It's a GAD GAD World
Monday, March 22, 2004
 
JUST SHOOT ME

I have an appointment with my doctor tomorrow morning. The first one since he dropped the bomb on me. And I'm shitting bricks.

I am so scared that he's going to tell me I can't come back anymore. I still need him. Or more accurately, I need the meds.

The memantine is working WONDERFULLY!! Sunday night thru this afternoon I had a real burst of energy. Here's what I've accomplished in the past 24 hours:

*Answered all the job ads I'd circled in the NYTimes
*Went into the city to do some work at my job that I didn't finish Saturday night
*Printed off several journal articles (I'm trying to talk my doctor into doing a particular research project--long story, maybe I'll go into it later)
*Emailed several colleagues and forwarded a HIGHLY relevant Village Voice article to them--2 of them even emailed me back, and one of them took my resume!
*Did laundry
*Changed the sheets on my bed

Then around 6:30pm I took a nap. When I woke up @ 7:45 I was groggy & had no energy at all, but I gradually came around to normal.

My depression & anxiety symptoms are still present to some degree (like right now), but compared to what I went through in January & February, it's a breeze. And the side effects are barely noticeable.

But back to my doctor. Not that he ever asked me, but it was never my intention to mooch off him and get free medical care indefinitely. My game plan had always been to be a "charity case" until I landed that ever-elusive full-time job with benefits, then discuss with him the possibility of seeing him in private practice. I don't think either of us anticipated that it would take me this damn long to find that ever-elusive job.

And I'm hard on him. I'm unbelievably hard on him. Sometimes harder than I need to be, and sometimes I feel bad about it. But I feel like I have to be. I could do a gazillion blog entries and fill them with stories about how people's lives have been lost/ruined or otherwise made miserable because some doctor fucked up. But the point is, doctors fuck up. And they fuck up because they're either lazy or incompetent or overworked or they just plain make an honest mistake. And when doctors make mistakes it's the patients who pay the penalty.

I'd have no problem with doctors making honest mistakes if they would ADMIT to it. But they won't even do that. A doctor's first priority is not the health and well-being of his/her patients. A doctor's first priority is not to get sued.

So I feel like I have to catch my doctor's mistakes before he makes them. (And he's made a few.) Because he won't correct them, and I'll be the one who pays for them.

I'm going to try & get some sleep now. Tune in tomorrow...
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