Oh. Wow. Whew.
I've been in a pretty hefty state of anxiety the past several days to a week. I felt literally petrified about this doctor appointment I had this morning.
But ok. That first part is over. Everything moving forward will still be anxiety inducing, I'll still be scared, but I think what I was really scared about was unfounded.
Ok, let me give you some background. As you may know, I've been working towards starting TMS (or transcranial magnetic stimulation). It's been kind of a long process, at least from when my psychiatrist first mentioned it to me, although I suppose that was still only a couple months ago. It's felt long though from when we decided, yes, we're going to try this route, contact that doctor. Then there have been a bunch of insurance discussions because of course the place my doctor recommended is out of network. And release forms so that my doctor and this new doctor can talk. And doctors talking. And scheduling an evaluation appointment, which brings us to today.
Today was my TMS evaluation, and Nasser took me to it because I was so anxious. And it was good. Good to meet the doctor who does this treatment, it was kinda more like an interview for us to go over my history a little, get any questions answered. It put me into a nice hopeful state. But the woman who does scheduling wasn't there when my appointment finished so we planned to talk later in the afternoon.
Well it felt like my world came crashing down again this afternoon after speaking to the scheduler. And it's not that bad. It's just that the earliest treatment start date, based on doing a motor threshold appointment with the magnet the week before (that one is the hard one to schedule since there are several people that need to be there), is Monday, February 20th. So like a month away.
And there's still the possibility they will try to get me in earlier. The doctor had wanted to get me in sooner after talking with me.
I knew this was possible, yet now that it's scheduled, it feels nearly impossible to wait that long. I thought I was preparing for scheduling to be tough, but I guess I'd still held hope that they could start next week or something. Four weeks and two days until that motor threshold appointment, then four days later I'd be starting treatment. I mean you'd think I could handle this.
But. It's still really really hard. It's been really really hard for awhile now. And as it seems it will be really really hard for awhile longer.
And then this is probably the biggest reason I haven't wanted to blog. Much of the time lately I've been depressed, or anxious, or both, and it feels like I'm just complaining about this sucky life I have. And I am grateful for all the good things that I have in my life, I really am. But then depression has a way of removing that gratitude and replacing it with self-doubt, shame, and worthlessness.
I just keep having to remind myself that this is all my illness talking and work to not beat myself up about feeling bad and thereby make it worse.
On a separate note, one of my biggest projects lately, has been coloring and a little bit of drawing. It's been a good distraction. Below is my sketch of "dragon tea party, with some politics arguing"...
And colored in...
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