Standing in the sunshine chatting with a friend while she waters our community garden our talk turns from carrots and beets (why is it that 40 something women love beets?) to drugs. Despite being in Colorado, and standing amongst buds and leaves we are not talking about the green kind, but the pink oval pills that get me out of bed each day. She works in the field and confirms what I have been reading and experiencing myself…our system is providing less support for mental illness, exactly at a time when talk about mental health swirls around gun control rather than treatment.
After a year and a half of taking a “new” anti-depressant that requires special authorization and Doctor testimony as to its status as “the only medication this patient hasn’t gained a tolerance for” my insurance has stopped paying. NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness wrote a paper on funding cuts in mental health treatment subtitled “a national crisis” in 2011. Things have only gotten worse since then.
Walking across the waxed to a gloss floor to the back of the pharmacy for the third week in a row I thought again about how lucky I am. Not that each WEEK I have to pay 94 dollars for an “emergency” supply as the doctor pharmacist and I wait for insurance approval but that I CAN pay.
While my boys load their arms with candy and chips and put on their most pleading expressions I wait for MY treats. I have the same conversation at the pick up window that I have had 18 times over the last four months. The same conversation that I had over the phone with this pharmacy 6 hours ago. I KNOW I don’t have authorization from my insurance company. I STILL want them to fill the prescription. I WILL pay out of pocket. To a person they respond in disbelief. Do I know how much it costs?
Why yes I do.
But do they understand the cost of not having it?
No, despite their training and status as medical consultants they don’t seem to.
They don’t know how looking at the loft that my husband and son built will make me cry. How the excitement and accomplishment that the 10 year old feels will be wiped out by a strange swirl of my rage and fear, which leaves me standing mute but nodding my head “no, no, no, no” . I imagine that wobbly thing collapsing, Oliver’s head smashed open on his floor. I feel rage, genuine rage, about the visible stamps on the 2 x4s, why did they use this material? They must have no sense of pride, no aesthetic standards, who are these people and how do I live with them?
Heading downstairs I see a miniature milky way wrapper on the kitchen counter. This reminds me of long ago, before my current medication where each leftover breakfast remain was a milky little bowl of fuck you. What kind of mother buys her kids candy? What kind of kid leaves out the wrappers to taunt her, to remind her of her shortcomings. I mean, other than every kid. But that perspective is gone, irrelevant.
So the loft and the small wrapper slay me. I have no choice but to head to bed. Staying in the mix will not work. It is not an option. I might see something else. Some crumb or drawing that will not meet my impossible standards, that will trigger my rage or sorrow, that will leave me a puddle of self.
Lying on bed, an important distinction that shows that the half life of the medication is still in there somewhere, I call the pharmacy. AGAIN. I explain the fact that I WILL have to pay out of pocket. That I NEED the medication. I want to tell him about the loft, about the imminent imaginary death of my child, and the candy eating aliens that live in my house. I want to tell him about the shrinking walls that make the boundaries of my life.
But I don’t. He won’t understand.
And anyways I will get another chance to tell him all of this when I visit him at his counter and re-repeat myself while my kids shop for more candy. Whose wrappers hopefully will represent only the small plastic of themselves, rather than the impossibility of life outside the bedroom.
Wow. This is really powerful. I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time getting the medication you need. So few people understand that we NEED these medications just as people with diabetes need insulin. Or my husband needs his whatever-the-hell-it-is that he takes for his high blood pressure. My family gets it; my son sometimes asks me if I remember to take my meds when he sees I’m having a bad day. Then he asks if he needs to buy me a turtle sundae. He’s a good man.
Not just any sundae either! He must know your positives well. A testimony to how the people around us might be more buffered from our bad times than we imagine while we are looking up at them from the pit of misery. Or something less extreme 😉
They’ve seen me every which way. I’m glad they no longer have to see the rage…it’s been replaced with crankiness, which is a little easier to handle. Looking forward to posting you on Crazy Good Parent.
I’m so glad you can afford to get the medicine you need. I would
most assuredly be dead without mine.
It is terrifying to think of the number of people who can’t access what they need in terms of meds and therapy, because it is cost prohibitive. It’s awful and makes me so grateful that I can afford mine and have the privilege of access.
Exactly!
This could’ve been a page right from my own experience. Meds may not be for everyone, but depression is a very scary place to be, and like you, medication has helped me be the mom I always thought I’d be and find the joy in life. Thanks for sharing your experience.
The right meds make all the difference. I know we need to be wary of over medication but I worry that the stigma of being on medication might be keeping some people from getting the help they need.