I’ve been trying desperately to get caught up on everyone’s blogs today. I started with nearly 250 unread blog entries and am now under 90. So, many of you will be seeing some comments from me. My goal is to be completely caught up by the weekend, since the number of blog entries over the weekend seem to decrease, so it will be a good start to a productive stitching weekend to not have to play blog catch-up!
Nothing to report on my visit with Dr. Steve from last night. Finished up the initial diagnosis with some memory and cognition tests. Then we filled out the paperwork needed for the insurance company with the diagnosis (which includes anxiety, in addition to dysthymia), goals for the therapy and an initial timeline. He says he always projects for 6 months of treatment at first, but it can take less time or many years. Then we went more into depth on cognitive therapy and how to start. Since I hadn’t finished my autobiography, I don’t think he wanted to dig into any issues yet. I printed out two copies of what I had written, so he will review it and I suspect that my next appointment (the Tuesday after Easter) will be more interesting for everyone involved. 😉 In the meantime, I will finish off my autobiography (which I predict will hit approximately 15 pages) and email it to him.
I found out that he has a sense of humor, though. While we were going through the cognition tests, I had to count backwards from 100 in increments of 7 until he stopped me; 93, 86, 79… I told him that I didn’t enjoy math so it was a bit intimidating for me to do that, even if it didn’t seem very difficult. When he did stop me, he said, “Now, calculate the cube root of 169….” and I just about died! He started laughing and said “That was a joke!” By the time we had finished the session, I was joking right back. I asked him for a pen to write out a check for the co-payment for the visit and he asked which one I wanted (he had figured out at the beginning of the session that one of his pens had run out of ink). I responded that it depended on whether he wanted the check written in real ink or invisible ink? 😉 He liked that, so I think I feel really comfortable with him. That will make it easier when we delve into the deep, difficult issues later.
I noticed the flood of Jenna comments this morning!
Glad to see you’re getting along your therapist (psychologist? I forget what he is)… the first (and only) one I’d ever been to made me very uncomfortable, so I know what that kind of experience is like.
Sounds like Dr Steve is off to a great start! It’s important you feel comfortable with him, so it’s great you do … and a sense of humour to boot! 😀 I know what you mean about blogs … my unread feeds were up to 349 again today – and I only got caught up a week ago, or so I thought! I really need to get back into the habit of reading for an hour every day to stay caught up … it just takes so long to catch up on the backlog before you can get to that point 🙁 And I don’t want to mark feeds as read, ‘cos I don’t want to miss anything good ;P LOL.
I am behind on blog reading too Jenna, and I’m behind on my stitching and my housework, and….the list goes on and on. It’s a good thing that it is the weekend!
I don’t feel quite so behind after reading your blog and Anne’s comment. As of right now, I have about 100 blog entries to read. Hope I can shave it down a ways tonight and finish up over the weekend!
So glad you feel at ease with Dr. Steve. I’m optimistic that he’ll be able to help you!
I’m glad you feel comfortable with Dr. Steve. It will makes things much more easier and pleasant!
Your new doctor sounds like a winner. A sense of humor sure helps in keeping things in perspective, too.