A few weeks ago I had a conversation with my therapist that went something like this:
Me: [crying my eyes out and using up all her Kleenex]
Her: “I don’t think your meds are working… I’m going to suggest something to you and see if you have a response. Well, you’re going to have a response, so I’m just going to say it and then we can deal with your response.”
Me: [waiting. I think I know what she’s going to say.]
Her: “I think you should see a psychiatrist.”
I have a response, all right. But it’s probably not what she’s expecting. It’s not, “Hell, no!” or “Thanks but no thanks” or even “I’m not sure what I think about that.”
My response is, “Yes, please. (Can I go right now?)”
We talk about it some more and I tell her about how I actually requested a referral to a psychiatrist a year ago – one that was recommended by a friend who’s a nurse – but I didn’t “meet the criteria”. The same criteria, incidentally, that prevented me from getting in to see this very same counsellor (pregnant or a baby under 12 months) until I ponied up the cash to pay for private visits. She recommends a different shrink and suggests I talk to my doctor about a referral. Interestingly, both of the psychiatrists recommended to me – both of them women – have a reputation for having a fairly brusque bedside manner. <sarcasm> (I can’t tell you how much this reassures me.) </sarcasm>
I agree to talk to my doctor and again work up the nerve to call and make that appointment. When I get there, I’m feeling pretty good so the conversation goes a little sideways. I describe how my ultimate goal is to feel well enough to get pregnant again and the result is that she agrees to talk to the first psychiatrist – the one my nurse friend recommended – about what is referred to, in a fabulously clinical way, as a “pre-conception appointment”.
It takes a month to get the news that this shrink has agreed to see me. In the meantime, I go from feeling pretty good and going back to my doctor to discuss weaning off medication to feeling a little less good to realizing going off meds is perhaps not such a good idea. (Chutes and ladders, anyone?)
As of now I’m still keeping that cliff in sight while trying desperately to figure out what’s around the corner.
As part of that orienteering effort, I sat through another session with my counsellor today. Sobbed through it, actually. Something’s not working and I’m stuck in the swirl, as she calls it (an apt metaphor, because I liken it to a merry-go-round I can’t get off). I sniffed and sniveled, wailed and wept, and blurted out all the stuff that’s going through my head. Stuff I can’t shut off no matter how hard I try. I listened to everything she had to say and when she asked how I felt about her assessment of what’s good enough, what’s normal, what I can control and what I can’t I thought, “I understand all that. I know it to be true but I can’t make myself believe it.”
I see the psychiatrist on Thursday, and that’s probably a good thing. I have no idea what to expect. She might be abrupt. She might wonder how this crazy woman who clearly is in no shape to be considering another baby got through her doors. She might not actually hear me – might just change my meds or up my dose or something else that might work…or might not, because it’s not really addressing my issue.
But she also might help me – perhaps by changing my medication to something that will work, perhaps by suggesting another resource, or perhaps by reiterating something I already know and am just not letting myself hear.
Whatever she does, at this point all I can do is hope it helps.
