Do you remember April? We had a miserable winter in the Northeast, with much snow, ice and rain, unending coldness and gloom thoughout the land. People kept speaking of this magical time called Spring, when it would all get better. None of us believed it. One day, in middle of April, I spotted a crocus, blooming in a sunny patch of grass. THEN I believed in Spring, and the bloom of flowers and grass and weeds that has accompanied our joyous and wet Spring and early Summer.
That's what I felt like today.
I got a call from the mother/father of a 13 y/o girl/boy with bipolar disorder, who was being discharged from a respite facility, and who had lost her psychiatrist while in respite, and who needed some medication of which I had never heard in order to stay on an even keel. A bridge prescription, they call it, to tide them over while they identify a new psychiatrist. (These "bridges" are sometimes far from temporary, as it can take months to get on a psychiatrist's list). As per our routine, I asked for documentation of the medication and assured the guardian that I could handle it for a month. While waiting for the documentation to arrive, I read up on the medication, which really had only a little evidence in its favor. The documentation arrived after about a week, and I called the father/mother to tell him/her that it would be handled, using the opportunity to commiserate about how hard it was going to be to find a psychiatrist, and urging them to bear with me if we ran into problems with the medication. "Oh, by the way" , she added nonchalantly,"I am enrolling him/her in that new program you have been talking about. They are here right now doing the assessment".
I smiled and laughed and cried just a little and my colleagues probably thought that I was crazy. But that is the crocus, my friends, the first bloom of hope for a while. This kid really needs this program; the program people have found the family; I will bet that they will have them hooked up lickety-split. I know intellectually that the folks from Community Healthlink with have just as much trouble finding a child psychiatrist as I would. But emotionally, knowing that at least one family is engaging in the process, makes me feel a whole lot better.
It is nice to see the Spring come. Bring it on.
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