I saw my doctor today. He wanted to know what my thoughts were and how I was doing with the medication change that we implemented Friday. Having told him my thoughts (he was hoping for different ones), and that I hadn’t managed to get on the wall to climb the entire weekend, he thought hard for several minutes. We decided to switch strategies. The medication that we had changed may take a while to reveal exactly what’s going on with the Apathy Syndrome if that’s indeed what’s going on, and with the thoughts I’m having, we don’t have that kind of time right now. So, it’s back to my usual dose of that medication. We had some good and fairly immediate shine with doubling a different medication a couple of weeks ago. Neither of us can figure out why it worked, but the fact is that it did. Therefore, in addition to going back to my usual dose of the first medication, we’re going to double the second medication until Friday, when I see my doctor again, and see what kind of results we get. We do know, at least, that we’ll get fairly immediate results, and that this type of medication does produce those fairly fast results – much quicker results than changes in the first medication. We won’t know if we can go slightly lower with the dosage on this medication, but we’ll fiddle with that when we get there. My doctor doesn’t like me to “borrow worry”. One thing at a time, and hopefully that one thing at a time works well enough to give some relief. “You do better when you climb. How long has it been since you’ve been in the hospital? Two and a half years. You’ve been doing a lot better since then. I know that’s hard to see right now, but…you’ve had a tough time all winter, haven’t you.” We discussed a few other things and neared the end of our time today.
At the end of our visit, my doctor leaned forward, hands folded loosely in front of him, looking me straight in the eye with that most serious of soul-to-soul eye contact, and said to me, “I want you to tell me you’re going climbing tomorrow.” I’m going climbing tomorrow. I promise I’m going climbing tomorrow. “Okay.” We shook hands after he reiterated my medication changes and I left feeling a little better. I’m going climbing tomorrow – he has my word on it.
CLIMBING 4 THE REST OF US 