i saw dr. barry today. i had a very early apt. but the thing is even though you have an apt you rarely get seen at your designated time. i went to the clinic at 8:30 but it was 10:30 before dr. barry called me. in the mean time two junior docs called my name. i dont know why that happened because i dont see junior docs. all i can think is they were new and didnt know that i always see the consultant. i had to tell them that i was seeing dr. barry. once i told them they were ok and left me alone. eventually dr. barry called us. we went in sat down and started to tell her everything that had been going on. it was so good to vent out all of what was on our mind. we talked about therapy and eileen being on break and how much we are missing her. we talked about our feelings of abandonment and insecurity around eileen being away. dr. barry totally gets it. she said that yes that is a normal trauma response. she said try to think logically about it, that eileen is just gone on a holiday and its not about taking a break from us or our stuff. i do know that. its just sometimes its hard to see when your feeling overwhelmed. we talked about sleep. i told her i didnt think the meds i was on for sleep were working. she said now carol anne, you know how i feel about meds. and i do. she is reluctant to prescribe sleeping tablets because she said my problems with sleep are not curable with meds. that they are ongoing and related more to my trauma and having the flashbacks and stuff at night is part and parcel of my ptsd and no meds will cure that. i understood where she was coming from. and to be honest i really dont want to be on meds for sleep. she told me to stop taking the ones i was on, the halcion because i’ve been on it for more than 3 months and it looks like i’ve built up a tolerance to it. she said it wont work in the future if i need it again, if my brain has built up a tolerance to it so the best thing i could do is stop it. she did encourage me to take haldol if i had two nights in a row where i couldnt sleep. she said on the third night i should take it. i am reluctant to take haldol too because of its side effects. a couple times though i have given in and taken it when things got desperate. we talked about karen leaving and saying goodbye to her. that will be happening on august 23rd. she said she knows how absolutely hard for us this is. i told her me and liz were most effected by karens leaving, because we are the two who had the most dealings with her and who had built up a relationship with her. we are getting a friend to make a card so that we can give it to karen because we are not that artistic ourselves, but we want to give karen something to remember us by. we thought about getting her a little gift but decided against it just in case she wasnt allowed to take it. if she wasnt allowed then we’d feel rejected so we decided not to bother with that. dr. barry said she is going to sit down with karen and sarah her cpn and talk to them both and see if sarah can offer us some sessions to do a kind of transitional piece of work with her. she said she’ll talk with karen and sarah, see what is the best thing for us, and what sarah can offer given her case load. she said we can talk more about that next week. i talked to her about respite and how we’d gotten on there last week. i told her we’d pretty much kept to ourselves but that a couple of times when the anxiety was bad or when we hadnt slept good we’d told staff. i didnt really go into too much detail with staff though around the mental illness. i’m still getting to know the staff there and i am not sure how they’d be so i havent disclosed much to them yet. that was all we talked about but i felt so much better when the apt was over. i felt so relieved and like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. when she brought me out to the secretary to make my apt for next week she lightly tapped my shoulder and said take care and i hope you have a better week next week. those words stuck with me. take care and i hope you have a better week next week. she is so sweet. i know her words are genuine and that she genuinely cares about me.
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