Staying On Task

I have other issues besides BIID. (There. I admitted that I have BIID. More on that some other time.) I've been dealing with them as long as my manageable BIID.

The depression I have isn't very manageable.

My experience with psychiatrists, overall, has not been a good one. More often than not, he tries to impose his will on me without asking me what it is I need and where I want to get to with the assistance of medication he prescribes.

This week was my latest dance with psychiatry. I knew I would have to address BIID and likely would have to explain it, but I also knew I would have to get past it.

I had to address BIID because my referral to this particular psychiatrist came by way of a BIID researcher, although it was a colleague-of-a-colleague deal. This new doctor asked how I came to be referred to him. I explained and said, "But I'm here to deal with depression, not BIID. That's under control."

We talked about BIID, which he hadn't heard of before. He was deeply interested in it and said he had heard of body dysmorphic disorder. He wanted to know more.

His fee is outrageously high, but having dealt with bad doctors before, I know good ones can be well worth the price. Still, I wasn't there to educate him. There are web sites. He's a very intelligent man. He can Google like the rest of us and will no doubt come up with the sites I would have recommended.

I think one of the tasks that faces a person with BIID seeking help with mental health issues is moving beyond BIID, and more importantly making sure the doctor sees beyond it too.

Hey, it's a new thing. It's a cool thing. It's kind of a funky thing for doctors to wrap their heads around.

Part of my responsibility as a patient is to know as much I can and truthfully report as much as I can about my condition. I know the difference between BIID-induced blues and the long-lasting depression that has been with me for a very long time. In this meeting, I had to make sure the doctor saw beyond the interesting and new and moved on to the particular problem at hand.

I pushed him not merely once or twice but three times to move on. Again, he's a smart man, so he got it and we moved on.

I don't doubt that one day we'll revisit BIID, but it will likely be on his dime and not mine.