I'm nervous. And I'm having second thoughts.
Over the last few months, my practice has been busy. Besides the schedule crammed with patients for management of chronic issues like diabetes and heart disease, there are the typical "need to be seen today" patients complaining of upper respiratory symptoms or burning on urination. And besides those patients there has been a spike in a growing number of same day patients complaining of anxiety.
I've never seen it this bad. In the eight or so years of clinical practice, I've never seen it this bad. Sure there have always been those who suffer from depression or anxiety, but this is insane. I saw a fifty two year old woman for a follow up from her hospitalization. She had been doing so well and had been so proud of herself in the last year and a half, but she fell off the wagon. She'd been on a one and a half week binge, resulting in a hospitalization for delerium tremens, alcohol withdrawal. "I needed it. I needed to drink again. I didn't know what else to do. Things are bad. I'm not happy, and it's gotten worse. My husband lost his job, and I don't know what to do."
And it's not uncommon. One of my sweet little old 80+ women, generally very happy and very generous with end of visit hugs broke down in tears as she told of how her daughter and son-in-law have had to move in with her, into the small apartment in which she lives or rather has been forced to live since her home burned down in the November fires. Or the couple who cried as they told me that they both wanted complete physical exams to make sure they were healthy because soon they would have no more health insurance. I've been doling out Paxil and Prozac and Pristiq like crazy.
So in the context of all this, yes I'm nervous. Nervous about having depleted my savings. Nervous about whether or not I'm getting in over my head with a mortgage payment.
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