Thursday, March 01, 2007
my psychiatrist
Woke up today with a fresh voice, some migrating bird twittering in the neighborhood. March 1 is spring. Monthly shrink appointment, a ten or fifteen minute matter that takes several hours by the time I get over to the clinic & back. I could use a taxi, but the walk is not unpleasant when the weather's alright, it's "good" for me. It's my monthly walk through downtown, & today I'd like to stop at the main library & pick up some large print detective novels, with my weak eyes they're excellent for bedtime reading, I regret not discovering them 20 years ago when I thought that section only had corny romances.
Dr. G, my psychiatrist, is a short, thin man, about my size actually, could be 50 or younger, he's quite pale year round, & often looks slightly worried. His small office at the clinic always has a few plants, today he had a sprouting bamboo stalk in large glass of water on his window sill. He used to have a tree, some common low maintenance office plant that had taken a liking to the quality of light & grown to enormous size, his room felt like a tiki lounge. He had to get rid of it. There's usually a classical music station playing so softly on a small boom box that you can't hear it until he closes the door. I don't think he's comfortable with the computer on his desk. When I visit him after drug company reps have been through, his office is loaded with "samples," which he inventories, locks in a cabinet, & parcels out to patients with no insurance, no doubt he has many. Dr. G is a kind person, gentle by temperament. I'm certain he's a Christian man, Catholic or protestant I do not know. I don't know anything about his personal life. Most of my visits are brief, he has a heavy caseload, many hard cases. His is not a private practice. Sometimes he runs late, emergencies arise. I don't complain. I was one of his emergencies once, back in 2000. A couple times a year, though, I catch him on a light day, when he's scheduled only a few people around a meeting or seminar, & he'll lean back in his chair, the thick binder holding my case file on his lap, & we'll chat for awhile, just small talk. The file is mostly bureaucratic in content. The substantive part of it he knows well enough. If our appointments feel routine, that is good. But if there are problems,. I know Dr. G is there. I''ve said to him a number of times, if there's a night so bleak I wonder how I'll get through it, I'll get through it because I can come here in the morning. His advice is to never wait; he does his shifts at the 24/7 psychiatric emergency center.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Dr. G, my psychiatrist, is a short, thin man, about my size actually, could be 50 or younger, he's quite pale year round, & often looks slightly worried. His small office at the clinic always has a few plants, today he had a sprouting bamboo stalk in large glass of water on his window sill. He used to have a tree, some common low maintenance office plant that had taken a liking to the quality of light & grown to enormous size, his room felt like a tiki lounge. He had to get rid of it. There's usually a classical music station playing so softly on a small boom box that you can't hear it until he closes the door. I don't think he's comfortable with the computer on his desk. When I visit him after drug company reps have been through, his office is loaded with "samples," which he inventories, locks in a cabinet, & parcels out to patients with no insurance, no doubt he has many. Dr. G is a kind person, gentle by temperament. I'm certain he's a Christian man, Catholic or protestant I do not know. I don't know anything about his personal life. Most of my visits are brief, he has a heavy caseload, many hard cases. His is not a private practice. Sometimes he runs late, emergencies arise. I don't complain. I was one of his emergencies once, back in 2000. A couple times a year, though, I catch him on a light day, when he's scheduled only a few people around a meeting or seminar, & he'll lean back in his chair, the thick binder holding my case file on his lap, & we'll chat for awhile, just small talk. The file is mostly bureaucratic in content. The substantive part of it he knows well enough. If our appointments feel routine, that is good. But if there are problems,. I know Dr. G is there. I''ve said to him a number of times, if there's a night so bleak I wonder how I'll get through it, I'll get through it because I can come here in the morning. His advice is to never wait; he does his shifts at the 24/7 psychiatric emergency center.
