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Zoe Girl
5-19-13, 12:59pm
just a heads up, if you have serious thoughts that mental health care in the form of medicine is not appropriate then this may nto be the conversation for you.

So I have bipolar 2, I have gone off medication once since I started 1 1/2 years ago and decided that life was much more difficult and not so manageable. I am due for my follow up appointment with the psychiatrist and it has been a pain. The appointment I got was scheduled on a major snow storm day and on the other end of Denver so I rescheduled. Then Monday was my new appointment and my GPS totally said 'you are here' and it was not so accurate, I tried calling but you can't get through to people so I did find it, got through the parking lots and was too late to have the full appointment so i again rescheduled, 2nd week in July now. Meanwhile I had to call for a refill and they needed to contact the dr, late on Friday I got an email that I needed to come home and find my password for (the secure kaiser email system) and found out they didn't have the correct number and had been trying to call me. This means that maybe i will get refilled on Monday and that is 3 days without medication. I am making sure I run every day, avoid things that stress me out, etc. My phone number and street address were transposed when I signed up for insurance and I have been correcting this for over a year with everyone, I am not even sure who does not have the correct number since every time you have an appointment they verify your number.

Meanwhile my son is in a total anxiety spiral. He has missed 3 weeks of school and is unlikely to return before school is out. It is very stressful, the school is working with us well at least. I had called the psychiatrist based on the meds my son had for sleep a year ago and they said it was okay to restart those, I have stopped by and called the pharmacy for a week and they said the DR needs to call me, so I thought I had misunderstood and we made our appointment on Friday. Actually he had okayed refilling the sleep medication but there was a glitch in communication. I am not sure it would have made any difference because my son said no to all meds. He is 16, I am not going to force anything on him, but now we are just on a wait list for counseling which is what he wants to do. They did offer us a counseling appointment that i cannot get him to at all, the counseling at the university is on a sliding scale and they have appointments up until 8 pm so we can actually make those. There are standing orders for a sleep and anxiety medication so at any time he can choose those temporily or long term but he has to choose.

So kinda stressed here, feeling a bit unpopular about supporting my son and my choices. I have been yelled at by dad for the grades being F's and my best guess to what sparked this in our son after over a year of doing well is that his dad is willing to sue me over the 2nd mortgage situation and all the family stress related to that. I am declaring bankruptcy, handling it, but my son very clearly said he thought dad should understand if he sues me then that affects all of us. I heard my son on the phone giving his name and he is not using dad's name right now either. Just in the waiting game

mamalatte
5-19-13, 8:54pm
ZG - uggh, that all sounds hard. When dh has had similar medicine glitches, the pharmacy has been able to give him just a few days worth of meds--they understand it can be a big problem to miss several days in a row. Is that maybe an option? With all you have going on, it does not sound like a good time for a gap in taking the medicine. take care, mamalatte

Tussiemussies
5-19-13, 9:25pm
Hi Zoe, I take meds too and sometimes I forget to call my Dr. To let her know I need a refill, so I will leave her the message but then go to my pharmacy and tell them I need an emergency supply until the Dr. Calls in. They will only usually give out a few days worth but sometimes the have done more. Depending upon what med you're on it could have serious side-effects to not have it....

Hope that you get it soon and hope your son gets to his counciling too...Chris

poetry_writer
5-20-13, 10:01am
I know that I plan far far ahead with the medication thing. Where I live there is a lot of weirdness in the psychiatrists we have to deal with. I simply cannot let myself run out of meds and schedule very far ahead. I call and verify appt times and change the time way ahead if i have to reschedule. I know, its a huge pain and ridiculous. My current doc has a family member running his office who loses files, numbers, get you confused with other people and probably would lose her behind if it was not attached. I know I will get a confusing mess when I go in and it is very hard to deal with. Sorry you are having to go through this.

Zoe Girl
5-20-13, 11:28am
Okay my refill is ready and I can go by right now, I need to look at the mail order option next. Just seems that psych appointments and meds are harder to get scheduled and refilled compared to other medications I have used, and we are more challenged in this process as a result of needing this kind of medical care, sigh.