Today (or yesterday, technically) was my fourth visit to Parnassia, and the first visit to a psychiatrist (or student psychiatrist rather, he explained). I forgot his name.
What we did was go through all the things that Sibie wrote in her report, and clarify things where necessary (which worked both ways). After my sessions with Dr. Sibie, and after doing some thinking about it and talking with people (read: my dad), I had quite a few comments and questions, but somehow we managed to address all these points without explicitly stating them as such. It wasn't untill the end of the session (that took well over an hour) where he asked whether I had any comments or question that I came to realize I no longer did.
That alone makes the whole session worthwhile, but it was also a pleasant conversation (as were the previous sessions). Even though (or perhaps because?) I didn't sleep (again), I was less anxious than the previous time — it simply seems to be going better, little by little — that was also a positive thing.
After we went through the report, he said he still agrees with the diagnose that was concluded in the report (which is that the anxiety attacks, in reality, are the biggest issue), but that he also recognizes depression (though maybe not in its most common form) and suspects there's also some hypo manic episodes (though not very apparent, but still something to keep reckon with when setting up a proper treatment). I agreed completely — this actually covered a lot of the comments and questions I had.
When we were about to end the session, he asked me — in a semi-rhetorical way — You're not the kind of person that keeps a diary, are you?
I answered that I've actually been keeping a weblog. His attention went back up to 100%, and he asked how long I've been keeping it. I answered that I've written sporadically over the years, but I've been serious about it since September last year, and that I'm actually pretty happy/proud about this becausee it precicely covers this depression episode. He seemed to get a bit excited and said I could help them a great deal this way.
He went to his desk and got a booklet from his drawer, and returned to tell me how.
The booklet is called Life Chart Methode™ — which, I think, is a very poor name: Life Chart
is English, and Methode
is Dutch — oh well. It's purpose is actually quite nice: it's a time table that allows you to fill in your state of mind (as in depressed, normal, or manic, and the level thereof), your weight, your day-night rythm, etc. This allows you to map periods of disturbence, which can be very usefull for setting up treatment. He explained how the thing works, and said that I could skip the day-night part because that's probably hard to retrieve from my weblog. I told him it's actually quite easy. He seemed really pleased.
I knew the weblog itself has its therapeutic (as in the writing of it, and reading back of postings), and recently found out it's capable of helping me out in real life, but never expected it to play a role in the treatment/healing process. How cool is that?
Anyway, when we finally did call an end to the session, I went home feeling pretty good. Actually, to the standards of the past months, I felt really good. I was hardly anxious at all during the busride home (I'm going to be more specific about these sort of thing now that I know it can be usefull in the future). When I got home, I played a series of games of NBA Inside Drive 2004, which I borrowed from Mikey. After that, I decided to play some of the real stuff: first at Jenny Plantsoen, then at Bakkersplein, and finally at Tram 2 Court.
There were a lot of people, and everytime people left, more people would arrive in return. I played non-stop for hours and hours. I had already started off good, but when some better players arrived, I really started to get in the zone. Actually, I think this was my second best basketball day this year. The best day, happend to be with the same people, at the same court, at the same time. We all agreed we should meet up there more often.
Back to Parnassia: the psychiatrist student psychiatrist (it would really help if I could just remember his name) is going to discuss his new thoughts and foundings with Dr. Sibie again. They will call me to set up a new appointment with either one of them, during which he or she will discuss their final diagnosis
and suggestion(s) for treatment with me.