Next Stop...Crazyville!

Like I said, Chip and I left the OBGYN's office with a bag of new meds and we were ready to get on with our life! I started the lexapro and I quickly took a turn for the worse. I was feeling even more depressed and my anxiety was out of control. I was crying non-stop, I felt like I was the baby we had just brought home from the hospital. It was like a really really bad nightmare that I couldn't wake up from.

At this point Chip assumed the communication reins and he would make all phone calls to the doctor. Within a few days of that initial meeting with Dr. "By the Book," Chip was on the phone again explaining the desperate situation. They traded several phone calls and finally Chip told me that Dr. "By the Book" had made an appointment for me to meet with a psychiatrist.

Sweet, I thought! Someone who knows what they are talking about. I was sure this new doctor would know exactly what pill I needed to take and then I would feel like myself again. It had been weeks since I slept like a "normal" person and I just wanted this nightmare to be over. I was ready to redeem my "normal life" and stop with this anxiety and this feeling of losing control. Somebody make it stop! Can you see a pattern with wanting to be "normal?"

You don't realize how much joy there can be in your everyday life until it is suddenly taken away. All I wanted to do was care for Sydney and enjoy being a mom. I wanted to take her on walks and go shopping for cute little outfits. I wanted my biggest stress to be keeping up with the laundry and making sure she was fed on time. Instead, I was curled up in the fetal position in my bed slowly losing pieces of myself.

Our next stop was to a real "psychiatrist." We will use that term loosely and call this first guy Dr. Free Samples. I will never forget it as long as I live. We walked into the waiting room of Dr. Free Samples and there were no words to describe what we saw. We both looked at each other and didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Umm..how do I best explain this? I was the ONLY one in that room that had health insurance if you catch my drift. There were several people in the waiting room and some even had "escorts" with them to help with basic functioning. Chip and I took our seats and tried not to look at each other for fear of making a funny face and possibly offending someone. We definitely did not want to provoke anyone in this room or leave our body language left open to interpretation. We just stared straight ahead, waiting to be called.

By the time we got back to see Dr. Free Samples, we were ready to get out of there. That was a good thing since I think the doctor spent all but 12 minutes with me. He asked me what was going on and I tried to explain the best I could and Chip filled in the rest. Without asking any further probing questions he told me that I just needed to "hold my baby." "Don't be afraid to hold her," he said. "You can't break her!" Seriously, was he joking? Did he listen to anything I just said? I just bit my tongue, I didn't even know how to respond.

And here is the best part...when he opened one of his desk drawers out fell at least a half of a bag of peanuts! In keeping with the whole theme of the appointment, he completely ignored the peanuts all strewn across his desk and reached for samples of a new medicine. The little yellow box said "Paxil" on it and he told me to take this and keep up with my klonopin and everything would be fine.

I am sure that you don't need anymore details on this one, we can all guess how that went!