Now all I need to do is borrow something and find something blue and I’ll be ready for the wedding. Oh wait. I don’t do that any more.  Nevermind.

Old. I’m still sick. That’s feeling very, very old. I have the bug from hell, it seems.  The evil cousin of that yellow whooping cough bug over there.  Actually, I am a bit better, not that it’s enough to brag about.  The prednisone has helped the asthmatic part of it hugely.  And I think the 20 hours sleep out of the last 24 helped a lot too.  I may have to be up 8 or 10 hours today. Oh well.  I’ll eventually get over this.

New. Today is my last session of DBT. We’ll be doing the last Distress Tolerance homework.  And that’s where I came in a year ago, so that’s where I exit. I’m kind of sad about that. I won’t miss it taking so much of my time. I will miss the people and the regular reminders not to beat my own self up and to be realistic, and to be effective rather than right.

I’ve never met such a stellar group of therapists before. Frankly, I didn’t think such a thing existed. Oh, maybe one or two decent therapists existed somewhere on the planet, I believed. But a whole group of them? All in one place? With one goal? Nahhhhhhh. No way Jose. Yet there they are.  Over the course of the year with the group, it’s been chaotic because of personnel changes like people getting promotions, and our group has worked with some 7 therapists.  Every single one of them has been compassionate, thoughtful, a good leader, a good teacher. Even the intern we’ve had with us the past few months. It’s really been pretty amazing to me.

It’s more amazing because all this is going on at County Mental Health.  *gasp* No wonder it takes them 6 months to replace a therapist in DBT! They actually wait until they can find someone good.  The others pitch in to make it work until that someone good can be found.  My hat’s off to these guys, especially in light of what crap I went through at County before I got into DBT. (The old emergency people who when you cry over having been abused they threaten to section you if you don’t voluntarily agree to go to the mental hospital, and suchlike.) To have found such a thing as DBT full of really good people is, yes, just amazing.

There have been times I hated DBT.  It’s rather difficult to turn some of your old thought patterns on their head or admit I’ve done things that made my life worse rather than better.  And often painful. There have been times I loved DBT. It’s wonderful to consistently have people telling you that, yes, you CAN do it. In all the mix, DBT has been tremendously good for me. 

S, my individual therapist, has been the best and the worst of the mix.  She just wouldn’t let me sit there and moan I couldn’t do it. I’ve hated that sometimes. Ok, most times. LOL Like talking to a very calm, compassionate rock! It’s been good for me, though. And she’s always been there and always reminded me I can do it, and shown me how I was doing so much better than when I walked in their door.  She never forced me anywhere, just asked questions and pointed things out. I had room to be ok with it all no matter how much I struggled to begin with. And when she got a promotion to go head up County Substance Abuse, she took me with her to continue individual DBT therapy.I laughed and joked that I can be stuck under SA too, after all. I’ve had to follow her to several offices for appointments, but she made time for me even while adjusting to a new job. And the County powers that be let her. Unheard of. Strange.  Kind. And she always, always has respected me as a human being. What gold!

Luckily, I won’t have to miss St yet, just the group part.  With all the chaos I’ve been dealing with the last couple months, I’m not in any shape to go deal with that yet since the world won’t end if I don’t. Not to mention the hallucinations and whatnot the prednisone is kicking up, and damn it’s depressing to be sick for so long in a normal sense and whacks with my bipolar too. She’ll stick with me until I’m back on my feet.

Even then, I won’t just wander off into the world with no support. It seems most people who go through DBT there go find an outside psychiatrist if they need meds, and just go on with life. While it would be wonderful to think I could, there are several problems with that. I can’t afford the meds or a psychiatrist, and I really need both. But I just can’t afford it. Nor can I take on a second job to do it. My mind and body won’t hold up to that. And I get so crippled from getting sick several times a year, which throws everything into chaos.  S advocated for me to go on to the a long term management program so I’ll stay with them and have a case manager/clinician and stay with Dr. C, the psychiatrist, and they’ll still help with my meds. It won’t be DBT, but it will help keep me afloat until I can come up with some way to do it on my own.  I’m grateful.

So today I go to my last group DBT and also meet with S.  Maybe I should stay home, because I’m not well yet. But I don’t want to just fade out of group and vanish. At least I no longer have a fever, so no one’s likely to catch this bug from hell as long as I sit a bit aside and don’t cough on them. I want to be there for the end of it.  And I really want to see S and get some help with balancing all this mess on my plate.

Aside from that, the only thing on the schedule is napping.  Neither blue nor borrowed, but it’ll do.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 11:02 am and is filed under 1 not too bad, bipolar, c-ptsd, mental illness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.