Can I join in?
I posted a little on the uni threads last year, but have only lurked this time round. Dd, who suffers from chronic fatigue, and has done since she was 13, took the opportunity to defer her uni place at Durham last summer to start this year. The gap year gave her breathing space, and she seemed to enjoy the first few months. I guess it was the first time for many years that she was not under stress or trying to keep up with her work, despite 50 to 75% attendance only at school through GCSEs and A levels. We let her relax, although she picked up a fairly lucrative tutoring job for a few hours a week. Since January however, I guess when uni became "this year" she became increasingly anxious about , well, everything. She agreed to see a counsellor each week and had regular appointments with her GP but avoided any travels with her friends also on gap years or other "new" experiences outside her comfort zone. To her old friends and family, however, she was skilled at pretending nothing was wrong, and I think she kept up that pretence with her doctors too.
come August and results and the confirming paperwork coming from Durham her anxiety and stress levels rocketed. There were tears most days, ostrich like burying of her head in the sand on others. I quietly went about gathering stuff for uni. I lurked on here and persuaded myself and her that everyone was feeling anxious and scared. However in September she had a severe relapse of her chronic fatigue, and was sofa bound for two weeks. This really scared her, wondering how she would cope if that happened at uni. She had several near panic attacks, cried often, and got herself in an awful state. She finally opened up to her Gp and counsellor who both commented that she did not have to go to university, or certainly not this year. Her Gp ( rather unhelpfully in my view) said that maybe DD should consider anti anxiety medication ( having advised against it before) but said it wasn't the right time to do it if she was moving to a new place where the possible side effects couldn't easily be monitored.
DD has always felt that she has to go to uni because that's what everyone does, she cannot think of anything she wants to do instead, she feels she is too old for another gap year.....
So, we went ahead with going to Durham and dropped her off at the weekend. She cried practically the whole way up ( and it is a long way) , had chest pains couldn't breathe etc. fortunately we met her best friend's boyfriend when getting the parking permit which helped with the initial move in, but she cried throughout the whole unpacking time, muttering that she couldn't do this repeatedly. In view of her chronic fatigue she was placed in the quieter residential block of her college, but found that this meant that two of the five rooms on her corridor are occupied by third years. So limiting the corridor friendship potential....we met with the senior tutor to discuss how they could help - but the assurances about extra time, and visits from welfare to bring her food if she was ill, and the need to see her new Gp, counsellor, uni disability service, course tutors, which were meant to help her, quite overwhelmed her. She slept not a wink until 4.30 this morning so is exhausted today. I stayed up in Durham and she came to see me post her talks today in floods of tears, begging to be allowed to come home. She is so utterly utterly miserable .
What on earth do I do for the best? Her anxiety is best dealt with by immersing herself in distracting activities, but her physical health doesn't allow her to do this on a sustained basis and new situations add to the anxiety....