bernadette
New Member
Hello.
I am writing the following for your advice. I know I have committed an offence and will have to face the consequences in court. I am, however, wondering if or how the following could be taken into account and what legal support I could secure.
As background, I have suffered from having a rare form of cancer called Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (ACC) 3 times over the last decade on the right side of my neck & head, that has resulted in well over a dozen operations & major facial reconstructive surgery, including removal of chunks of my lower right jawbone. Early in 2016 I had a major scare that the cancer had come back for a 4th diagnosis. Fortunately, it was negative but my mental health has been so severely hit by the last decade of cancer battles that things just went out of control in my mind and I've spent the last 18-months since battling major bouts of depression.
Unfortunately, my coping mechanism for these bouts of severe depression is alcohol, usually white wine but sometimes spirits, which of course doesn't help the depression but mental ill health doesn't allow such clear, logic thinking, and whatever your coping mechanism becomes is the only thing you want, the only thing you need.
I've been getting professional support over the last year and this is helping - my bouts of depression are getting less severe in length (early in 2016 they were lasting 4-6 weeks, now it's more like 7-10 days) but still happening regularly, more or less every month.
This professional support was working wonders in late 2016 with a very good 'CPN', community psychiatric nurse, supporting me for several months but she had to refer me onto the next level of support which was a psychiatric service run by the local NHS.
I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist in January 2017, which a close friend attended with me, but the service was shocking and has been very poor since - a critical part of the service is that a 'community care coordinator' is appointed to support me, but now almost 9 months later, this critical care has still not happened. And I've had a total of just one further appointment with the service in this entire 9-month period!
In May 2017, I attended a two-day conference in Leicestershire, 100 miles from home & to which I had driven. During this conference, my mental health began to decline and early on the second day I phoned the NHS psychiatric service for some crisis support. A support worker called me back and started the conversation with the line “well, you sound okay to me” – I was shocked, I had called them for crisis support and that was the professional response I got! I felt so let down & increasingly anxious, I was 100 miles from home alone in a hotel, 100 miles from my husband & children, my call for NHS help was literally thrown back at me, and my only coping mechanism meant purchasing some wine to cope. As logical thinking is impossible, I decided to leave the conference during the second day to find a long-lost relative, my late dad’s brother (my elderly dad had passed away just a few weeks earlier) who I thought lived somewhere in Leicestershire and so set off driving. I got hopelessly lost, increasingly anxious, and sadly my ill mental health meant drinking more wine to cope. My husband was trying to contact me and persuade me to find somewhere to either park up or a hotel to book into, to just stop driving immediately, but I had to keep driving to find this lost relative, I just had to, it was all I could think about. My husband subsequently called Leicestershire police to report me as a missing person who was more than likely driving around in an unfit state. This was a Friday evening back in mid-May, my husband called at around 8pm that evening, and the police eventually found me in the Leicestershire countryside by in the early hours of the next morning and I was arrested for suspected drink-driving.
Due to my major facial surgery as a result of the ACC cancer, I cannot blow into the straw of the breathalyser as my mouth muscles don’t work properly (I cannot drink from a cup or glass without dribbling & I have difficulty eating basic things like a sandwich) so I was taken back to the central custody suite in Leicester for a blood test. The police were most understanding and provided a local mental health crisis team worker to support me the next morning, and he also alerted the mental health crisis team back home (who I was already registered with, of course) to put some home support in place for the next few months. (This home support service is totally separate to the above mentioned poor psychiatric service & is provided by a separate NHS trust in our area i.e. the local psychiatric hospital).
Bizarrely, despite Leicestershire Police saying it would be 3-4 weeks before the blood tests came back, I called them back in late June with my missing persons reference (as that's all I had, no crime reference was provided to me) and despite their own searches on the system, they could not find any evidence of my DD arrest and overnight stay in custody. I was told to call back in late July, which I did, and again despite the staff even contacting the officers involved during my call, they could not find any record of my DD arrest - and in fact, the phone operator told me I was still logged as a missing person from mid-May on their system and said to me "I take it you've been found then!"
All this waiting was affecting my mental health, it was a long and very anxious period waiting & chasing the police for the blood test results and waiting so long for an expected court appearance but I forced myself throughout August to put it to one side, to even hope the police had dropped my case after my phone calls to them for information proved so fruitless! But as expected, a court letter arrived on Friday 1[SUP]st[/SUP] September 2017 with a blood alcohol level from the incident of 21[SUP]st[/SUP] May 2017 and a court date of 21st September in Leicester Magistrates Court.
I am working so hard to overcome my mental health issues, I've got great support from friends & family, and I had just this week started a new part-time job as an enterprise support worker at a local charity. This job is on the other side of the city from home, but I could continue this without a car if I lose my licence as my boss (who knows about all this & is so understanding) has agreed to pick me up & drop me home each day.
For background info, I'm a mum with two young children, one started high school this week, the other is in Year 2 at primary school.
I am in the process of submitting a formal complaint against the local NHS trust responsible for the very poor psychiatric service that has let me down so badly this year, including on the very day I had this DD incident.
Despite securing the new job as mentioned above, over the last three years I have been self-employed but my mental health battles over the last 18-months has meant I’ve only been able to work less than half of this period. This of course means a significant reduction in my income as you don’t get paid when you don’t work when self-employed, and I’ve even lost 2 contracts that I’ve not been able to complete. We’ve subsequently got into significant financial difficulties which, with the help of Step Change, we’re working our way through. This did almost result in losing our home as we didn’t pay the mortgage for almost a whole year until early 2017 so unfortunately paying for legal advice will be impossible.
I am writing the following for your advice. I know I have committed an offence and will have to face the consequences in court. I am, however, wondering if or how the following could be taken into account and what legal support I could secure.
As background, I have suffered from having a rare form of cancer called Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma (ACC) 3 times over the last decade on the right side of my neck & head, that has resulted in well over a dozen operations & major facial reconstructive surgery, including removal of chunks of my lower right jawbone. Early in 2016 I had a major scare that the cancer had come back for a 4th diagnosis. Fortunately, it was negative but my mental health has been so severely hit by the last decade of cancer battles that things just went out of control in my mind and I've spent the last 18-months since battling major bouts of depression.
Unfortunately, my coping mechanism for these bouts of severe depression is alcohol, usually white wine but sometimes spirits, which of course doesn't help the depression but mental ill health doesn't allow such clear, logic thinking, and whatever your coping mechanism becomes is the only thing you want, the only thing you need.
I've been getting professional support over the last year and this is helping - my bouts of depression are getting less severe in length (early in 2016 they were lasting 4-6 weeks, now it's more like 7-10 days) but still happening regularly, more or less every month.
This professional support was working wonders in late 2016 with a very good 'CPN', community psychiatric nurse, supporting me for several months but she had to refer me onto the next level of support which was a psychiatric service run by the local NHS.
I had my first appointment with a psychiatrist in January 2017, which a close friend attended with me, but the service was shocking and has been very poor since - a critical part of the service is that a 'community care coordinator' is appointed to support me, but now almost 9 months later, this critical care has still not happened. And I've had a total of just one further appointment with the service in this entire 9-month period!
In May 2017, I attended a two-day conference in Leicestershire, 100 miles from home & to which I had driven. During this conference, my mental health began to decline and early on the second day I phoned the NHS psychiatric service for some crisis support. A support worker called me back and started the conversation with the line “well, you sound okay to me” – I was shocked, I had called them for crisis support and that was the professional response I got! I felt so let down & increasingly anxious, I was 100 miles from home alone in a hotel, 100 miles from my husband & children, my call for NHS help was literally thrown back at me, and my only coping mechanism meant purchasing some wine to cope. As logical thinking is impossible, I decided to leave the conference during the second day to find a long-lost relative, my late dad’s brother (my elderly dad had passed away just a few weeks earlier) who I thought lived somewhere in Leicestershire and so set off driving. I got hopelessly lost, increasingly anxious, and sadly my ill mental health meant drinking more wine to cope. My husband was trying to contact me and persuade me to find somewhere to either park up or a hotel to book into, to just stop driving immediately, but I had to keep driving to find this lost relative, I just had to, it was all I could think about. My husband subsequently called Leicestershire police to report me as a missing person who was more than likely driving around in an unfit state. This was a Friday evening back in mid-May, my husband called at around 8pm that evening, and the police eventually found me in the Leicestershire countryside by in the early hours of the next morning and I was arrested for suspected drink-driving.
Due to my major facial surgery as a result of the ACC cancer, I cannot blow into the straw of the breathalyser as my mouth muscles don’t work properly (I cannot drink from a cup or glass without dribbling & I have difficulty eating basic things like a sandwich) so I was taken back to the central custody suite in Leicester for a blood test. The police were most understanding and provided a local mental health crisis team worker to support me the next morning, and he also alerted the mental health crisis team back home (who I was already registered with, of course) to put some home support in place for the next few months. (This home support service is totally separate to the above mentioned poor psychiatric service & is provided by a separate NHS trust in our area i.e. the local psychiatric hospital).
Bizarrely, despite Leicestershire Police saying it would be 3-4 weeks before the blood tests came back, I called them back in late June with my missing persons reference (as that's all I had, no crime reference was provided to me) and despite their own searches on the system, they could not find any evidence of my DD arrest and overnight stay in custody. I was told to call back in late July, which I did, and again despite the staff even contacting the officers involved during my call, they could not find any record of my DD arrest - and in fact, the phone operator told me I was still logged as a missing person from mid-May on their system and said to me "I take it you've been found then!"
All this waiting was affecting my mental health, it was a long and very anxious period waiting & chasing the police for the blood test results and waiting so long for an expected court appearance but I forced myself throughout August to put it to one side, to even hope the police had dropped my case after my phone calls to them for information proved so fruitless! But as expected, a court letter arrived on Friday 1[SUP]st[/SUP] September 2017 with a blood alcohol level from the incident of 21[SUP]st[/SUP] May 2017 and a court date of 21st September in Leicester Magistrates Court.
I am working so hard to overcome my mental health issues, I've got great support from friends & family, and I had just this week started a new part-time job as an enterprise support worker at a local charity. This job is on the other side of the city from home, but I could continue this without a car if I lose my licence as my boss (who knows about all this & is so understanding) has agreed to pick me up & drop me home each day.
For background info, I'm a mum with two young children, one started high school this week, the other is in Year 2 at primary school.
I am in the process of submitting a formal complaint against the local NHS trust responsible for the very poor psychiatric service that has let me down so badly this year, including on the very day I had this DD incident.
Despite securing the new job as mentioned above, over the last three years I have been self-employed but my mental health battles over the last 18-months has meant I’ve only been able to work less than half of this period. This of course means a significant reduction in my income as you don’t get paid when you don’t work when self-employed, and I’ve even lost 2 contracts that I’ve not been able to complete. We’ve subsequently got into significant financial difficulties which, with the help of Step Change, we’re working our way through. This did almost result in losing our home as we didn’t pay the mortgage for almost a whole year until early 2017 so unfortunately paying for legal advice will be impossible.
