My pdoc is 2.5 hours away, so 5 hours total. 5 hours would be too much, even for her and she's amazing.

I live in an extremely rural area and there are very few psychiatrists here. 14 years ago when I finished the clinical trial I did after I was diagnosed I tried to get in with someone in the next city (where I see my therapist, about 75 minutes away). Nobody would take a bipolar patient. I was put on one waiting list but after 14 years I'm starting to think they won't call . So my therapist got me into to see the one at the counseling center. She was there 3 times per month and otherwise had a practice an hour north. The about 8 years ago she took a job with a big teaching hospital and I moved there with her because she is pretty much perfect, an angel with a prescription pad. So I have one really long day per month when I see my therapist, take off and grab lunch to go and then see my pdoc (and she's always late and lately our visits have been 90 minutes to 2 hours) and then 2.5 hours home.

There honestly isn't much I'd have done here though; I worked in healthcare too long and know too many horror stories. One of my patients was seeing one of the only pdocs around here for depression following a stroke. She had to go on prednisone for treatment of a rash and on prednisone she had a few hallucinations. Prednisone causes all kinds of things and hallucinations are certainly not out of the realm of possibility. He put her IP (where they couldn't handle her medical condition so refused to let her out of bed for 4 days) and they put her on haldol. He told her she had to take it the rest of her life. Never said why, no diagnosis, no reason, nothing. She couldn't wait to go home to stop it and while I usually think drs should be aware or involved I totally understood that one. And that's the GOOD local pdoc...

Thanks for the nice words about sleep. I'm used to having trouble but it had reached the desperate point. I slept 5 hours with extra PRN meds and hope to get back to sleep soon. I woke up for the bathroom and am pretty wide awake so I hope that I didn't get all my sleep in that block. Sleep is one of the hardest parts of bipolar. Before I got really sick and again when I was more stable my body liked to go to bed early and get up early (for a long time I slept from 11-4 and it was great). Now it's more erratic than ever before that I remember although my therapist might remember other times it was worse. And then adding this to the already really bad and you get me wondering if I can take a nap in the waiting room at my pdoc's today (answer: no because it's always full).

Maybe tomorrow......