...so years prior to this, around the time when my son, Chris and I were pumping out 100+, sometimes 200+ chainsaw parts packages a day from our webstore on eBay, I started having crazy dreams at night and not bring able to concentrate during the day. of course the armada of physicians wanted to PRE-SCRI-BE stuff that might help, none of it did anything at all as far as I or those around me could tell. I would be totally "on", life of the party at certain times like Chainsaw GTGs but afterwards completely drained and listless. I did finally manage to get an appointment with a psychologist (for you guys scoring at home that is a non-prescribing doctor who is essentially a counsellor) and began several years of weekly appointments where I would invariably describe myself as FINE or OK despite being generally miserable. She is a totally sweet lady who agreed to see my wife immediately after the death of my son without any referrals. or nonsense, even though I had not been a patient of hers for a couple of years by then. we decided that seeing her wasn't going to be of any more help and She helped me find an actual psychiatrist which is a real struggle around here, most waiting lists were several YEARS for a first appointment at that time. I worked with him for more than a year, he was a different kettle of fish as all prescribing doctors are, they need to make good guesses based on "iffy" feelings from a patient and try to keep correcting on the fly as they go until they make positive traction. Early on in the process I mentioned what I was going through to a physician/chainsaw maniac who was a close buddy of mine at the time. He called it years earlier than anyone else, saying I might mention the possibility of bi-polar to my Doc. instead of that happening I got a letter from the psychiatrists office saying he had passed away peacefully of old age and that they would be trying to place me with another appropriate doctor. well *f-word me in a rowboat full of kerosene, but I had been in the process of "therapy" for perhaps 4ish years at this point and was feeling worse than ever most days. The deceased doc's staff never found me a referral and out of desperation I called my former therapist and she called in a favor to get me in to see a man she referred to as an unqualified genius. He was an artist and a technician, totally unafraid to see me more often than the almighty insurance GURUS thought was clinically necessary.
We made progress and I was eventually prescribed as Major Depressive 1 with Bi-Polar and ADHD and seasonal effective disorder.....tired again, more later, if this is too boring just shoot me a PM and I can stop.
Sadly I am not nearly as close to a lot of great guys I met on AS, then OPE and chainsaws in general, maybe a little catharsis and I can correct my fault in that too.
