I had to go to see the nurse at the Mental Health Center today. Apparently, I missed some appointments, ran out of meds, etc. Whenever I run out of Effexor, withdrawals ensue. So, I went to the nurse to keep from going through the massive withdrawals. When the nurse called me back, she didn’t close the door. That should’ve been clue #1 that something was up. The nurse said that I needed to make an appointment with the doctor before she could get a prescription for me. I went to make the appointment, but it wasn’t made because the therapist needed to be seen first. I went back to the nurse’s office and told her this. She said that I needed to go make an appointment with the therapist then.
I would have done that, except that the therapist is no longer in the same building as the doctor. She’s over in the area where they see the addicts and people like that. I wasn’t going to another building when the nurse could call the therapist’s receptionist for the appointment. (Call me lazy, if you want, but you haven’t see the mess that is the building complex.) When I snapped at her for this, she acted offended and more uppity than she was already acting. She said she couldn’t make a call. I laughed and told her, “That’s funny. Other people can call.” She asked, “Who can call?” I told her, “The doctors can call the therapists and therapists can call the doctor. You’re a nurse and you have to work with both of them, so you should be able to make the calls. Well, she didn’t like this, but she did make the call. The therapist’s receptionists put her on hold. After five or six minutes, maybe longer, she started acting offended and like they were being rude to her because she’s the nurse. I muttered, “Now you understand what it’s like to be a patient.” She kept acting offended. I muttered, “This is why we don’t call this place.” I eventually apologized for my snapping, which was a big mistake, because the bitchy nurse decided that she needed to lecture me.
This next part should be read with the sound of a snippity woman. First of all, she’s 62 and has 3 children older than me. They never spoke to her the way I spoke to her. (Probably not to her face.) I’m 26 and I should know a little something called “control”. By the time someone is 26, they should know better than to snap at people in public, especially people who are older than them and in positions of authority. And she’d worked there 19 years, so she knew a little something about this kind of thing.
This would be about the time that (if this were on the internet), someone would say, “O rly?” I almost asked her if any of her wonderful 3 children had any kind of history of mental illness or if they had ever been told that they had to jump through hoops to get medicine that is required for them to take. I didn’t, though. I let her lecture me, while I internally mocked her. And as for the lack of control, I don’t think she understood how controlled my response was. If I had been either of my parents, I would have jumped across the desk after her. I think that calling her a bitch and saying that the system is stupid is relatively restrained. Anyone who goes to that center for any period of time and is forced to make appointments before they get their prescription gets angry. Most of them show it. Some threaten the people. If she’s so upset because some 26 year old who has been crazy the same length of time that she has been a psychiatric nurse (assuming she’s even a full-fledged psych nurse), then maybe she needs to get a new job or retire a few years early. I’m sure that if she’s worth her salt in her field, then she could get a job. Nursing isn’t usually a job that lacks demand, plus it’s one where they like experience. And, given the way that a lot of local nurses have acted lately, you don’t actually have to have any level of competence.
So, I have therapy scheduled for tomorrow and a psychiatrist appointment scheduled for mid-November. I will probably make the therapy appointment. I will try to get to the psychiatrist. Typically, psychiatrist appointments that get missed are due to a lack of communication. (The MHC has a history of rescheduling appointments without informing patients.)
When I got home, my family doctor told me that she needed to do a biopsy on the endometrial tissue. She wanted to do it tomorrow if possible. So, tomorrow afternoon, I get to go in and have that done to, according to her, “rule out uterine cancers”. I didn’t like to hear that. Of course, since the biopsy could also confirm fibroids, which run in my family, I’m going to try to keep my emotions in check. BTW – if I do have uterine fibroids, I may donate my DNA to medical science to see why I inherit every disease that runs in the family.
