Freshly Brewed Coffee

I'll never forget the first house that Jim and I purchased. It was a townhouse on a street with other townhouses that were all the same dull shade of brown. The road curved back around to the main road of the development so that it made the shape of a horseshoe which I hoped meant good luck. The beauty of the house was not its color, its layout or even the road that it stood on but rather the pine forest with its maze of trails and the sounds of the wildlife that lived there. We sat on our deck whenever we could just to enjoy the sounds of the birds and the shade that the trees provided in the back of the house. Of course the aroma of  french vanilla coffee brewing added to the sense of peace and calm that I always felt there.  Those forest sounds and that first sip of coffee were soothing even during my worst bipolar mood swings. It is often said that remembering an event in your life is directly connected to your memory of the senses that were experienced. The vivid memories that I have of that small townhouse help me recollect the more difficult events in that period of my life. It was a few years after we bought our house that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It was a frightening diagnosis at the worst possible time, as Jim and I had just started the paperwork to adopt our son Jake from Korea. The diagnosis could affect our chances of adoption since mental illness is often an immediate dismissal in regard to foreign adoptions. My illness was not in its worst state at that time so my psychotherapist and my family doctor felt that it could be managed with medication and that it was unnecessary to share that information with the adoption agency. I was so grateful to them for seeing me as a person and not a medical form, which rarely happens with mental illness. I had a very different experience when I had to find a psychiatrist to dispense medication because my family doctor and my therapist didn't feel qualified to give me the care that I needed. Finding a Psychiatrist who treated me with respect and listened to my concerns was a difficult prospect. My first session with my Psychiatrist lasted all of 15 minutes. At the conclusion of this brief and disturbing visit he informed me that our meetings will not consist of therapy just evaluating medications "because that's how Psychiatrists work". My understanding of my rights as a patient and my need to advocate for myself was limited. I realized shortly after that visit that I needed to take charge of my own care.  Unfortunately my experience with that Psychiatrist did not end there. After my family moved to a new city about 45 minutes away from my little townhouse I continued to remain under his care since I was unsure of how to find another doctor. On one occasion I failed to ask for another refill of my medication.  I was in a state of panic and anxiety, my heart was racing as I called my psychiatrist to request an immediate refill of that medication. He responded by yelling at me on the phone because I didn't get the script during our last visit. It became evident that I needed to find a new doctor. This was the worst experience that I have had but there were several other psychiatrists, therapists and even pharmacists over the years that "stopped working" for a variety of reasons. One doctor spent most of our sessions telling me stories about his family. A pharmacy that I chose to use due to its convenient location, were often rude to me and treated me as if  I were crazy. When Jim went to pick up the prescriptions, however, he was treat with a smile and the respect that I was not given. I left that pharmacy and found most people that I dealt with spoke to me with kindness and often engaged me in simple conversation not related to my medication and most importantly, there was always a smile.  There are few words to describe how those short conversations mean to me.  I am finally under the care of a few doctors and pharmacists that work as a team to provide me with the support that I need. The "moral" to this absurdly long tale is to advocate for yourself and to "move on" if someone stops "working" for you. Don't worry about hurting their feelings because this is all about you. Advocate for yourself in any situation in which you feel you haven't been treated with respect, including pharmacies,  nurses as well as on-call-agencies that some doctors use. I have been lucky enough to find a wonderful team of professionals who treat me with respect and who think of me as a person first and then as someone who suffers from Bipolar disorder. They never refer to me as bipolar because that implies that I am my illness not that I have that illness. Don't worry about hurting the feelings of a professional because this is about you and finding the best way to treat your illness. Remember to keep trying to find the small corner of peace in your world where you can hear the birds sing and you can smell that first cup of coffee brewing.

Just a Thought:   By Walt Whitman

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware, I sit content
And if each and all be aware,
I sit content