Yesterday I met two wonderful mental health professionals. The first was a female psychiatrist, my first woman psych and I believe there is more to know ab0ut being, Alive.She was very clear, “I don’t do psychotherapy depending what you mean. . I described the difference between two of my psychs in Winnipeg and was fine with what people now like to call talk therapy. That was possible she said, but not psychoanalysis. Well I’ve been fortunate to have had something akin (selected as just a cool word.) to analysis in my life, but recently – say the last 20 years have had talk therapy. It has been an important element of my mental heal practise (honest slip, really, word to be health) since 1985 along with medication, meditation (both daily) reading, listening to music and writing for and about my life. So we’d start in a month with a half hour by Zoom to see if it could work. I prefer in-person but it involves my power wheelchair, handicapped van, a carer to drive, so Zoom is easier, especially to introduce my wife, just at first just. to say hello.
I am writing to distract myself from the reality of our dog’s death. So this is a a scene and an example of my frustration with my doctors. I present well, though I talk too much. Not really a problem with talk therapy. But the medication issues for pain management have been all centralized under addiction, and the second doctor is an addictionist, one different than a previous one that nearly killed me. A long story for some where else. My mental chemical balance, doesn’t. Finding the right meds since the last fail is harder now after spending a week intubated, and off all my meds, and another week in hospital. The two weeks in KGH has affected a good deal of how I think and how I an, but the meds are nearly sorted.. Ok this is the story
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My carer takes me into the addiction centre (not visibly labelled as such) to the proper entrance to see my second doctor aboput pain management. We also have an appointment to put down our dog in our neighborhood at 4:30. This appointment runs from 3:20 to 3:50 downtown so just barely manageable as it is. The timing of my meds, and the stress of a second appointment both about the state of my brain was stressful. I presented well. “Honestly, I didn’t notice any stuttering or memory loss or forgetfulness” Because I can write about what actually happened with a writers’ touch, there is “nothing wrong with me”
Well you/I are not to get more than 30 minutes of a doctors time. Especially on a Tuesday, when 5 Kelowna residents have ODed on the previous weekend. My brain makes stories, jokes, puns and is getting judgmental which is freaking me out a bit) but mostly I don’t stop talking, and often that applies to my writing (a digression like this happens always), but I left at 4 and he took me out the clinical space by the exit and away I went! Yeah, can you see the problem?
Exits are often not in the same space, visual space, from entrances. Especially mental health spaces. Some notion of privacy I think, and office traffic flow planning maybe. I could not find my carer and walked around a bit and decided time was tight she was probably at the van already. Took the elevator and I could not find the van when I reach out doors (there’s a great Fran Liebowitz joke\” The great-doors?” The great out of doors is what I pass through between the hotel door and the cab.”) This is where I try to explain my brain’s issue with being in the world. I never really know where I am in the world. So I exit the building, can’t find either van or carer. I take out my phone and start sending messages. They are ALL Not delivered. This I find out later has something to do with “AirPlane Mode” and our new carrier. So I sit beside the van, and yes the carer “turnips” and we are both glad. She hadn’t and couldn’t see me leave and so she stayed and waited until the meter was run out. And there we are, in a happy reunion. And after a quick cell phone lesson, homewards! So end of story. But I was disoriented, and lost in space, without meds (plan to be home by then etc) being able to tell anyone that asked.”Yes I am in Kelowna.” The street sign says what it has to say and disregards the rest. How can I possibly demonstrate my situation and distress to a doctor. It has happened before, and I’m getting better at waiting until I’m found.
Unfortunately to late to take our deer Deefer to the vet, and a handicapped van is needed for my wife’s power chair…..but then our supper carer has come and found someway to get everybody back home to the Vet, including Deefer in a 4 door hatchback. I include a picture of DEEFER and me in my powered chair and Deefer earlier this year.
I’ve just had my 4th vaccination “jab” today in a main floor refrigerator-white pharmacy. Same wonderful carer and no complications. The good news is I am learning how to successfully drive my powered wheelchair in and out of the handicapped van, which will take two powered chairs. We’ve done it, and are planning it again for a Guy Few concert with an R.M.Schaefer composition being featured. So to close this circle, I am writing twelve ghazals based on Schaefer’s 12 string quartets.And there will be some pictures as some work gets shown, presented and taped for later use in our Canada Council supported LOOK show, that has been postponed because o0f “the incident” as I now refer to my near death experience. Though Dr. John did point out that “life is a near death experience” is his later album about the disaster of Katrina and 9/11. I am writing this as a good deal of the southern coastal United DStated is being ripped apart by a hurricane. STOP. ALL ASSOCIATIONS AND DIS/ASSOCIATIONS. PLEASE!!! STOP!!! ok how about some poems then?
TAKE ME HOME
When I am nowhere
dissociating in a crowd
next to you is safest
relocated again.