Number seven showed up in the waiting
room yesterday and greeted me with a firm handshake. “I used your
first name just there and not your title because I didn't want to
give the game away,” he said, with a grin. Give the game away. I am
a doctor, a mentally ill doctor sitting in a waiting room of mere
patients.
Number seven seems quite fierce, very
direct in his questioning technique. Who do you live with? How long
have you been with him? (Blimey, eight years? That suggests you're
good at maintaining relationships). The man is smart. Not the
type of psychiatrist who is easily conned or manipulated. Reminds me
of number two...
Number one (my favourite so far)
referred me to number two when I was too self-destructive to be
managed in the community. Number two wasn't having any of that shit.
One week I hoarded the antidepressants the nurses dished out each
night and landed myself in hospital on a cardiac monitor after an
overdose. Number two went mental. You don't bloody harm yourself
with a drug that I prescribed to make you better. Do it again and
I'll refuse to see you! So I
didn't do it again. Not until I was back under the care of number
one.
Number three picked
me up at medical school. The man couldn't stand tears. Rang my social
worker in a panic when I started crying during his clinic. Number
three told me that it wasn't Prozac that was killing my libido, it
was the fact that I was a woman. I can see why the man might think
that. It's hard to imagine any woman he's ever slept with enjoying
herself. Of course, that's not to say I've never fantasised about
sleeping with psychiatrists. Just not him.
Number four was
private. Cost £100 an hour. It's true – turns out money really
doesn't buy you happiness.
Number five just
told me to take my medication and stop bloody drinking. So I did. And
I got better. Not exactly rocket science is it?
Number six seems
okay. So far.
I have both loved,
respected and at times loathed, hated and feared my psychiatrists.
Funnily enough I often think about becoming a psychiatrist - all I
need do is get myself onto a training programme next year and somehow
survive within the profession. I can't decide how suitable psychiatry
would be for a person like me though. In some respects I think my
experiences would make a damn good psychiatrist. But could it end up
breaking me? Number six told me to choose which speciality I go into
very carefully in light of my illness. Avoid night shifts. Avoid too
much hard work... But I want to follow my passions! I can't turn down
a speciality for fear of becoming unwell. What if this truly is my
last episode? Some people would call that denial. I call it optimism.
