Waves

I’ve seen many a doctor over the years, some good and others not so good. I always try to go into an appointment with a new doc with the best intentions and a shaker full of hope. That couldn’t have been more true than when we went to our first appointment with Pickles new psychiatrist this past Tuesday. After all we made the move here so Pickles would be able to see docs who would be able to help her a little bit better than the docs back in Idaho. Instead what happened was we met a doctor who couldn’t have been more ignorant and unprofessional.

The doctor was running late, which happens. I’ve waited several hours sometimes to see a doctor who was running behind and sure it’s annoying, but I get it that another patient could be dealing with something incredibly serious or time-consuming and that if it were me I would want the doctor to take their time and assist me. I get that. This doc though, we were his first appointment of the day and he was 20 minutes late and then used that as an excuse to rush through getting our history. If that would have been the worst of it, I might have cut him some slack. From his rushing us it only got worse.

The very first thing this doctor, and I use the term doctor loosely, asked my Pickles was if it makes her angry that Mommy walks so slow. Then he asked her what “Mommy makes you do for her?” One of the horrible things on the list of tasks was “bring her lotion.” This sentence, this doctor twisted into “you bathe your mommy?”. Yeah, seriously…he took “bring her lotion” into asking my 6 year old if she bathes me.  That night I spent a good 45 minutes trying to explain to her why he asked that. I told her the truth. I told her I didn’t know why he asked her that. Each day since she has asked at least once to never have to see that doctor again. I have promise her we will never, ever go back to him.

Here is a child who is having trouble functioning in the world around her. She is experiencing mood cycles, dissociative symptoms and anxiety which made the whole experience all the more traumatic for her. Instead of getting the ball rolling here with supposedly better docs, we are somewhat back at square one. Well, ok, not square one, because we do have a better diagnosis that meets up with her symptoms better than what we had before; so maybe more like square 1.5. As soon as we got home that day I got right on the phone and I have a phone evaluation/appointment a week from tomorrow with the psychiatric clinic at Children’s Hospital. I hadn’t started there because Medicaid doesn’t cover that hospital and what private insurance I do have is horrible coverage. Translate that into more bills, more debt, more stress.  There is no choice though. It’s all about what is best for Pickles. There is the cliché saying of you do what you gotta do. This is where cliché becomes reality.

It wasn’t all bad mojo this week though. Wednesday was our emergency IEP meeting with school officials and for all that could have gone badly with that, nothing did. The communication was good, there was agreement on all sides and there are changes coming quickly which I feel good about. Pickles will be changing schools and going to a school with a classroom with less than a handful of other kids and staffed by teachers who know how to not only teach her the three R’s, but who can help her learn to navigate the world. Tomorrow her new teacher will visit her current class and observe her, and then we will all sit down together on Thursday and work out how to help her with this transition and what will happen in the new class. The goal is she will actually start in her new class in one week.

Ups and downs. Good and rotten. We’ve weathered the week as best we can. We’re still here and we’ll still wake up in the morning and look ahead to what this week will per chance bring.