Finally got to meet with the shrink today. Doctor L was very nice. I was a bit irritated with all the traffic we had to deal with going to and from Folsom, then the noisy waiting room, but we didn’t have to wait long. 

What was surprising was the appearance of the place. It looked like the typical medical building Mercy would have and not the small office like what Dana and Stacey had with plush chairs. I also didn’t meet with the doctor in the same room where the nurse took me to take my vitals. My BP was a surprising 170/80. This alarmed the doctor a bit, though I assured her I was just wound up about seeing a new doctor, and when she had the nurse take my BP again on the way out it was 150/80. It’s almost always normal. I’m sure right now as I write this it’s 120/80. In looking at my BP measurements since switching to this medical group, 144 was my highest. 

Anyway, after the first round of vitals, I was taken to another office where I expected to have to wait for the doctor, but the doctor was already there. She’s a tall, slim woman with dark hair that was piled up with a claw clip I liked that she said she got in Hawaii. She’s from Guatemala too, but I didn’t have any problems understanding her with her accent. 

She asked for some past background, and even though I didn’t see what it had to do with the here and now, I told her a little about my bio family, the foster homes and Valleyhead. Even how I would cut myself as a teen and jumped out a window and broke my arm. The system was very different then, as we discussed, and the stigma was even worse. Instead of receiving help for these things I totally regret doing, I was ostracized and made to feel even worse. Shrinks were also too quick to drug their patients up instead of getting to the root cause of things by talking and taking other healthier, safer measures. 

I told her I felt that for the most part, it was a waste of our time and money to see her because had my old doctors simply listened to me and not withheld so much information from me, then we could have just lowered my thyroid medication dose the first time around and 95% of the anxiety I was referred to her about would’ve backed off. She understood, but at the same time said they were a caring group and were just looking out for me. 

I told her about my old endo, of course, and the drama I went through when my T4 got too high. I said that while I fear medication in general and tend to be prone to side effects, I’m fine on my current thyroid dose and am ok with taking low dosages of lorazepam as needed, but only as needed. I hope to never need the stuff again, but it’s still nice to know I have it if I do. The bottle I have is over a year old now, since I got it from Alyssa, which I’ll refer to her as now, and so she called me in a new one and said I could get refills from my PCP. Hopefully, I’ll never need to do that, though. I hate being dependent on things other than oxygen, water and food same as anyone else. After I broke my cigarette and Navane habits in the '90s, then I became dependent on sound machines, then lotion, then lip balm, then glasses, then thyroid medication, and now anti-bacterial soap so I can have a slightly itchy crotch instead of a seriously itchy one. 

I thought we were going to talk more about what happened that led to my referral to her as opposed to the past, but she asked a lot about the past and my family. When we hit upon the subject of my sleep disorder she asked if I’d taken any action where that’s concerned and I said no because it wasn’t much of an issue since I work at home and there isn’t any cure for it, but as she said, it might be a good idea to look into it since I can never know how it may help in the end. Yeah, maybe so, and it definitely would be more convenient to always be on days. Just not right now. Right now I just want to enjoy the fact that after tomorrow I will be appointment-free till March! Yes! 

Then it was off to Jack’s for burgers and fries where some pissed-off black guy was shouting that he was tired of waiting for his tacos. I wondered if he’d pull a gun out and get trigger-happy, but fortunately, he didn’t. 

Still entering sweeps, most of which are pretty crappy these days compared to years ago. They just don’t have as many big prizes anymore, and again, I don’t feel I can win like I used to. 

The park and Bob have been very annoying during the daytime. People are constantly landscaping, along with the park, and Bob was using his saw really early yesterday morning I think to repair his trellis or something. 

Tom trimmed the Cypress trees and put a lot of stuff on the street this evening for tomorrow’s bulk trash pick-up. The old toilets, a couple of chairs, a water dispenser, the old disposal, the boxes the toilets came in that are filled with tree clippings as well as old hoses.