First, I will start with the recent and then back-track. Today I went to my first day of day treatment/partial hospitalization at Herrick. They have an inpatient unit there as well but I couldn�t go to that (long ago before Rogers, when my therapist/doc were looking around here) because of insurance reasons. But from the looks of it, I�m glad that was the case! It is not an ED unit; it is a general psychiatric unit for under 18s. Girls only. They take quite a few ED patients over the year but there aren�t usually more than 1 at a time apparently. Right now I am not sure if any of the inpatients are there for an ED, none that looked anorexic but beyond that I can�t be sure. They are all really young though, or appear that way. Really immature blah blah blah. There are only 5 of us day patients, including me. Three girls and one boy. All three of the girls are there for EDs which is amazing actually because like I said they don�t get many at one time usually. I think that at least two of the girls were hospitalized (they were IP first) for depression mainly and their ED is a secondary diagnosis and not as much of an issue. The third girl I can�t be sure. The two that I mentioned before (who I think have depression and one of them made reference to cutting) are 17 and seniors in a high school nearby. The third girl looks *very* young but she may be older than she looks. She reminds me of Gianna! Not in her personality really, just her looks. She looks like Gi quite a bit except Gi is much, much thinner. This girl, Katrina, is very tiny but doesn�t look skinny or anorexic per se, just tiny, petite. She must be like 4�10�. All I know is that I towered over her in the elevator and my shoes only added an inch! I didn�t think she was there for an ED, just thought she was a tiny Asian (sorry to be stereotypical, but I do know a ton of Asians around here who are tiny, naturally), but I caught some comments that clued me in. The therapist, whose name is Andrea (said On-dray-uh), said something about gaining weight to play sports again, and also Katrina makes a lot of references to how she has no energy now.
The boy�s name is Nate and I don�t know how old he is. Actually, I don�t know any of their ages officially, but the person who gave me my assessment on Tuesday told me there were two 17 year olds, and since those two girls (Maddi and Alli) are seniors and go to school together I assume they are the 17 year olds. ANYWAY, so I have no clue how old Nate and Katrina are. I think Nate is there for depression. He is pretty nice, very quiet so I haven�t talked to him or anything yet but he *seems* nice. Not like the asshole guys I remember from high school, anyway!
The day seemed to drag but once it was over I realized it�s a pretty short day. Especially as far as partial programs go. It�s only from 9am to 2:30pm. The day goes like this:
9:00 Check-In
9:30 PE
10:00 Break
10:15 Group
11:15 Art
12:00 Lunch
1:00 School
2:00 Check-Out
I hated PE and School. I actually thought I might like the PE because I need exercise and I thought we might do something fun like basketball which I haven�t played in ages. But instead it was awful because we have to go down to this little fenced in yard where there is a tiny kiddies structure, plastic playhouse, etc. and it was bitter cold. Well, cold for us Californians :P It was like 40-something degrees out! I just froze. The activity was just hitting a ball back and forth in a big circle. Wow, how fun! PE, art and school are groups that are combined with the inpatients. I feel pretty out of place there considering I�m 19 and everyone is younger than me. But apparently this is better than the adult program because not only are there no ED�ed patients in the adult program, but the youngest woman is 30 and the majority are 50s and even some older. I haven�t decided yet if I am going to keep going. I went today, and I�m going tomorrow, but that is all I can say for sure.
Besides just feeling out of place I had a really bad day physically. Anxiety was really bad this morning and I got sick and threw up my breakfast of a banana, completely involuntarily. I think I managed to keep a little of it down. I had a meeting with Michele (dietician) at 8am and then rushed over to the program. A few hours into it my stomach started to hurt and it got progressively worse. Eventually I had very bad pressure and bloating and it was just getting worse and worse� my abdomen was seriously swelling more and more by the minute. Thank god I had on a big sweatshirt� but it was so uncomfortable and painful. I have no idea what caused it because there was no food trigger since I had barely anything in my stomach, and an empty stomach does not cause that kind of a reaction! Believe me, I would know� anyway, just as it was getting really unbearable, it was time for lunch. I asked the counselor who came to get us from the inpatient unit where we were doing art if I could see the doctor. No one even knew who my doctor was so they sent me to lunch and said they would try to find him. We went down to the cafeteria. They give you a $5 meal voucher every day and basically you just get whatever you want. Katrina got French fries, mashed potatoes, a granola bar and this huge chocolate milk (it had three servings and each had 200 calories; I tried not to be obvious while reading the label LOL). Katrina must really like those chewy granola bar things... she ate two in the morning, one at lunch, and one in the afternoon! Both the other girls got French fries also, grilled cheese and a cheeseburger. Oh, and diet soda *eye roll* haha. I stood around for an embarrassingly long time trying to figure out what to get. They had a grill where you could get hamburgers, turkey burgers, chicken breast, veggie burgers and grilled cheese, plus some pre-made sandwiches, a salad bar, etc. I finally decided to get a chicken breast and it came on a bun. I also got an orange. They had so much diet soda down there! Really a great selection. They had diet Barq�s root beer, which I love :) So anyway then we all took our trays back upstairs to eat. All three girls had no behaviors at all eating their food� not to say they don�t have EDs but it was kind of weird how at ease they all appeared with their food choices and while eating it. Especially since Alli said in check-in that she had �eaten a lot of salad� the night before for dinner so she �threw it up� ??? So� salad = must purge, but cheese burger & fries is ok? Hmm� I struggled with lunch because I didn�t know the calories in this particular chicken breast and was obsessing over the fact that it was grilled on the same grill as the burgers� :( It was very small though, so I ate 90% of it and was easily not full in the least. Left the bun. I was embarrassed because everyone ate so quick and I wasn�t finished until the nick of time.
Eventually my psychiatrist came up to see me and his name is Dr. Hightner. He couldn�t give me anything for my stomach, he said, since I wasn�t a patient in the hospital. That really sucked! He felt sorry for me though so he went to try to find something and came back with an antacid. Not only was that not what I needed (I needed a simethocone/Gas-X really bad) but it was the LIQUID type� �mint cr�me�! Omg. I gagged it down hoping it might help even a tiny bit. It didn�t, and I nearly puked. After lunch we had school. The teacher wants me to give him my Venture teacher�s name and number so he can call her. Uggh! I don�t want him calling her. I�m fucking 19 and I explained that I do independent study� I don�t need him calling her when I already have the whole year�s assignments already and know exactly what I need to do. He wasn�t getting this when I explained it though so I guess I�ll just have to deal with it and let him make his stupid call. ?
After an hour school was over (I read Cracked the whole time, the new book by Dr. Drew and it�s pretty good. It�s all about addiction and his work at a rehab facility) and we went back to do �Check-Out� but I got called out almost immediately by Dr. Hightner to go have our first session. When I sat down he said �So, I hear you have some kind of eating issue?� I had to keep myself from rolling my eyes. �Yeah�� and he said �Well, can you explain that?� and I said �Well what do you want me to say? I was diagnosed with anorexia?� and it just went on from there� really basic stuff. Obviously, this guy doesn�t specialize. Which is kind of surprising that he calls it an �eating issue� when there are all these other ED patients there?! Maybe not at that particular time but in the past there have been. Weird. Hopefully though, he can get me on some better meds. Because the Ativan is not a high enough dosage and the BuSpar only knocks me out for a 2 hour nap but doesn�t make me less anxious. Seroquel I was taking with my Trazodone at night but now I�m not taking it because I heard it causes weight gain� *sigh*
It was a short meeting and then I went back for the last five minutes of check-out and then went home. I puttered around on the comp for a bit and ate (I was so fucking hungry!) before succumbing to my sleepiness and napping from 4-6pm. Shit! I had therapy at 5pm. I had decided last minute to do a phone session instead because I was way too tired to drive the 45-60 minutes out there in rush hour traffic (why the hell does it start at 3pm?!), but then I completely slept through it. Oh well. She called at 6 and didn�t seem pissed off.
That concludes my day I guess. I was going to write about some other things� more important things� such as Thanksgiving, the funeral I had to go to the next day, seeing Brian and Chelsea and other people from my old high school� but now I�m just beyond tired. I have not been sleeping well at all and last night only got three hours. Up since 7am, it�s been a very long day so I think I�m going to go to sleep now so I can get 5 hours in. I don�t know how I�m going to stay awake tomorrow�?