What did one psychiatrist say to the other psychiatrist?
The punchline?
Absolutely nothing.
It’s a crap punchline so you can imagine how I felt today when I saw my consultant to discover the care plan drawn up by my other psychiatrist last week hadn’t been passed on to him.
A breakdown in communication was to blame and it clearly wasn’t my fault but I had to pay the price (a quiet cry on my bed in the ward and an hour or so of feeling anguished and angry until I sorted myself out).
I’d like to be able to report this breakdown in communication as though it were something rare or unexpected but sadly its not, this kind of thing happens all the time on psychiatric wards.
To go back to the infamous car crash analogy, on a medical ward, doctors do rounds every morning. You get to give an update on your health and are given an update on your condition, treatment and progress.
On the psychiatric ward (in my limited experience) you may get to see a doctor once a week. (You can request to see a doctor any time but you’d need a good reason). This allows you all week to build up the experience in the hope it will provide you with some answers to at least some of the questions you’ve spent many an empty hour coming up with.
The consultation often fails to live up to your expectations. So I shouldn’t have been surprised today and I suppose I wasn’t, just upset.
The breakdown in communication has since been sorted and tonight I will start taking Lithium as planned last week. I am ever hopeful that this will prove to be the magic bullet and I my moods will be stabilised soon.
I discovered today (thank you Wikipedia) that Lithium Carbonate is also used in fireworks as it ‘imparts a deep red to flames’. In my current state of mind that property really appeals!