đ§ Listen to Sarah read this chapter⤴
My life changes with one word:Â Google.
I sit in my new psychiatristâs office with its floor-to-ceiling windows looking out on Michigan Avenue. Dr. R wears his usual crisp, white button-down shirt. His suit pants have a sheen.
We talk about getting me off lithium. Doing so will reduce my pill load from five to three: the SSRI Iâve been on for nearly a decade, the other mood stabilizer, and Klonopin.
Our appointments are all-business. Med checks, basically. He never asks about my lifeâhow teaching or writing is going. Iâm not sure he knows I teach and write. Or that I have a sister or chose not to marry and never wanted kids. Or that I live in a dank, dark studio apartment so small my bed is practically in the kitchen, an apartment that looks out onto a brick wall.
He knows I received six different psychiatric diagnoses during the twenty-five years I spent in the mental health system, and heâs masterful at adjusting my meds. Almost witchyâtwo dashes more of this, a tad less of that. And weâre easing me off the âmess of meds,â as he put it, I was on when I came to him a couple of months ago.
Iâm lucky to have the money to see a clinician like Dr. R. The young man I passed on Michigan Avenue on the way here, the one often sitting outside the Ralph Lauren store, the one not wearing a hat and holding a sign that reads please help and sobbingâfull, heaving sobsâseemingly all day longâthe one so in need of care and not getting it, reminds me.
Apropos of nothing, Dr. R says, âI had a client. Worst diagnosis you can haveâschizoaffective disorder. I mean, bipolar topped with schizophrenia? Canât get worse. She was from a family of litigatorsâfamous litigators. Not what a psychiatrist wants. I told her family what we needed to do. Her family informed me what they thought we needed to do. As far as I knew, they didnât have a medical degree among them. But I said, âFine, take her to Mass General, best in the country for this sort of thing, and get a second opinion.â They flew her out to Boston on their private plane. The docs at Mass General disagreed with me. Fine. Six weeks after her treatment started at Mass General, she was worse. The family came back to me. We did what I said. It took time, but she got better. Sheâs now an executive at Google. Off all meds.â
I nod though not in agreement. No one heals from schizoaffective disorder or any other disorder. And even if they did, they wouldnât become an executive at Google. Come on. Everyone knows that.
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