Trust in Mental Health Treatment #6: Axe to Grind

Actual texts sent to my Partner from my psychiatrist appointment:

Lavender: “Mental health treatment is bullshit. I got the first appointment with my psychiatrist at 8:30am – knowing how ridiculously early that is – and I honored that commitment to wake up on a weekend to be available for rehearsal. It’s 9:45am and he hasn’t felt like showing up. I thought yesterday that maybe I should skip rehearsal, so that I could conserve spoons for axe-throwing. But, I don’t want this new troupe to drop me, so I planned to be responsible. It would have been courteous of Psychiatrist to let his patients know that they would need to – I don’t know – skip living their lives to queue for hours to get the meds that let them live their lives.”

Twenty minutes later:

Lavender: “Still not here. Not queute, Psychiatrist. No rehearsal, it seems. I’m going to tell myself I needed those spoons for axe throwing anyway and hope they don’t hate. But, it’s not like queuing itself doesn’t cost spoons. If a client – even an ADHD one – forgets an appointment – they get dropped. Let’s never forget that he’s one of only two doctors in our area who will prescribe stimulants to Medicaid patients. So, it’s not like most of the other clients queuing have any other option when he penalizes them for doing exactly as they are diagnosed. Yet, he can stroll in whenever he feels like it, secure in the knowledge that he has a captive audience.”

Partner’s reply: “And it’s going on your blog?”

Another twenty minutes after that:

Lavender: “Absolutely. He’s still not here. To add insult to injury, I just tried to buy a snack from the vending machine, and it didn’t come out. The front desk was like, ‘Eh, no one has serviced it in a long time. You shouldn’t expect it to work. There’s a number to call. They know to just refund the money.’ They have since proceeded to let two more people waste $ trying to get snacks. My new mission in life is to prevent more poor saps from losing $ by camping out beside it.”

Another twenty minutes after that (aka almost three hours after the original appointment time):

Lavender: “Most of my targets tonight will be labeled as [Bully-of-a-Boss] or the 9th Circle of Hell. But, I’m dedicating one to Psychiatrist, too. I just finished my appointment, and I have a further axe to grind. You can ‘axe’ my why tonight. ”

Partner: “Before I voluntarily stand next to a girl I’m trusting to throw sharp objects long distances near my head – knowing full well that she has poor proprioception and might slip her wrist mid-throw – I want her focused. Get food. I’d prefer we not try find the laughter in involuntary manslaughter today.”

I got fast food and chilled until our axe-throwing date night. I did not attend improv rehearsal, and I hope that doesn’t make them wonder if I should be cut from the troupe as unreliable. I’m already unreliable enough on my own, without my psychiatrist making it worse for me when I had pre-planned.

Nothing untoward happened at axe-throwing. It turns out one of the things they instruct you to do is to soften and relax your shoulders, “Almost like you were going to partially dislocate them behind your back while you throw.” Almost? I laugh at almost. I took third among sixteen walk-ins throwing that night. The top two were in a league. I kind of want to join an axe-throwing league now, but knowing that I have to go back to fitting psychiatrist appointments, haircuts and various and sundry other adulting-type things all in on weekends – because I can’t currently make weekday appointments with my longer commute – probably means I don’t realistically have the spoons for that.

And if you are were wondering what that additional axe to grind with my psychiatrist that made me mentally affix his name to some of my targets was?

When I finally saw him for the all of ten minutes it took to renew the same prescription I’ve been on for years – that can’t be electronically filled because it has to be dated and hand-carried through more security checks at the pharmacy than America would dare require to buy deadly weapons like a throwing axe or even a gun – I politely noted that I had missed improv because of him.

I noted that his patients had lives. If he knew he was going to be running late, could he let front desk know the realistic time he’d be in so clients could determine how best adjust their plans? He did apologize, but he also simply gave me the heads up to just assume that, “Any appointment before the 11am one is a gamble to whether I’ll be on time. Just plan to make yours for then, and I’ll be sure to see you first since I know you have other commitments, unlike most of my patients.”

After this apology, he asked me about improv. After learning it was something comedic that I missed, he chuckled and said that spending almost three hours in a waiting room with the types of characters he usually sees in practice, “Hopefully at least gave me enough material for an entire comedy routine.”

Very not queute. There are some things* you do not joke about. Your own patients should be first on that list. Improv is not stand-up, so I will not get the chance to do a routine about my three-hour waiting room experience. However, even if it were, the routine would mock him, not any of his clients. And shame on him for not seeing that.

*Violence isn’t exactly on that list. I’ve played D&D too long not to automatically envision throwing axes at my enemies, label my targets with their names, and otherwise make sharp-edged puns about it. But, as a disclaimer, I don’t advocate real-world violence, only revenge fantasies. Emphasis on the fantasy.

<Image>: Throwing axe inside the black innermost circle of a target. Bullseye!

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Need a recap of anything I’m talking about in any post? Check out my Glossary of Terms

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