January 31st, 2014

Today I received a call from a woman wanting to schedule an appointment with me for Spiritual Counseling.  I have had a private practice, taught workshops and classes in intuitive and healing arts since 1990.  I have advertised, promoted myself and done all the things one does to build a practice.  Like trying to slow a freight train, the information that I have closed my practice takes much longer to slow down than it did to start up.

Because I am still trying to find the right way to answer why I can no longer see clients I have tried the following reasons: 

1. Sorry, I am focusing on other things right now.
   
   
2. There is a high likelihood that even if I could get dressed for an appointment, I just might faint, covered with sweat, part way through the session.  Oh, and I would have to push my little “She has fallen and can’t get up” button.
   
   
3. I am dying.
   
   

Turning down another client, especially because of reason #3 reminds me that I have no income.  The day two neurologists at Swedish Hospital sat Chuck and I down to pass on the news that I did indeed have Multiple Systems Atrophy (Note for future reference that if two doctors walk in you know you are in trouble) they said to apply for Social Security Disability, and as an added benefit MSA is such a fast disease that there is some kind of no waiting list of diseases that would have hurried up the Social Security process.  (Another note for reference, if your disease has a “fast track” with Social Security you really know you are in trouble.)

Closing my practice and getting disability was not my first choice, but referring to answer #2: There is a high likelihood that even if I could get dressed for an appointment, I just might faint, covered with sweat, part way through the session.  Oh, and I would have to push my little “She has fallen and can’t get up” button.   I gave applying for disability a try; after all as a sole proprietor I had diligently paid into the system.   And they promptly turned me down.  What?!  Oh yes, I remember now.

Several years ago, when I actually had this fast tracked disease but had not been diagnosed, I applied for disability.  After careful consideration the judge noted that I had listed my profession as a “Spiritual Healer and Teacher”, which to him seemed down right suspicious.  He announced that I must really be a psychic, and everyone knows that a psychic’s job is to fool people.  So he threw out my testimony, and any testimony based on what I had told my doctors.  I must be amazing because I apparently have fooled all my doctors into thinking I am actually sick.  This was all explained to me by a Social Security agent, that because of that decision I was not eligible for disability, but wait! The good news is I can apply for my regular Social Security when I turn 62, in two years.   Note the irony here.

So here is the part where I complain that one very incompetent doctor in Seattle decided to take me off all my medications to see if any of those could be the cause of my symptoms.  It took a month to titrate off them all.  Over the six years I have been looking for a reason for what I called my “fainting goat syndrome” doctors have ordered many tests and tried all sorts of medications.  Some of those actually helped.  Why you ask would this doctor think the medications, or my heart, or whatever else he could think of, would be causing the symptoms of Atypical Parkinson’s Multiple Systems Atrophy?  HE HAD NOT READ MY CHART AND HAD NO IDEA THAT I EVEN HAD A DIAGNOSIS. (Yes, I am aware that all caps equal a rant.)

So, let’s figure this out; two days of Chuck needing to take off from work, two trips to Seattle, two appointments to a doctor I was referred to by the neurologist, my wise and brave decision not to follow through with the two days of testing at Swedish to check to see if this could all be my heart (not the first dog and pony show with that, and every time the same tests show it is not my heart) and a month of a “drug vacation” from medications that actually were helping me.  Yep, I am coughing and choking, hurting, not sleeping, depressed, experiencing flair up of my Irritable Bowel Syndrome because he did not read my chart.  Now how much did those appointments cost?

So tomorrow it is another day off work for Chuck, a drive to Seattle and an appointment with my neurologist to most likely figure out a plan to titrate back on the medications I just went off. 

No moral lesson in this post, I will end with assistance from Sister Mary Margaret’s special autocorrect, that duckin’ double duck everything, and tomorrow is another duckin’ day.

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