Should I...

I know no one reads this.  I just like to get things out there.  It helps me figure out stuff.

So my dilemma is as follows:

I am certified in both Family Medicine and Psychiatry.  In recent years, I have focused on Psychiatry in private practice.  I have been considering adding FM to my practice.  When I am in the Bahamas, I do take on FM patients (I am registered there).  I actually really enjoy it and frankly, sometimes dealing with strictly psychiatry can be daunting, overwhelming, and difficult.  This would be a good time to do this as I have taken on a partner in my practice so I can travel a little more as my kids become older.

So, I'm not really sure.  Some of my patients have expressed that they would not mind if they could get their PCP care and Psychiatry from the same source. I have to weigh it all out.

Just that. Enough said.

Family

I don't use this as often I should.  I mean, it's not like anyone actually reads it or anything.  So I could use it to vent and stuff and only strangers might come upon it...

😐

So.  Family.  Yeah.  My spawn are 16 and just about to be 18.   I have to say that they are pretty good kids.  They are hard working, don't take much of their lives for granted, are generous, funny, and full of life.  They haven't had an easy go of it.  Their father, my beloved first husband Sean (senior), passed away when they were little.  Sean (Junior) had just turned 6 and Siobhan was 4.  It wasn't easy for us.  Yes, I had help and money and a house and a career, but it was still hard.  Then I met Paul, fell in love, and married him 5 years ago.  I was lucky; my kids fell in love with him too.    Paul's adoption of the spawn was finalized two years ago. We're a family in every sense of the word. 

This is so important to me as I never had a family growing up. I was orphaned at a very young age and was raised by nuns in a children's home.  I never got adopted.  Most of us didn't.  That isn't to say I had a bad childhood.  It wasn't Dickensian or anything.  It was actually pretty happy, for the most part.  The Sisters were supportive and I had a great education and did grow up to become a doctor.  But I didn't have that core feeling of belonging.  Not until I met and married Sean and had our kids.  And then that ended.  Sean left me in the worst possible way, the victim on a drunk driver going the wrong way on an upstate road.

I had to navigate the waters of single motherhood with no mother of my own to lean on for advice and support.  I had it better than a lot of single mothers, though.  I had, as I said above, a good solid career with good money coming in and I could afford childcare assistance.  A lot of single mothers (and a lot of married working mothers) don't have that.  But having that assistance didn't replace not having a mother figure I could rely on.  I was probably a crappy single mother in the beginning.  I'm sure I was.  But my kids were (and still are) resilient and they forgave my ineptitude. I'm glad they forgave me, and probably forgive me every day for never really getting it quite right.  But I must be doing something right, because my kids are amazing.

So, yeah.  This is probably disjointed as hell, but I am a perfectionist and this blog is my change not to be.  My chance to grammatically incorrect at times and not follow the rules.  Now let's see if I can avoid coming back to make a million corrections.

Irma and Jose somehow managed to skirt our part of the Bahamas and other than some weird tide action and some rough surf, all was fine.  Opened up the shutters, aired out the cottages, cleaned some debris off the beaches and we're good to go.  Thank the weather gods for keeping our little area of paradise safe.  Donations have gone out to local charities in Texas and Florida.  Wish I could do more, but the money helps.

Bahama Bound

It's one of those weeks.  This physician needs to heal herself.  It's time for a little Redemption on the Cay!

Looking forward to hanging out with Paul and the spawn, toes in the sand.  Heck, I might even get in a little snorkeling!

Ghost in the Machine

So.... what do you do when you hear someone telling about this amazing haunting they witnessed/experienced and you know for a fact it didn't occur?  I've seen someone, I'll call him Lou, going around con to con telling people about this extreme haunting he experienced.  He's very specific about the dates and place the haunting occurred.  He's come up with a name that supposedly everyone called him when "word got out" about the haunting.  He's shopping a book deal.   But the thing is, I lived in the same house as him when this supposedly occurred.  We were in college together.  None of the stuff he said happened really happened.  And I don't feel I can call him out on this because he's MonsterMan.

Triggers

Been triggered all over the place today.  One of my patients is in a relationship similar to the one I had in college with MonsterMan.  I'm not sure if I should continue with this patient or pass her on to another therapist.  Honestly, I feel fragile and small when I hear her.  I thought I put MonsterMan in the past, but do you ever really get past the small micro aggressions that grow into larger verbal aggression, and culminate in hitting and that horrible night where a knife was held to my neck while he strangled KellyCat with his free hand?  I still have a small physical scar on my throat from that night.  But the emotional scars go so much deeper.  I have to give this serious thought.  When does the therapist walk away from a case that stirs the emotions?