The Medical Paper Gown

I recently got an email from a reader that included this bit:
I just left the hospital last night after a small cut needed 7 stitches. Nothing big, just obviously a self inflicted wound. The nurse tried to force me to put on a gown in the middle of the ER while no other patients were [...]

Enough

I finally wrote what I thought was a reasonable letter to the shrink, since he never seemed to hear what I said…about how I can’t live in the dark about what is wrong with me or how to fix it, that I was deeply hurt and concerned about the borderline thing, etc. I hoped that [...]

Crying at the shrink

I did cry at the shrink’s the other day, and that was strange, because I’m usually so hard and in control. But I was so strung out by anxiety and three days of no sleep from the bupropion that it took me a few minutes to even calm down enough to talk (this kind of [...]

The Rest of My Life

I’ve been writing kind of heavy stuff lately, and I think it has skewed what this started out to be, which was a chronicle of how people who are crazy live in the normal world, how we are mostly invisible to everyone. Lately, you’d think that all I ever am is crazy.
Which is understandable. This [...]

Cyclothymia as a personality disorder; hormones and moods

I have had a partial response at least to the bupropion. Because of the anxiety it causes, I haven’t been overly eager to up the dose so I am still on half a normal dose. I can’t get anything done and feel bad a lot of the time, but I am not wallowing in my [...]

Link

Things here are mostly the same, maybe slightly better since I’m working back at my main hospital, mood more or less stable, but in a slow decline. Physical health also taxing and on top of it, a massive viral infection (winter in the ER, joy to the world), but whatever. I can deal a lot [...]

Why I Don’t Fire the Shrink, and follow-up

I’m sorry to drop the last post down because I think it is one of my more important ones and would like it to get as much traffic as possible. Maybe I’ll make it a page or something, but I wanted to write a little more today.
Tony White over at Graffiti left me a beautiful [...]

On mental illness and stigma in medicine

Today I saw a patient for a pre-operative evaluation. This is a consultation for a patient that needs surgery, but who has other medical problems that make the surgeon nervous, and the surgeon basically wants someone like me to sign that I evaluated the person so that I can be blamed if something goes wrong. [...]

On Makeup and Magic

I have a strange relationship with my looks. As a child, I could never quite remember what I looked like. I would go about my day, and be faintly surprised every time I caught a snatch of my reflection in a windowpane or in a puddle. “Oh yeah,” I’d think. “That’s who I am.”
I was [...]

And I’m high again

It feels good, actually, except for the no sleep part, and maybe the slight misuse of stimulants to keep it going. I am a little worried about what I know will come later – the crash, but for now, I’m alive so fuck it all.
That’s why I haven’t written on this blog; I’ve been amazingly [...]