Seeking a Diagnosis (part 1)

It is January 2000.

He is good-looking, 6’3” tall, with a head of thick black hair, neatly combed into a side parting.  I imagine him carefully grooming just before we meet.  His soft well-spoken English accent is calming.

Sometimes we warm to people immediately, other times, we experience a distinct lack of affinity.  This man fits into the latter.

Perhaps it is the absence of direct eye contact.  Maybe it comes from casually asking questions about areas of my life that I prefer to forget.  He frantically scribbles every hesitant word.  I want to snatch the pen from his grip.

I feel vulnerable, exposed, and terrified of expressing an accurate description of my mental state.  The rapid and extreme mood swings with such bleak and desperate depression.  An inappropriate anger that rages within and then manifests as self-destructive behaviours.  Then there is the crippling paranoia, erratic impulsivity and a dark suicide ideation.  It is a catalogue of mental illness but I feel mute to enunciating the true scale of the torment.  I have a genuine fear of a forced admission into a Psychiatric ward.

I name him Dr Potty.  It’s not his real name, but close to it.  This reflects his position as Consultant Psychiatrist of the local Psychiatric Hospital.

“Depression secondary to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” He states in a matter of fact manner.

I leave the surgery with a prescription for antidepressants, feeling angry and dissociated.  I wished I had said more.  How could I express this bizarre lack of identity or the way I swap and change personality to please the company I keep?  Would he understand the emotional immaturity?  Feeling like a child pretending to be an adult?  How do I admit an inability to sustain friendships or relationships?  Is it significant that I’ve told my partner to leave just because I was terrified of abandonment?  Do I even recognise that the chronic emptiness is anything other than “normal”?  

Four years – and two mental breakdowns – later, I ask my GP to refer me back to the Psychiatric services.

It is now 2004.  The waiting room is the same and I am waiting for a familiar face.  Instead, a tall man appears in the doorway.  It’s not Dr Potty.  This man is considerably older.  He looks in my direction, smiles, before ushering towards his surgery.

We sit in his small office.  There is no introduction. The first thing I notice is that he has a chronic nervous twitch that seems to resonate from the neck and shoulders, jerking his head up and down, eyes blinking in unison.  My mind wanders to the little nodding dogs in the back windows of cars.  It’s difficult to maintain focus.

I am desperate for help and a more realistic diagnosis.  I try hard to explain my experiences. Every statement I make includes disagreements about Dr Potty’s initial assessment and dubious diagnosis, “Dr Potty said this, Dr Potty said that”.. I drone on.

As I spout verbal diarrhea , the psychiatrist is busy writing notes.  I notice he is slowly becoming agitated.  Eventually, he sets the pen down with a quiet thud and turns to me with a look of, ‘I’m going to say something very important so listen carefully’

There is shock on my face when he says in a clear-slow-voice, “I am Dr Potty”

Evidently, four years working in Psychiatric hospitals, not only ravaged his good looks, but has also had a negative impact on his own mental well being.

Despite the doubts about his original diagnosis, I instinctively know Dr Potty is not for turning.  It feels as if we were in a weird time warp, transported back to January 2000.

“Depression secondary to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder” He states in a matter of fact manner.

If a Consultant Psychiatrist could not help me understand what I was struggling to live with, what hope was there for recovery?

Nothing could have prepared me for what lay ahead…