Okay, so the title is a little misleading.I'm not exactly sure what shrink wrap is, but I know it doesn't have much to do with my psychiatric history unless you equate "wrap" with "rap" and I can tell you that over the years I've sung my heart out to a lot of shrinks.
But my most recent doctor--let me call him Dr. No, only because of his ultimate decision on my behalf--will go into my personal record book of shrinks as a unique interaction. For one thing, Dr. No is young, 30ish,good-looking but appearing to be overweight by some 10 or 15 pounds. Actually, all of my shrinks have been men if you don't count one New jersey psychologist who tried to cure me of OCD by joining her weekly group therapy session.That's like trying to cure a cancer patient with castor oil. If it works, it's only by accident.
Since I don't actually have any prejudice against female shrinks, I think the reason I favored relationships with men is at the time they were more plentiful and they don't tend to be as critical as women.That one suburban psychologist I saw during my elementary school teaching days seemed to always find some way to get a dig in. And the irony is she knew that like most neurotics, I was sensitive to criticism. But she would smile away with a cheshire-like grin during our 54-minute session and make subtle remarks about my negativity (which I freely admitted to), my then-habit of checking out dead bodies that I feared I ran over during my drive enroute to her office from my workplace, and my ineffectual participation during group therapy. Most of what she criticized was true, but she had an annoying tendency to make the hurt stick. When I finally called it quits with her, she told me that I should have attended group at least one more time to "explain my departure."
To be fair, I wasn't just gender-biased after the above incident. I was ethnically-biased. As a Jewish female who was about as religious as a clam, I avoided Jewish shrinks ever since the time I was referred to a former "friend" of my father's. Not only was he older, but he didn't "get" OCD and managed to put me on every loser of a drug that pharmaceutical companies were churning out. Plus, he was a real bastard--no compassion, high fees, and a let's-wait-until-she-gets-really-bad-attitude that did not inspire optimism or confidence.
Six or so shrinks later I was now in Arizona, devoid of OCD (one day it just got up and walked away, I like to say). I was told that I aged out of OCD. I don't know if that's true across the board, but it was so for me. I just think my mind couldn't keep up with reconstructing the "almost" car crashes, food poisonings, chokings, and other near calamities that had "befriended" me for a good 15 years. The truth is I wasn't smart enough after a while to be OCD. It takes a certain amount of cognitive voltage to manage all that checking and handwashing--and in my case obsessive thinking--and like many people I got stupider as I got older. So I had to settle for chronic depression topped off by vicious cycles of anxiety. I was getting better or so the shrinks told me. It didn't feel that way, but according to them, I wasn't at high risk for suicide, which comforted them but had zilch effect on my quality of life. To put it bluntly, my QOL was shitty. I only felt somewhat happy when I disappeared into a movie or book or snacked on cake, ice cream or another high-caloric dessert.
But then the previously benign but chronic depression took a turn for the worse, and it became chronic medication resistant depression, which meant none of the drugs was working. I was waking up and going to bed with SADNESS, and every time one of my pets died, I hammered another nail into my coffin. This was about the time that ketamine (Special K for you dopesters) was rediscovered as a treatment for chronic pain and chronic depression. Sign me up I said, with an enthusiasm that bordered on manic. But ketamine IV infusions were trendy and I didn't care for that. No way was some para-medic who went to school six weeks and read a pamphlet on intravenous procedures going to hook me up to a mystery bottle, hunt for a good-enough vein, and immobilize me until their coffee break was over. I didn't even like going for blood tests and chatting it up with hematologists, so I certainly wasn't anxious to do the vampire waltz with ketamine.
Luckily I found a guy shrink, Dr. No, who catered to my phobia. "What about gel tabs?" he asked. Well, that was all I had to hear and I fell in love with the guy. It didn't matter that he came late for appointments, was next to impossible to contact for medication refills, or sometimes neglected to show up for scheduled meetings--"The next one will be free, okay?" I needed him like a bird needs a tree, so it didn't matter that my tree was a little shaky and lacked foliage. About then I googled Dr. No and saw that an older photo a few years back revealed a super handsome guy, ten pounds lighter, clean shaven, and with a yuppie hairstyle that cried out "I'm great." What happened? I asked myself. How did this light-weight shrink morph into The Incredible Hulk? And what was more important, why did he change?
I found out about a month later when I needed a refill on a prescription. I texted, then voice mailed him for a few days without a response. After about 10 tries, my voicemails deteriorated into whining tantrums, but I still got no reply. That's when I began to worry: He could be dead, ill, strung out on drugs, in an alcoholic blackout. Why else would he abandon me? After all, it wasn't as if I was a free patient--I was paying a few C-notes every month. If nothing else, he needed me so he could continue his current lifestyle, which I knew nothing about. For all I knew he lived in a one-room hovel with only cockroaches for company and crept out at night for meals at IHOP and conversations with stray dogs.
Here again was a second doctor who had left me for no good reason. What was wrong with me? Was it my breath, my boring diagnosis, my tendency toward self-blame and babbling? Then an intelligent voice emerged and said, "Janice, there's nothing the matter with you that a few months in Tahiti and a little time travel wouldn't fix. The guy either has a PERSONAL PROBLEM or he's dead, and in both cases he's unavailable to you." This was later confirmed by a knowledgable source who once got me out of the loony bin (but that's another story entirely).
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