It was normal, like any other visit. A touch of apprehension. Excitement at the idea of stimulating conversation (my doctor, unfortunately, chose to go to UVA, but he's brilliant).
My faithful psychiatrist (of four years now), the one who'd seen my veriest highs and my veriest lows, closed the door and returned to his desk. "You don't like med students, right? You can sense their presence."
"No," I said as I scrunched my nose in pseudo-disdain. "You can sit in on the next one, (blank)," he said to some eager med student on their psych rotation.
"How have you been?"
"I'm okay today, but I've barely gotten out of bed in months." (3 months between visits is standard in psychiatric care).
He looked down. My eyes were drawn to where his were looking and I noticed his eccentric blue socks with zig-zag green stripes on them.
"Will I have to live at my dad's house forever?" meaning, would I always be held back by this illness, would it be this bad forever?
He sighed and looked down again, "I don't think so; I think you'll come to a point where you can manage it."
"Lots of my patients that have bipolar are dentists [here I briefly interjected and asked if there was a common factor for that to which he replied 'intelligence'] they begin to realize how the system works, what medicines they need at what time. I think you're close to that, that soon you'll connect the dots." Oh yeah, did I mention my psychiatrist is like Yoda? He put the ball squarely back in my court.
I began to think of the litany of drugs I'd been on in the course of the six years since diagnosis.
Interrupted, my doctor lamented, "You were going to conquer the world when I first met you."
Weakly, after a pause, I replied, "That's still the plan," with as much cheer as I could muster.
"It's sad to see what's happened. You really were going to conquer the world."
...
"I don't watch movies often but there's a great one you should watch..." ... "A Beautiful Mind?" I finished.
"How did you know?!" During his fast-paced career he'd forgotten that he'd recommended it to me before and that even at that time I already said it was one of my favorite movies.
"Your life is just like his; he never was rid of the effects of his mental illness but he learned to manage and function and eventually achieve his dreams."
All very inspirational *tear*.
"I remember one of the first things you told me, when you walked into my office for the first time, is that you don't like men who drive big trucks, you, being one of the genuinely nicest people I know." He laughed.
"Now when I see men driving trucks, I think of that and think, 'You know, she's right. I don't like them either."
"Should refill all your current meds?"
It was like a dream coming to an end too soon. He always seems to possess the answer, the key, to my mental success, but he never quite tells me. I left the office and got back into my mother's car (I was too scared to drive this far away from home).
The next day, I went on my first walk in probably a year. My first time outside, other than to go to my car.
I took a walk.
"Does the cosmos contain keys for opening up my diving bell? A subway line with no terminus? A currency strong enough to buy my freedom back? We must keep looking. I'll be off now."
-Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Berck-Plage, July-August 1996
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