So, a funny thing happened a couple of weeks ago i-- I got myself an AD buddy. Someonme had mentioned to me that there was someone else in the department with health problems, but I never made the connection because I didn't know who she was. Anyhow, at the graduate student meeting we're all required to go to before classes started, the grad director asked if we had any questions. I raised my hand and started asking a few pointed questions about the new policy.
You see, my university switched from UHC to Aetna back on August 1st, and in the transition we don't have any information on our policies. In fact, I am STILL without an insurance card and it's been about a month. At the time, we didn't even have a group policy number for insurance purposes, and I was getting antsy. So I started trying to get some answers from our grad director, which is usually a mistake anyway, but anyhow...
"So, I was wondering if we have a university-wide group policy number yet," I asked in the meeting, "because I think I can still at least get my prescriptions with that even if we don't have insurance cards yet. Has anybody heard anything on that yet?" My grad director stammered a little.
"Well, no..." he answered. "I'm not sure..." A woman behind me and to my right perked up at the question.
"What are we supposed to do in the meantime?" I asked as patiently as I could.
"If you keep your reciepts you can get refunded as soon as the policy gets finalized..." he offered.
"But my rheumatology appointments are 375 bucks a visit," I said. "I'll have to just wait. Do you know how much longer I'll need to?" The dark-haired woman behind me raised her hand and started answering all my questions, as she had just grilled the insurance rep the day before and found out as much as she could. After she filled in the entire grad student body on the state of the insurance debacle, she mouthed come talk to me. We met up in the hallway. It was "Mary Beth," a grad student who started the year before me.
"You're seeing a rheumatologist," she said matter-of-factly. "What's going on?" So I told her about what was going on for the last year or so, and that's when she told me that she probably had rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, her doctor (Dr. W as it turns out!) wasn't sure which. And she was on anti-malarials and a few other things right now, and she couldn't get some of her prescriptions filled during the insurance fiasco.
So, "Mary Beth" is a bit of a pro at all this now-- her sister has RA, and she's been dealing with much more severe symptoms for a couple of years now. She knows the ropes with my rheumatologist. She knows the insurance hierarchy at my college better than they know themselves. And she's developed some good plans for balancing work around her health. She says she's nearly normal now, and is even back to hiking, which for RA is a heck of an improvement.
We had a little weird bonding moment in the hallway when we both found out we were having problems with Raynaud's disease. "I call it dead-man fingers," she joked.
"My name for it is 'zombie fingers,' I confessed, and we both laughed. We also both found out we're being treated by Dr. H, which was funny, and we both talked about how cool she is. So "Mary Beth" and I are going to get together sometime and have a chat.
I wouldn't wish this crap on my worst enemy. But I'm so damn glad that I now have someone to talk to who actually gets it. I didn't realize how much I needed that.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
How a Bus Driver Diagnosed my Depression
The wisest person back in my hometown in the Rockies isn't on the school board, he isn't mayor, and he's not a millionaire. His name is "AJ," and he's a bus driver for the school district. AJ is sort of an odd duck, to be honest-- he's in his seventies, looks a little bit like an Appalachian Santa Claus, and he scrapes by on a minimum wage, more or less, working three jobs. He moved to my home region from back east about thirty years ago. It's hard to imagine someone with more life experience and wisdom as AJ, and he has the most amazing intuition. It's something that has served him well as a protector of children-- he has been the reason that a lot of abusive parents and child molesters are in prison because he can tell when something is wrong, and he's the guy all the kids feel safe enough to talk to when there's trouble at home. There are troubled kids and troublemakers who won't even talk to their teachers or police officers, but they'll just open up to AJ. He's proof that you can't judge someone by appearance.
So, I got to see AJ again a couple of weeks ago when I was back in town. I was with my father down at the local ice cream joint, where AJ tends to park himself in the evenings. He has a bad back, so he grabs a picnic bench with a burger and coke, and lets the town come to him to visit. Back in the day when I was in high school, he was my bus driver for speech and debate; and when I was an undergraduate, AJ and I worked together during the summers, so we have a pretty good relationship. I plunked myself down at his picnic bench to catch up, and I'm sure my face lit up when I saw him. He's one of my favorite people.
Anyway, as we were talking about the local gossip, how his job with the district was going, and how our friends were doing, AJ looks me in the eye and starts going off on a tangent about depression. "You knew I have problems with chemical depression once in a while, didn't you?" He asks me, and then he tells me the story of how he was first diagnosed: how all of a sudden he was too tired to even walk in his front door after work, and he was too tired to eat, and it was all he could do to make it to work every morning. He told me that he went to talk to our local doctor thinking he was anemic or something, and after they chased down all the options, they decided that it was depression. So, they put him on an antidepressant regimen, and eventually he became his old self again. "Yep, there's no shame in realizing you have a depression problem," he said with a piercing glance in my direction. "It's a real medical problem, and one that needs to be treated like a medical problem." I just bobbed my head and agreed, and it never once occurred to me that he was telling that story for a reason. I just thought it was a strange place that our conversation had wandered to.
Well, it seems that, after years of discerning other peoples' problems with that wicked intuition of his, AJ sniffed right down to the heart of mine, too. When I got back home in Appalachia a week later, I was so tired that literally all I did was sleep. I slept until I needed to teach class, and then when I got home I slept some more. At one point I went to cook dinner, and I only got as far as opening a bag of rice before I was so exhausted I couldn't even think. So I took a nap.
It wasn't a matter of thinking evil, dark thoughts or wanting to hurt myself, or getting all emo and wanting to cry all the time. It was a matter of being able to function on a normal level. I felt like somebody had sucked the life out of me with a straw, and I couldn't muster the willpower to even do things I really liked to do. So, I went to see the fabulous Dr. H to chat. I had been having chest pains recently, too, so I was wondering if I should get screened for pericarditis again.
Well, the fabulous Dr. H checked for the normal stuff, the EKG was clean, so there was nothing really wrong with me, physically speaking. We started to chat about what it might be, and I blurted out, "But, Dr. H, something's wrong, I feel like I can't even walk in my front door without getting exhausted..." and I paused. Where had I heard that before? It was AJ, of course, and I thought to myself, oh shit, what if he's right? I looked at her in exasperation and said, "Okay, so there's no physical cause. Maybe... maybe I'm depressed." She gave me a knowing look, and she reminded me about how common depression and mental fatigue are with autoimmune disease, and she sent me upstairs to chat with the psychologist. And he decided that, yes, I'm probably depressed and need treatment.
So, that was two weeks ago, and now I find myself on a 20 mg dose of Prozac to see what it'll do for my symptoms, and I'm chatting with a head-shrinker (actually, he's a real nice guy, and also a Dr. H) once a week to see if we can work on getting my daily routine back on the right track. It's still to early to tell if it's going to take care of all the problems I'm having, but I'm already starting to feel a little more... level. Like I'm not trying to walk up a hill with a sixty pound pack just getting through the day. I think that's a pretty good start, really.
I'm still not sleeping very well, but that's a combination of some really severe dry eyes and a cramp in my gut which I've nicknamed "Conan the Obstruction" (I'm having gastroenteritis symptoms, you see, probably from the Mobic.) But I still feel more capable of surviving through the day than I did three weeks ago. So I think it's a start, and I think that the Prozac is probably here to stay. Dr. H and I will talk in about another two weeks to decide if pushing the dosage up to 40 mg is a good idea... but we'll see.
The important thing, however, is just realizing that I didn't need a shrink to diagnose me. I needed a friend who's walked the same road. So, I guess the moral of this story is: if your bus driver starts talking depression, listen to him.
So, I got to see AJ again a couple of weeks ago when I was back in town. I was with my father down at the local ice cream joint, where AJ tends to park himself in the evenings. He has a bad back, so he grabs a picnic bench with a burger and coke, and lets the town come to him to visit. Back in the day when I was in high school, he was my bus driver for speech and debate; and when I was an undergraduate, AJ and I worked together during the summers, so we have a pretty good relationship. I plunked myself down at his picnic bench to catch up, and I'm sure my face lit up when I saw him. He's one of my favorite people.
Anyway, as we were talking about the local gossip, how his job with the district was going, and how our friends were doing, AJ looks me in the eye and starts going off on a tangent about depression. "You knew I have problems with chemical depression once in a while, didn't you?" He asks me, and then he tells me the story of how he was first diagnosed: how all of a sudden he was too tired to even walk in his front door after work, and he was too tired to eat, and it was all he could do to make it to work every morning. He told me that he went to talk to our local doctor thinking he was anemic or something, and after they chased down all the options, they decided that it was depression. So, they put him on an antidepressant regimen, and eventually he became his old self again. "Yep, there's no shame in realizing you have a depression problem," he said with a piercing glance in my direction. "It's a real medical problem, and one that needs to be treated like a medical problem." I just bobbed my head and agreed, and it never once occurred to me that he was telling that story for a reason. I just thought it was a strange place that our conversation had wandered to.
Well, it seems that, after years of discerning other peoples' problems with that wicked intuition of his, AJ sniffed right down to the heart of mine, too. When I got back home in Appalachia a week later, I was so tired that literally all I did was sleep. I slept until I needed to teach class, and then when I got home I slept some more. At one point I went to cook dinner, and I only got as far as opening a bag of rice before I was so exhausted I couldn't even think. So I took a nap.
It wasn't a matter of thinking evil, dark thoughts or wanting to hurt myself, or getting all emo and wanting to cry all the time. It was a matter of being able to function on a normal level. I felt like somebody had sucked the life out of me with a straw, and I couldn't muster the willpower to even do things I really liked to do. So, I went to see the fabulous Dr. H to chat. I had been having chest pains recently, too, so I was wondering if I should get screened for pericarditis again.
Well, the fabulous Dr. H checked for the normal stuff, the EKG was clean, so there was nothing really wrong with me, physically speaking. We started to chat about what it might be, and I blurted out, "But, Dr. H, something's wrong, I feel like I can't even walk in my front door without getting exhausted..." and I paused. Where had I heard that before? It was AJ, of course, and I thought to myself, oh shit, what if he's right? I looked at her in exasperation and said, "Okay, so there's no physical cause. Maybe... maybe I'm depressed." She gave me a knowing look, and she reminded me about how common depression and mental fatigue are with autoimmune disease, and she sent me upstairs to chat with the psychologist. And he decided that, yes, I'm probably depressed and need treatment.
So, that was two weeks ago, and now I find myself on a 20 mg dose of Prozac to see what it'll do for my symptoms, and I'm chatting with a head-shrinker (actually, he's a real nice guy, and also a Dr. H) once a week to see if we can work on getting my daily routine back on the right track. It's still to early to tell if it's going to take care of all the problems I'm having, but I'm already starting to feel a little more... level. Like I'm not trying to walk up a hill with a sixty pound pack just getting through the day. I think that's a pretty good start, really.
I'm still not sleeping very well, but that's a combination of some really severe dry eyes and a cramp in my gut which I've nicknamed "Conan the Obstruction" (I'm having gastroenteritis symptoms, you see, probably from the Mobic.) But I still feel more capable of surviving through the day than I did three weeks ago. So I think it's a start, and I think that the Prozac is probably here to stay. Dr. H and I will talk in about another two weeks to decide if pushing the dosage up to 40 mg is a good idea... but we'll see.
The important thing, however, is just realizing that I didn't need a shrink to diagnose me. I needed a friend who's walked the same road. So, I guess the moral of this story is: if your bus driver starts talking depression, listen to him.
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