I understand the complexity of modern medicine, and I also understand the ridiculousness of it. One of the greatest advancements of the twentieth century was the discovery and use of antibiotics to cure sickness and disease. With that, came more people and more people who live longer.
As someone with a congenital disability, only alive on this earth because of modern medicine, I say what I am about to say with much deliberateness: The modern world offers more opportunity to more people to live, and live better, but there is always a lingering “God power” in the relationship between physicians and patients. So many factors determine who lives and who dies. Resources and access hold tremendous sway. These two concepts overlap. Resources primarily translate into money and support. If you have money to buy healthy food, prevent stress, and pay for services and devices, you will lead an easier life. If you have support, which can be financial, familial or interpersonal, you have more opportunities to receive help. If you have money and access, that means you have transportation to appointments, therapies or grocery stores, and that they exist near you with the services you need. It’s not only about if they can accommodate a disability. Resources and access and sometimes luck (or God if that is your belief) decide who lives and dies. And as we can treat and improve quality of life and save so many more people with so many issues, it brings up the question of who determines what constitutes acceptable quality of life and how the severely sick and disabled can interact with an increasingly technological and not natural world?
I know and recognize that if medical professionals hadn’t “done everything they could” when I was born prematurely in 1975, I would have died. It’s why my mother named me Angel. If you didn’t know the origin of my name, there you go. I was supposed to die. And my mom– who was 21 years old at the time– wanted God to give her little baby a place in heaven.
Shrink’s office vs. therapist
I wrote my post yesterday immediately after my doctor’s appointment, wanting to preserve some thoughts of how I felt in the moment. Well, today I am here to tell you about the rest of my day. After that appointment, I spent three hours fighting anxiety. I did things, and I did what needed to be done, but the whole time, the physical sensations of anxiety filled me: thoughts that would not settle, the back of my neck hot, it felt like my heart was racing when it was not, my chest was tight, and my mood was difficult to regulate.
Then, I called my therapist– the same one that my shrink-by-proxy suggested I should be seeing more regularly, and her comments made me wonder if she was implying that he didn’t do a good job and it was his fault I was in the state I was in because he didn’t see me more regularly. I have been seeing him for 15 years, and he knows how much I’ve grown. I’m okay. And folks– when you have a diagnosable psychiatric condition, one of the criteria is that the symptoms interfere with your ability to function. And folks, if you know me, you know I might not always be the most stable, but I always get the job done. I never have trouble getting out of bed, I approach each day like the wondrous clean slate it is. It’s just a question of how long it takes me to lose my optimism. Sometimes, it’s a few minutes. Sometimes, it’s a few hours. Sometimes, it’s a good day.
When I called my therapist, I called the wrong number and could not leave a message. I did not realize my mistake, so I wanted an hour and tried again. Still no luck. So I emailed. He emailed me back about 90 minutes later. He reminded me of the correct number, so I texted. He called me back. I asked if I should make an appointment.
“I’m happy to schedule that,” he said. “But I don’t know. We’ll put it on the books and if something changes you can always cancel.”
And although I had emailed practically everything, I told him why the visit had upset me.
“It’s not the issue of the medication,” I said. “We both expected that. It’s that she told me to make a budget and stick to it. That upset me, and I think perhaps I visit with you will help keep me from getting upset at my next appointment.”
“She gave you conventional avdvice that would work for most people,” he said. “But she doesn’t know you, and she doesn’t know how unconventional you are in just about every area of your life.”
And what she doesn’t know, we discussed, is how successful I have been at breaking the generational cycles that run in my family. How I have avoided addiction, gotten an education, never had to endure domestic violence and bought a home, all while also contending with a disability. In my case, success can be measured by what I have avoided in addition to what I have achieved.
My therapist continued talking: I have asked myself many times over the years, he said, if I have done right by you, if I could have pushed you harder. But, he continued, I think if I had, I would have pushed you away. You would not have come back. You took what you needed from each of our sessions, and you worked with that, and came back when you needed more.
“You know what you need.”
I was getting teary-eyed at this point. He warned me that I won’t fit in anybody’s neat, little clinical checklist. He warned me that psychiatrict’s “add, they rarely substract.” And I believed him and proceeded with caution. And in that phone call yesterday, he reminded me that I could “politely decline” their medications and their suggestions. That my decisions, as unconventional as they are, are rarely (if ever) wrong. And that I know how to pace myself. (Which is a funny statement since I don’t pace myself in life– I do too much all the time. All the time. Which is a trait that points to ADHD.)
I will try the Zoloft. Who knows… It may help. My past experience with Lexapro suggests that an SSRI will take the edge off, but will it give me the calm, the peace, the increased circulation (which all relaxed my muscles and not only improved my mind, but my mobility)?
I understand– even if I do not understand and agree– that the medical process often diagnoses by ruling out vs. solving a puzzle, but I find it counterintuitive to suggest that my response to this SSRI would rule out serious psychiatric conditions, while no one has given me an actual test for the condition that may be the true problem (despite my experimentation with a medication, which, if their process involves judging the response to medication, shouldn’t the date from our family’s experiment also be valid?).
Eva, on the other hand, plans to download some psychiatric tests from the databases at school and administer them to me, and send me to my next appointments with them in hand.
The week of Oct. 26-30 I have FIVE appointments: Monday, therapist. Wednesday, annual visit to neurologist/psyiatrist. Thursday, shrink-by-proxy followed by primary care physician (who has not heard about any of these recent events from me). Friday, chiropractor.
Speaking of the chiropractor, Nicole (my chiropractor who used to be a physical therapist) believes I may need physical therapy. I have been thinking the same thing. Especially since now I have met my deducatible for the second time this year.
PS– When I first met my therapist, I had extreme anxiety connected to my finances. I needed my accounts to be at certain figures. I needed to know where every cent went. (I still do.) I searched for value. I made purchases based on usefulness. I was so extreme that I would not buy food that I deemed too expensive or not nutritionally dense. I would not buy things because I liked or enjoyed them.
Now I do more things because they bring me pleasure.
This is part of why the comments about needing a budget bothered me– because it felt like she was denying me pleasure and implying my incompetence. If you know me, you know, I plan everything around the budget. That’s part of why I rarely vacation. I won’t vacation if it costs more than $500.
