Guys, guys, guys, read the fine print: It says "Outpatient". I'm still at home. They haven't called out the paddy wagon with the padded walls yet.

One possibility is that they will engage me in very intense psychotherapy during the day and send me at home at night. Or I will be perhaps dealing with a shrink at the hospital (a place full of triggers for me, kind of like a rape victim walking by the alley where she was raped.)

This has to be done. A shrink there would have easy access to a druggist, because adjustments have to be made to my meds. Risky for anyone, but doubly so for me with my symptoms of cerebral palsy. My life could become hell fast if one is not careful. My current shrink chose not to act at all and I am paying for it now. He doesn't think I can be fixed.

I don't know which guardian angel intervened. The woman who phoned me said that they had forgotten to give me the phone number for Outpatient Psychiatry in emerg that night. For this long???? And they said I already had a current psychiatrist and couldn't help me. I've never known the General to be THAT incompetant. Someone has quietly intervened.

I met with my doctor yesterday to refill my pain meds. Before that appointment, I dropped off an e-mail from my mother that discussed treatment of a bladder infection and bits of my medical history. In that same letter, was my mother's reply to the news that I was severely depressed (again) and that my psychiatrist was refusing to raise my meds out of fear of making matters worse.

My mother and I have our differences. She's a nurse. At times, I've felt she's joined the enemy (the medical profession).

I do not go to her lightly. But she is my mother. She and I have had most of our heart to heart-mother to daughter talks when I was flat on my back with orthopedic problems.

She is NOT afraid to take risks when she knows her daughter's life is at risk and she does it prudently, covering every base. I think that's one reason why she became a nurse, to better aid in my care, because it was painfully obvious the surgeons were making matters worse. She didn't specialize in cerebral palsy,but is clearly looking for anything that might apply to my case, constantly brushing up on the latest research, even though she's 59! (She didn't start nursing studies until her 40's)

I hate the idea of my mother being a nurse, but it clearly has its' advantages. Especially now. I am able to be calm and cool in an emergency room situation, at least on the outside, remaining capable of giving what one paramedic described as "the best case history he's ever heard". I get that from her, I think.

I fall apart only when I get home, in very subtle ways...like not sleeping for 36 hours and not eating. No screaming, no crying, just bolt for the nearest church and quietly stay there in silent shock for hours after destroying all evidence of an ambulance visit.

No one even knew I was in shock the first time. By the time of my enema, all my friends at church could sense that something was wrong. I never said squat that day until I asked someone to walk me home so I could call an ambulance and asked them to wait with me. I never grunted in pain. I just turned "whiter" than my normal shade of white. I was also singing hymns at the top of my lungs, alone in a washroom. The librarian sent someone in to check on me and pull me out of there.

By the time, I showed up at the church the next morning, I didn't feel tired. I looked it. My new friends saw it. When I wouldn't go home, they made sure I found someplace quiet, tilted back my chair and closed my eyes for a couple of hours.

Falling apart...I can't cry...I can't scream and it can take months for me to say the words: "I feel like h$##." even in a monotone, to a man I have started to trust. Though I can write the words eloquently, express emotion beautifully on the written page, I can not say those words aloud, even to a friend who I love dearly.

I've felt this way for months, years...just quietly and slowly died in my soul...alone. It was even worse when I started making friends again, because they didn't know, could never know, the anguish I felt. It would hurt them, drive them away.

Better to live alone than live through that.

But meeting Doug changed everything. When the physical pain pushed me to my breaking point, someone was there to watch my fall from grace. Someone was there to push and prod, to make sure I didn't scurry back into the darkness. It made my fall even more visible. It got more witnessnes involved. Someone was there to insist that I write them every day, no matter how dark the letters got.
And someone was there to encourage me every time I lost all hope.
And somehow, strength that was not my own began to infuse me, at least enough to enable me to crawl my way through this. I may be dragging myself by my fingertips through fields of broken glass, but I am still here to drag myself.

Thank you Doug.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.