New Psychiatrist Day

2004-04-23 at 11:57 p.m.

Well, I went to see the new psychiatrist. Bit difficult finding the place though as there are surprisingly few places you can actually cross the road in Whitechapel. Then the inside of the outpatients department is a warren! Four different lifts, have to know the right one to get to where you're going...nightmare.

But I got there eventually. The new psychiatrist - Dr Connell, is a youngish woman, seems quite nice. We had a chat about this past year, about the depression, the mini-highs, the weird-unusual things like that hallucination I had, my family background (no madness, and no I wasn't ever living with other people than my parents when I was little. What a weird question to ask). She wanted to know if there had been complications with my birth too, not that there were - even if mum did have to spend 3 months before I was born in hospital.

I think Dr Connell thinks my old psychiatrist was a bit funny - apparently it really isn't normal to be seeing a psychiatrist for hours every two weeks or to be chatting away to them - what she's going to do is see me in a couple of months and then after that I'm to ring her if I have a crisis so that she actually gets to see me when I'm ill rather than when I am fine.

She's also doing a load of tests on me - general blood health ones, liver ones, thyroid ones, and a EEG (some sort of brain test) I assume to rule out brain damage/tumours and whatnot. Apparently that is standard procedure whenever you see a psychiatrist and she seemed quite surprised that Dr Smith had never done them. Don't imagine there is anything wrong, I'm generally physically healthy, so I'm not expecting anything scary from it.

Next time I see her - once she's had a chance to assess what I've told her and look at the scans and stuff, I'm going to ask her for a once-and-for-all confirmation of what my diagnosis is and to ask whether I am allowed to read up on whatever that diagnosis is. Dr Smith neither told me what was wrong with me nor let me read anything and I would like to - if she says not to then I suppose I won't but I hope she says I can because I am a nosey person.

Afterwards, I gave my blood (embarassing myself because the nurse insisted on taking blood from my left arm, which is where all the scars are. More embarassing because I was hot which made them all stand out. Still she didn't mention it.)

Then I just putzed about Whitechapel road, which I actually quite like despite feeling like I'm really in Beruit. Then I came home and had to avoid my GP who was shouting noisily out of his surgery window at passing patients, making everyone in the dock stand and stare. Came back and I've been playing computer games ever since.

Thats about it, really. Now I have nothing to do till Monday when I have library books to go back and signing on to do and then Wednesday for the next lesson in my HTML thing. Oh and I've got to choose a book from the History Guild because mum has said she will buy me any one I want. Only I can't decide!

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