Posted by mair on December 30, 2006, at 14:34:18
In reply to Re: My T Got Bad News » mair, posted by zenhussy on December 16, 2006, at 21:17:55
Thanks Zen
Dealing with a T's major health crisis is not an experience I'd wish on anyone. In the last couple of months, my T has had 4 surgical procedures including a partial mastectomy - something the first 3 procedures was supposed to avoid. With the recuperation time between each one, there have been alot of therapy gaps, of varying degrees of length. I'm in the middle of an almost 3 week gap now necessitated by the holidays and by my T's first go-around of chemo. Yesterday she started chemo and I felt this low level of anxiety for most of the day.
When I have had therapy there seems to have been alot of idle chit chat like friends having coffee, or something. I hate it; it feels worthless to me, but I guess it does have some worth because it helps me hold onto a sense of connection which for me is hard to achieve and hard to maintain.Traditionally this is the hardest time of year for me. In my office, it's a time when things are tallied - revenues attributable to each person mostly. The whole process highlights for me (and everyone else in the office) how unproductive i am in comparison to my colleagues, even when I'm working longer hours. In looking at the year end numbers, I also get to face up to the fact that for someone of my background and experience, I'm paid an embarrassingly meager amount. In 2006 we switched to a medical plan which offered me no mental health benefits if I stayed with my current T. My colleagues more or less agreed to pick up the difference between what i paid in T costs for 2006 and what I would have paid had we kept the old policy. When push came to shove, some of my colleagues balked at picking up the whole difference (because it was pretty damn high) which, of course, made me feel uncomfortable - and it was pretty awful to me even that I had to let them know how much my T costs were anyway.
They eventually ended up picking up the whole difference, but not before letting me know that they wouldn't do it in 2007 because the old wonderful indemnity policy we had before 2006 (with totally unmanaged mental health coverage) doesn't even exist anymore. So during this little interval, I've also been considering whether I should cut way back on Therapy. Of course, I can't think about doing that without considering that if I reduce the number of session, I'll be reducing my T's income at a time when her ability to work is severely compromised. If I admitted this to her, she'd tell me that it's not my responsibility to guarantee her a certain level of income. But since I have to keep the records which tell me exactly how much therapy costs me, I have the numbers to know how much income she'd lose if i cut back.
And then there's the issue of new year's resolutions. I always feel that I should make resolutions, but I can never decide on just one because there are just too many things about myself that I have to fix. It seems too difficult to just focus on one. I need to eat better and lose some weight. I need to exercise more (this shouldn't be as difficult as it seems since I'm not exercising at all now), I need to be much better about not spending money foolishly. I need to be better organized in so many different ways. I need to be much better about returning phone calls promptly, and getting work done more quickly. I need to be much more efficient about billing for what i've done. (My T correctly surmised once that billing people for work I've done for them is an agonizing process for me. So rarely do I feel "worth" what I'm supposed to charge so I find a ton of ways to reduce my bill or not send it at all). I need to be infinitely better about nurturing friendships and staying in touch with people.
When the list is so long, it's so hard to know where to begin.
Thanks so much for thinking of me.
fondly
mair
poster:mair
thread:694187
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20061210/msgs/717598.html