no matter what you do. Even as a semi fictional INTERNET handle, there’ll always be someone glad to see you.
I hope your eye stays as healthy as can be.
Sound brah, all the best with yours too.
We are all rooting for you.
Yesterday I was told by a staff member that the eye would never get back to what it was. I was told that I would have to get used to what I am seeing. That “one day you will cease to notice the double vision”. Then the consultant said my macula was perfect. He mentioned “two years”. My epiretinal membrane is not on the macula. I am told it is not the reason for my distorted vision. I am told prisms will likely not work in correcting my double vision. There is a thing called an Amsler grid which is used to demonstrate metamorphopsia. It is like graph paper. When I look at it, it, every line is crooked and distorted. The whole thing is bent five degrees to the right. The word metamorphopsia has taken on a terror for me. It’s like a monster. It’s like that pane of glass in the Superman films where the baddies were banished into space, trapped in that pane of glass. My eye is like that. My life is trapped in a cellophane wrapped pane of glass called metamorphopsia, drifting endlessly into the black of infinity.
I walked the whole way back into town from the Clinic, along the footpath beside the main bus lane into Galway,. The GoBus and the City Link bus and the local double decker buses all sped past me, about six feet to my right. I thought about it, it was in my mind the whole way, but only as a thought experiment. Like a windy corner forward, I was afraid of the intense physical pain of a bus demolishing me. When I reached town I went to the pub and drank about nine pints of Guinness. I’m hungover. A friend of mine took and hour or more out from his work - he works as a caretaker in NUIG, and came to Hughes’s with my brother and drank Coca Cola as I drank Guinness. His father took his own life sixteen years ago. He told me not to take anti-depressants. He says they ruined his father. I do not know where to turn. I do not know what to do. Every person I talk to, every person I converse with online, I put up a sort of front. Inside I am dying. Everybody tells me things will get better. When? When will they get better? I do not class “coping” as getting better. I cannot cope. I want to be lobotomised.
I’ve already rung Pieta House today. The woman on the other end of the line said I should go to A and E. I will not go to A and E. I rang orthoptics in UCHG. They said I could ask the Clinic to send on my case notes. I sort of said I’d do that. I am too embarrassed to do that. Yesterday I promised people I would ring the GP. I did not ring the GP. I am running out of will.
Today my mindset is moving another step towards accepting that I will die soon. I do not want to die, but I think it has to be this way because the alternative is too painful. Oh Jesus I’m a pathetic, pitiful sight today.
There is nothing any of you can say to make it better. Whether I die soon or not, my life feels over. I am sorry.
You need to take the medicine. If any of us on here wrote the above, you would be saying the exact same thing. You are not thinking rationally. You need to trust the experts on this.
While I feel for your friend and his loss, I’m not sure his advice is the answer here. His father was a tragic case but I’m certain there was more going on that just the medicine. I dont see what you have to lose in taking it given your last paragraph. You need to trust the experts, rightly or wrongly at this point.
Fact. Talk easy to yourself and find the Cheasty that would have the advice.
Youre not thinking rationally. You know this… Take the medication to help you think a bit more rationally.
You’d want to get a fucking grip of yourself for fuck sake. It’s one eye, that could come back. There’s lads with terminal cancer have a better outlook than you. Think of all the possibilities ahead of you. Don’t kill yourself over a few blurred lines.
I have taken one anti-depressant tablet this minute.
Would you consider chopping them up and doing a quick line, chased by a flagon of cider?
Don’t kill yourself obviously but if you do, please do it in a way where you don’t throw yourself in front of a vehicle and ruin someone elses life.
Get yourself to a and e, straight away
@Cheasty , have you taken the medicine yet? if not, you have to
go to A&E please, you have a lot to give still, you are underselling yourself, you are one of the most intelligent posters here, you could use that intelligence for the greater good & to help people
You’re looking for instant results to what is likely to br a short to mid-term issue. You are correct to take the anti-depressant but you need to go to A&E immediately. The lads above are giving you the sensible, practical next step to take TODAY. We’ll worry about tomorrow later. A&E now.
How you today?
Jesse Lingard: ‘Nobody really knew about my struggles. We’re all human’
David Hytner
Jesse Lingard has admitted he did not want to be on the pitch at times due to his poor mental health.
Jesse Lingard has admitted he did not want to be on the pitch at times due to his poor mental health. Photograph: Craig Brough/Reuters
Nottingham Forest’s attacker opens up on depression during lost period at Manchester United and how lockdown helped him reset
David Hytner
@DaveHytner
Mon 14 Nov 2022 10.00 GMT
The best way to sum up how bad things were for Jesse Lingard was that he had become everything he is not. The fun-loving, extrovert Nottingham Forest midfielder did not want to leave the house. The boy who has always embraced the ball and the game with everything he has did not want to be on the pitch. He was even drinking. Anything to escape the bleakness of his reality.
“I was on autopilot,” Lingard says. “I was having conversations with people and I was just like: ‘Yeah. OK. Yeah.’ Nothing would register. It would go in one ear and out the other. I was numb and I wanted to be in that numb state where I didn’t have to feel anything.”
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This is what depression looks like, the insidious condition that has tormented Lingard’s mum, Kirsty, for longer than either of them want to dwell on. Lingard says she has been “depressed from when I was born”, often medicated and in bed; exhausted, overwhelmed, the curtains pulled shut. And it is what took hold of him in 2019 when he was a Manchester United player, gripping with increasing ferocity in the months leading up to the first coronavirus lockdown in March 2020.
Lingard says that rock bottom came in an FA Cup tie at Derby at the beginning of that month. He had played the 90 minutes and United won 3-0, but he was not really there. He had not been for some time. As he boarded the team bus afterwards, a couple of United fans hurled sustained and deeply unpleasant abuse at him.
They did not know what was going on in Lingard’s life. When his mum was admitted to a facility in London in 2019 for treatment, Lingard’s younger brother, Jasper, and younger sister, Daisy, came to live with him. He had them there for “longer than six months”, looking after them, making sure that they got to school and all the rest. As he worried about his mum and felt his siblings missing her, his well-being crashed.
It is unlikely that the abusive supporters would have cared. To them Lingard was a highly paid footballer, living the dream at his boyhood club, and so he had to perform. Full stop. But Lingard wants to open up on his turmoil, perhaps to explain what was a lost period for him at United and, more importantly, to raise awareness and understanding of the issues around poor mental health. It is why he has collaborated on a documentary with Channel 4 – Untold: The Jesse Lingard Story, which airs on Tuesday.
“I just felt so much scrutiny, especially after the Derby game and I was getting abuse as I got on the bus,” Lingard says. “I can normally take it but sometimes it gets to a point where it’s like: ‘Ahh, I can’t even be arsed doing this any more.’
“Nobody really knew about my struggles off the pitch so they think: ‘You’re a footballer, you live in a nice house, you’ve got money, you can deal with anything.’ But when it’s someone’s health and well being – it’s a different situation. We’re all human.
“It was difficult around that moment in time. It was probably [for] months. I didn’t want to play in case I did badly and there was more scrutiny. Football is my happy place but at that time, I couldn’t really put myself in that situation. I was playing and I felt like I was nonexistent. The games were just passing me by. When it’s not working out on the pitch, you try to work that bit harder to do well in the next match but my mind wasn’t there to do that. I wanted to stop completely and have a break and just be at home. I didn’t want to be on the pitch and have all that scrutiny. You lose a ball and it’s more pressure.”
Jesse Lingard celebrates after Nottingham Forest’s win over Crystal Palace.
Lingard is back to enjoying his football on the pitch with Nottingham Forest. Photograph: John Clifton/Action Images/Reuters
Lingard paints a vivid picture of the loneliness he felt on the field, one man in front of thousands, the collective stare laser-like and utterly unforgiving. He holds his hands out and brings them slowly towards his head. “You feel like everything is closing in on you,” he says. “All the weight is on your shoulders. You feel closed up. You don’t want the ball, you are hiding away from the ball. That’s never been me.”
There is a scene in the documentary where Lingard is videoed by his elder brother, Louie, lying on the sofa, completely still, eyes blank. He was like that for a few minutes, apparently, and it did not sound like an isolated moment.
“Just autopilot,” Lingard says. “Coming home, lying on the sofa and staring. When I look at that now, I don’t know what was in my mind but it must have been racing. Literally, I just wanted to sit at home and drink a little bit – try and take the pain away. I don’t do that, normally. I’m not really a big drinker. Of course, here and there on nights out, whatever. But sitting at home and drinking before bed … that’s when I knew I was in a bad situation.
“It wasn’t drinking to excess. It was just little bits through the week and stuff like that. I look back and think: ‘What was I doing?’ It was probably just to be in a mind frame where I’ve got no pain, no cares. Because I didn’t have anyone to bounce off or feed off, I resorted to that.”
Lingard did confide in the United doctor and also Ole Gunnar Solskjær, the team’s manager at the time. They were sympathetic and it helped. But what he really needed was to get away from the game. He makes the point that he never wanted to quit for good, just have a break for a month, two months or “whatever it would have been”. So lockdown, perversely, had an upside for him.
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Lingard took delivery from Louie of a stack of old videos of him doing well for United at youth level and England at the 2018 World Cup, when he was a fixture in Gareth Southgate’s starting XI on the run to the semi-final – probably the highlight of his career. They reminded him of why he had got to the top in the first place and he was able to reset.
Jesse Lingard before an FA Cup tie against Derby County
Lingard’s lowest moment was during an FA Cup tie for Manchester United against Derby.
Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images/Reuters
“If lockdown didn’t happen, I don’t know what situation I’d be in because I needed that rest to really look at myself again, to reignite that fire in my belly and work out what was wrong with me,” Lingard says. “It was a turning point. I watched those videos and thought: ‘I should never doubt myself.’ I started training every day, going for runs and making sure that I was one of the fittest going back to United after lockdown.”
The knocks continued to come but now he was able to deal with them. Lingard barely played for United in the first half of the following season but when he got a loan to West Ham in January 2021, he caught fire, scoring nine Premier League goals for them, although it was not enough to earn a place in the England squad for the European Championship. He was also able to stay strong last season when he started only three games for United and the club blocked a January loan to Newcastle.
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If Lingard describes his Euro omission as a “down moment; I expected to go with the form I was in”, he knew in his heart of hearts that he would not get the call for the World Cup in Qatar. He has simply not started well enough at Forest after his free transfer from United in July, only scoring his first goal and registering his first assist in last Wednesday’s Carabao Cup win over Tottenham. Lingard, though, is back to being himself and he can also be proud of the courage that his mum showed to talk so candidly in the documentary.
“I guarantee that many, many people will be going through depression, especially in football, which is such a mentally draining sport,” Lingard says. “For me, it was about opening up and speaking about it. You’re never going to be judged because you’re a man and you’re talking about mental health and your feelings. You’re not soft for it.”
Untold: The Jesse Lingard Story airs Tuesday 15 November on All 4
What united done to him was nothing short of disgraceful. Thank god Forest saved him.