The waiting game

Well, Tuesday I had a joint meeting with my therapist, psychiatrist, aunt and my dad. We had the meeting because we're not sure what to do, I've been going to this clinic for over a year and my depression, anxiety, panic attacks, depersonalization and overall ability to function have been declining, and my suicidal ideations have been increasing.

My psychiatrist gave me a new medicine to try, Symbyax, med number 20 for me, it's a combination of Paxil and Zyprexa; he gave me free samples to last me for two weeks when I'll see him again. We're leaning towards a bi-polar diagnosis from the sounds of it. Honestly the more I learn about bi-polar and looking at my history, it does sound like a good diagnosis. When I read through the "Recognizing Bipolar Depression" section of the link above to Symbyax, it does sound much like me.

We talked about institions, shock treatment, the mental health care system in general, and we're leaning towards going to the Amen Clinic to get a SPECT scan done before resorting to shock treatment. But, in the end, it's up to my dad to pay for it all, which is a lot of money (possibly over 4 grand for the scan) and it'll be a good month before he knows if he can afford it or not. We also talked about whether I should move in with a different family member, and decided it wouldn't be a good idea to try and move right now, it would just add to the stress. Basically, stick with the status quo, then see if we can get this SPECT scan, from that we can get me onto some kind of medicine cocktail and see how things go from there, and if the medicines make a noticeable difference, then we can start getting me more involved in daily living.

It's real tough on myself and my family right now, it's hard for them knowing that I'm so depressed to be suicidal and so anxiety-ridden to have trouble driving, not too mention the costs of all this treatment.

Tuesday was even tougher because I had to spend quite a bit of time trying to sort out billing errors with the clinic I go to, they showed me as owing them over 7 hundred dollars, and it took me quite a while with all my receipts and stuff to go through and show them that I don't owe them anything, and as we went over it, it looks like they may actually owe me instead. It's not all said and done yet, keep your fingers crossed for me as I continue to play the waiting game.