http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LX3vsw2F_DA&ob=av2e
Yes, yes. Naughty me. The non-compliant patient me. About a month ago, I stopped taking Drug 1 because it's $130 / month. I also stopped taking Drug 2 for high blood pressure because it meant I would have to go back to my doctor ($100+) to be lectured and told I am still fat. Drug 3 has been petering out. I'm supposed to take two a day. Sometimes I take one. Sometimes not.
So yes, it was a whacking great surprise when I sat at my desk this morning and wanted to just Not Be. Wanted the pain to stop. (What pain? How do you describe it? It's like fibromyalgia pain, I imagine. You bloody well know what it feels like, but people roll their eyes at you, yeah, yeah, right.)(Like trying to explain cramps to a man - okay. Imagine someone's reached up into your gut, you say, and at that point, you get whoa, whoa, whoa, stop! And he runs away. And you don't even get to finish saying, "Someone actually pulls your gall bladder out with his bare hands. After squishing it like a tension ball a couple of times.")
Oh, the horrible things I say to myself. The horrible things I want to do. And I hate it. I hate being mental. I hate not being able to live without these drugs. Please don't give me the old saw about it being like diabetes, because I know non-compliant diabetics, too.
Most of all, how on earth do I explain the last couple of days....weeks...month...to my boss at work? I don't, that's how. There is exactly one person in my building who has a visible disability, a guy about my age who has CP and really and truly looks like he's going to fall on me because his balance pitches the top half of him forward. If the wild proliferation of people with physical disabilities is any indication, I can guess how it would go over if I said, "Isadora, by the way, the reason I act kind of strange sometimes is because I have a mental illness." Here's your tin foil hat, what's your hurry?
Oh, and granted the Big Finance campus is huge, but I have only seen one person using a wheelchair and I think he was just here for a conference.
How could I tell my recruiter? Again, I can't. I can just see her laughing at my jokes (she always does) and surreptitiously typing, "Do not send the Crazy One out again, ever!"
Although I can tell when I'm rushing headlong into disaster, it has to get pretty extreme before I put the brakes on it. Usually I do that when it's too late to rescue the situation.
Is it now? I don't know.
I tried four times to call my shrink after he canceled the last appointment a month ago. It was only today (brakes screeching) that I was able to get through and actually make an appointment.
And the crazy thing? Going to the doctor, going to the shrink, and paying for a month's worth of meds is about what one day off from work costs. I don't know how many days the cray-cray would have taken to get straight. Even now, I just know that I've stopped on my Path to Destruction and turned around. I have no idea how long it will take to get back to where I was.
But I do imagine there will be some time spent working on my resume this weekend. I've already started to clean off my desk.
I hate being mental. I hate it. I really, really hate it.
And when you - you know who you are - asked me if I had suicidal ideation, I didn't even answer you. I wanted to say, "No, but I imagine you can get it fairly cheap on eBay" and the answer was yes. But you probably knew that. And you probably know how much I hate being mental. I worry that I might have BPD, as we diagnosed Emma. I just don't know any way of telling the work world about this.
3 comments:
You either need to buy the drugs or buy insurance (which will pay for part of the drugs). I'd still go with the insurance because of life's uncertainties. Either way, you have to face it's going to be an inevitable expense.
Me too. Somehow I can't help telling the world about it. It sucks. But we need the meds to be on an even path with everyone else. Not fair though.
I am with you on the drug hatred. However, you already know that the cray-cray will come, and it is the sneakiest, most evil thing ever, and it will TELL you not to take the drugs, because, hey, cray-cray wants to come out and play, too.
Sometimes I think it would be so much easier if we just went with possession by occultal forces. Sort of "Oh, hey, Bosslady, the imps are all over me today and I need to get my anti-imp drugs."
Good side -- you put on the breaks. This means LEARNING has taken place. And that means a bit of healing, and that means the cray-cray isn't quite so uber powerful.
And so many people are mental, ya know, but still get into management positions at big companies so they can share their particular brand of the crazy with all those around them. Wouldn't it just be amazing if you found out your boss had had bouts of depression and was taking meds?
Most of the people I deal with in my life don't know I'm diagnosed with a mental illness unless I tell them, even on those days I showed up at work with knife slices on the inside of my arm.
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