i saw another psychologist last tuesday, and she seemed ok. i've decided i better just pick one and go every week whether i think it's helpful or not. only because my mom is really getting fed up with me. each time i get in the car after my initial appointment with a new T and say "i don't like her" there is a long, annoyed sigh from her. i know she is thinking "AGAIN?!" and she doesn't need to remind me YET AGAIN that "this one isn't on insurance" because well, none of them are now. i've exhausted all my insurance therapists, they all sucked. there were only a handful that had any ED experience that were on my insurance. sessions at $100-150 each is a lot to pay if you're going every week... we cannot afford this. i wish i could just not go. but my mom is now feeling like she has screwed up and failed as a mother so she's determined to keep me in therapy so that it's not another thing people can say she did wrong. anyway, back to avis. that is the therapist's name, that i saw on tuesday. i know it's hard to believe her name is actually "avis"!! it was just my history the whole sesson. god, do you know how sick i am of telling my "history"?! what seems like a million fucking therapists, 5 doctors, 3 psychiatrists... i am just tired of it all. i miss jennifer. yes, i am pathetically still not over her leaving. i cannot even think about her without crying still. and i am not someone who has been crying easily in the recent past. something happened awhile ago and i just went numb and could not cry. but jennifer leaving changed that and i was crying all the time over it. i almsot committed suicide i was so distraught over her leaving. and now i am still crying over it :(

i also saw a new doctor. that was yesterday. well actually wednesday, i am writing this at 5:30am friday so i still think of it as thursday since i haven't been to sleep all night. here is the shocker... I LIKE THE DOCTOR. yes i can hardly believe it myself. she is very, very nice. and very experienced with eating disorders. she has adult patients as well as adolescents which makes me feel better, i was sick of doctors talking to me like i was 5 or mary jones who didn't want to treat me since i was an adult so she couldn't really control me and a "medical risk" -- mary lowen [the new doctor] is not like that at all. at one point toward the end she was saying that if in a few months i have still not gained weight or been able to stop throwing up so much that she would want me to consider some type of inpatient [which seems pretty fair, to give me a full 2 months unlike "gain 5 pounds in a week or i won't treat you" like mary jones!] program, and i said "so if i haven't gained weight then, you mean you will drop me?" [as a patient], fully expecting her to say "yes" and give a lecture on "willing to work on recovery" or something like that. but instead she said "no, of course not! i will never drop you as a patient. i have never stopped seeing anyone. i've had patients who stopped seeing me but i was never the one to terminate treatment." which made me feel so relieved. another great thing about seeing dr. lowen is that the doctor's office building has a unilab [for getting blood work done] down the hall and also an EKG machine. i used to have to go all the way down to summit hospital to get an EKG when a doctor ordered it, and also go to another location for blood work. but on wednesday, not only did dr. lowen do all the normal vitals checks and all that, but i had an EKG done right there and then she walked me down the hall to the unilab and had them take my blood. it was past closing time and everyone was so nice to me, they didn't act resentful of the fact that because of me they were staying overtime.

being at a new doctor, not to mention i am nervous around ALL doctors, my blood pressure was through the roof! lol. before i left for the appointment i took it myself [i have a digital at-home monitor now, just bought it recently] it was 82/50 lying down [and i know that it's pretty accurate because this is a good omron monitor] but at the doctor's it was 95/55 lying down! it hasnt been so high in god, ages. i can't even remember.

my EKG was normal, of course. because i'm fine see. it's so hard to convince me that i'm in "a dangerous state" and a "walking time bomb" as one therapist put it... because if i was so sick why would i continue to be fine month after month? if everyone is so concerned over my heart than why is my EKG normal [and all the other EKGs i have had as well]? my blood work must not have been too terrible either, because she said she would call me if it was low enough to need hospitalization and she didn't call. she wrote me a prescription for K-Dur [sp?] though, which is a potassium supplement, figuring it must be at least a little low. i really am a "medical marvel" or something. that sounds pretentious and that's now how i mean it. what i mean is, i'm not supposed to be this healthy! it's not as if i throw up but then replenish my electrolytes with food or supplements. i'm so horrible to myself that i don't even do that. the only food i occasionally keep down is lettuce... and that is not even any every day occurance. yet somehow my body has managed to adapt. i discussed this with lowen and that's what she said. back when i was in texas in october and i was eating a little and not purging hardly at all, i felt like death. i wrote about this but i'm sure no one remembers. anyway, it was the oddest thing. going from puking everything to eating a bit and not purging, you would think i felt BETTER, right? but instead i felt 100 times worse. i felt like i was dying, i'm serious. i could hardly walk 10 feet before i had to sit and rest. i slept 14 hours a night and was still exhausted, only getting up because my grandma made me. so that was one of the first strange "adaptions" by body made - it got used to throwing up and living off my muscles or fat or wahtever the hell i was burning for energy. i don't know *how* my body is able to keep my potassium in the low range [vs. hospitalization-levels which are very very low] -- which i'm assuming is where it's at now since i didn't get an urgent call -- but that seems to be where i am right now. sure i have low blood pressure but it's better than it was in november, and generally it's just my systolic that is so low, not diastolic [which is what deirdre says is more dangerous].

so that was my appointment with dr. lowen. it lasted 2 hours! oh, and i forgot to mention that she was very nice about the weigh-in. i didn't get weighed, i just couldn't handle that at the moment and she was very understanding. unfortunately, next time it won't be so easy and she says she "must" weigh me next time. uggh. i just hate being weighed by other people. i hate to see the number enough as it is, when i'm ALONE, but to have others see it? DOCTORS who have treated girls 60 pounds? it's humilating. if i was 70 at the doctors, like i was recently, i would have let her weigh me. the reason being that if i went in at a very low weight, then any gain from there [which is easy to do if i'm 70 pounds, i gain on a CRACKER!] would be seen as "progress" whereas if i weighed more and then lost for the next few appointments she would be upset. does that make sense? i don't know what i weigh right now. i'm all over the place because of these huge weight fluctuations. i will have to find out soon though. all i know is i still think my thighs are disgusting, along with my ass. and why do i still have boobs?! god, i should not still have boobs...