Tuesday, March 16, 2010

now that didn't hurt a bit, did it?

So the appointment went really well, as far as appointments can go. The doctor was super duper nice, easy to talk to, his English was great and we totally went over the time limit.

I have mentioned before, I have the gift of gab and people tend to open up to me. I swear it must be the look on my face because it seems to say "tell me every thing about you, your family, you life, your wishes, your hopes, your dreams, what you ate for breakfast and how your bowels are moving along" because those are the stories I get no matter where I go. And don't get me wrong, I don't mind at all, I love talking to people but do you see where this is going?

About 15 minutes into our appointment he had to stop himself to say "oh wait, I forgot the introduction" because it was seriously just that easy to have a conversation with him.

At another point in the appointment as the psychologist was in the middle of telling me a story about his wife and her struggles when she moved to the Netherlands (she's an expat just like me!) he stopped himself and said, well wait, we're reversing the roles here. We had a good laugh and I actually learned quite a bit about his own family.

Eventually we did have to wrap it up and we got down to the "down and dirty". He said I've actually done a really good job at pinning down what I think my problems are (self destructive behaviors i.e. shoving a whole pie in my face, hiding my eating) and that the work that I did on my own with Dr. Phil's book The Ultimate Weight Loss Solutions has done me a lot of good and gives him a good base to work from. (He is a Dr. P fan by the way, LOVE THAT!).

He said that every two weeks the group of doctors get together and discuss the new patients and talk about what they feel the next steps should be. He said that for me he is going to recommend that I see a specialist who deals solely with eating disorders and he thinks he knows one who practices in a hospital near by our house (which he also used to live in this neighborhood a while back when his daughter was younger but then they ended up buying a house in Amstelveen, which is a great little city that Marco and I actually wanted to move to as well...)

So I have my follow up appointment with him in two weeks and he'll let me know where we go from there! It was such a good experience for me and I am so glad that I've taken this first step to getting the help that I need to get these issues under control.

p.s. he also recommends that I go back to school and finish my degree because he thinks I'm a really clever person and can do pretty much whatever it is I want to do. Nice!

2 comments:

becklette said...

ahem. I TOLD YOU SO. of course it went well. therapy is the best. also, of course you are clever and should finish your degree-- you want to!

Teale said...

That's great that your appointment went so well!

I am also similar in that people tell me EVERYTHING... I used to work at a hospital, and trust me, that is not a good gift to have when people want to tell you about their mammograms & hemmorhoids, when you're just a paperwork girl! haha!