Is this helping?

This is a short talk I gave as the voice of "Lived Experience" on the Zero Suicide Community Coalition that is currently underway in the Fox Valley. Part of my reason for being there is to help others remember why we are doing what we are doing.

I am, by nature, a planner. I take notes, make lists, write down challenges for myself and keep a rambling journal filled with random notes from books and columns and blogs.

This year I ramped it up a bit by making a list of books I wanted to read at the beginning of the year. Presently I have already finished six books, opted to skip another three that don't fit the plan for myself, and added another dozen because I shot too low and decided to aim higher.

Since I made it through this past Christmas without a relapsing depression for the first time in so many years I dare not even guess the date, I have, as one can imagine, been flying higher than a jet just reaching cruising altitude.

"I rock," I told myself as I sent out an encouraging note to a friend, led a book study and taught my new dog to shake and spin all in one day. And then my rock became a boulder and grew roots and became immovable and when I fell and hit my head on its' pointy top I backed up, shocked and angered by its' sudden appearance in my happy life

Living with mental illness means dimes become tops and changes become storms that threaten to tear apart the calm blue seas that have previously been holding steady a small rowboat paddling at an even cadence down a narrow channel.

I have felt hopeless that my rage, which nearly always accompanies my recurring depressions, can ever be controlled. I can't seem to communicate well with my psychiatrist for while I think he means well, who, ever, just wanted a psychiatrist who means well?

I wanted him to stand up and slam his leather-soled foot on the ground and dare the world in the small space of his sterile-walled office to give him a challenge as small as mine.  He would pull out his prescription pad and write down new dosages of new meds that promsie to bring new miracles; he would pick up his phone and call one of the dozens of qualified therapists that could deliver a strong dose of CBT or DBT or whatever letters I need delivered in weekly sessions on plaid, cotton-covered couches that will walk me back off my crumbly ledge. I wanted him to ask the questions that I did not provide answers to. That is not what happened.

After my last appointment, I scheduled a return visit for a month out. A couple of weeks later I received a phone call that my psychiatarist needed to re-schedule due to a conflict. This is the third time this has happened in the last 6-8 visits. My appointments with him have become like scheuling a coffee date with a fickle friend. Now it is one more month out before I see him again.  When the receptionist told me when his first available appointment was I mentioned how I felt that it was an awfully long time for me to wait when I am still dabbling with a medication change to calm a fire in my head. I was to see him in one month, now it is two. The receptionist informed me, in her "duly noted" voice, that she would let the doctor know.

   

By the time I see him next the emergency will either be over or there will be a trail of relational debris strewn through my  yard, down the block and 20 miles in either direction. My husband will be behind me with broom and dustpan. Oftentimes it takes a vacuum cleaner with attached jet pack securely mounted on his back.

 I am currently in the uneviable position of having to find psychiatric care in the Wausau area. Which, to my  understanding, is only available through one's primary care practitioner. If I happen to see a nurse care practitioner, she has typically not even heard of the mediction I take. If I see a doctor, he has maybe heard of it, but does not know anyone who takes it. These are the hands that are to hold  my care. My husband, who often advocate for me, has even given up.

I probably sound angry to you, and I am. I have a friend who lost consciousness while driving. Her team of doctors have stopped at nothing to find out why she passed out while driving. She had to check into the hospital for testing. And when she left the hospital there were more tests and procedures and doctors called in. She has been angry at all of this and she is tired of more tests and doctor's visits but told me that the doctor's will keep looking until they find an answer. But if someone wants to die,  or to have their depression treated, even just adequately, one has to become her own advocate with super powers to find someone who will stop at nothing.