Starting Over

Today I met my new psych nurse practitioner, whom I’ll call “Sarah”. She is very nice and enthusiastic about her work, which is a good sign. I’m still not over losing Dr. Awesomesauce, but between her and Kathy I think I’ll be OK eventually. The fly in the ointment is, not only do I need to find a new primary care provider STAT, but he/she is going to have to be comfortable prescribing the challenging combination of psych meds I’m taking. The NP only manages the meds, tweaks them as needed, and communicates that information to the PCP, who is supposed to do the rest.

This ought to be fun. There are approximately five gazillion doctors around here, but only about a fourth of them take Medicaid patients and maybe a fourth of them will prescribe psych meds. Sarah said the mental health agency can help out with finding a PCP who’ll deal. I sure hope so, because otherwise I’m going to be on the phone all day looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, and we all know how much I love calling people. Even worse, I’m going to have to go through my psychiatric history in detail yet another time because whatever doctor I get, he/she is going to want to know the name of the beast he/she is prescribing for. And from experience with my own internist, I know the average MD doesn’t much like being responsible for patients with serious mental health issues like bipolar 1, which I’ve been re-diagnosed with by both Kathy and now Sarah.

Make that stable bipolar 1. The hypomanic episode has ended, but it hasn’t been replaced with the depression that preceded it, so I’m content with that even though I enjoyed those couple of weeks tremendously. I don’t even know where it came from; there was no obvious trigger except for a brief period of sunny, warmish weather, and it continued even after that little taste of spring was replaced by clouds and rain. I can tell it’s over because I care about my spelling again, and I’m not arguing politics or posting random crap on Facebook anymore. But in a way I’m glad it happened, because it means that I’m not always going to be flat and unemotional—that there’s still some fire and passion deep down, and it doesn’t have to get out of control. I don’t think I even pissed anyone off this time, at least not bad enough for them to call me out on it.

So here I am, starting all over again with new providers and a relatively clean slate. It’s not what I would have chosen if I’d had my druthers, because I really, really miss my dear Dr. A and we have four years of shared history. I went through the worst of it with him—the wild manias, the brutal depressions, the suicidal ideation, the hospitalization—and he was there for me every single step of the way. I hope this new treatment team will be there for me just as he was…or better yet, I hope going forward that I won’t be as high-maintenance as I used to be. Right now that’s looking pretty good. 🙂