One psychiatrist I saw weekly for 5 or 6 visits. It started out okay but as time went on there were many red flags and each week her behaviour became less and less professional. Every appointment was in a different room of this big empty house she was renovating, and she was badmouthing other psychiatrists and insisted she had so few patient's because she "cured" hers. At one point I was looking hopefully to the walls for evidence that maybe she did have a diploma of sorts. Never did see one. The last time I saw her she started yelling at me before I'd even said "hello" about how I was turning people against her. By the end of the appointment she was sitting on the floor in front of me yelling that I made her spend money. It was funny, but the second I entered her office that day I knew I was the only sane person in the room. And even with this bizarre behaviour and my shrink hurling paranoid accusations and insults at me, I managed to be mature and unflustered. I just knew she was not rational and though I did defend myself it was not with any great passion, I simply corrected her each time she was wrong.

Just before that last appointment I had seen my g.p. and told him about how she was deteriorating each week. So by the time I got to my appointment with the psycho my g.p.'s nurse had called her and asked that she be in touch since they had never received anything from her about me, and that's what set her off. She knew I'd said something and she went batcrap crazy. She knew my g.p. was also my friend and would believe me, though she did try to discount me by telling me I was paranoid and delusional and irrational and psychotic. I was none of those things, I was depressed, but she was desperate to discredit me.

A month later I was in the hospital for depression and I told the psychiatrist all this, against my friend's advice who thought no one would believe me. But this psychiatrist looked into it and the next day came and told me that he didn't like to speak ill of his colleagues but he was not surprised I'd had that experience with her and she should not be practicing. I always wished I had lodged a complaint against her but it felt like it would be too hard and frustrating to be believed, while the psychiatrist in question would be trying to make them think I was just crazy. However, I believe when I told the psychiatrist at the hospital it was taken care of. No one had ever heard of her there so they were astonished that there was a psychiatrist practicing in this relatively small town that they did not know about at the hospital.

When I stepped out of that last appointment after driving my psychiatrist completely nuts, I stood on the sidewalk in the sunshine like a gunslinger in a western and blew across the barrel of my pretend gun and said, "My work is done here."