waiting

In some sense, I feel that I have been waiting my entire life to do psychiatry.  One of my college roommates in my first year of college had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I remember how terrified I was when I realized that her phone call to me during second trimester exams was actually coming from the hospital - and I had not picked up.  I remember her getting into bed and not getting out of bed again - and equally, the nights we stayed up talking into the wee hours.

She was under care, but I was always terrified that perhaps she would not be alive the next time I got home.

It has been a tremendous relief to finally see the other side of bipolar disorder from a medical perspective: what happens inside the hospital, what medications are used and why, and what would happen if the disease remained untreated.

I can think of more than a handful of people I know who had suicide ideation.

I can think of  at last two occasions in which I spoke with people who were delusional, manic, paranoid, or having ideas of reference (secret messages from the world being conveyed to them).

And of course, there have been plenty of personality disorders along the way.

It has been such a relief to see professionals dealing with these issues - to see medication break a mania, to see psychotic people return to their right minds, to see suicidal people improve.

It has been a huge privilege to be on psychiatry.