I’m Back after a too-long gap, and while gone I gained some valuable insights

It has been eight months since my last post to the Blog, and I apologize to any readers. While I was away, I uncovered some things that can waylay writers, and some things t be on guard for,

I somehow failed to recognize the warning signs at the time, and that bothers me. Up until the end of June I had been seeing a succession of mental health counselors in an attempt to deal with a variety of psychological issues that are keeping me trapped on Social Security Disability and other benefits. I felt they were helping me move forward with my life, so I kept going. As I continue to discover, they were subtly pulling me in the wrong direction, and were actually keeping me from developing my talents and writerly passions.

This is hard-earned lesson number one: the only person who truly knows you is yourself. All counselors can do is make suggestions and point the client in one direction or another. Ultimately it is up to the client to do the actual recovery work that emerges from the counseling relationship. This is why counselors and other advisors must be chosen wisely, deliberatively and cautiously. The right counselor at the right time can be a great benefit. The wrong counselor, even if the time is right, can be downright destructive.

At the same time, medical practitioners need to be chosen carefully. Keep conscious of the fact that it is the patient (the consumer) who can be said to retain ultimate authority in any physician-patient relationship. At the first sign that your deepest concerns are not being adequately addressed, or are being seen as trivial by the physician, you do have the right to change physicians.

I last saw my primary care physician on March 31. The appointment was a complete downer because the message that came through all too clear is that apropos my primary health concerns, I am entirely on my own.

This is not an admission of pride, or a trumpeting of success. Rather, it is a statement of fact: I need to lose about 250 pounds to get back to a healthy weight level for m frame size and type. This amount of excess weight drives my Body Mass index, or BMI up by quite a bit, which, in turn, makes me an ideal candidate for the most successful form of weight loss (or bariatric) surgery.

However, because of a complex mess of regulations and qualifying criteria, I am also enrolled in both the Federal Medicare program and the Federal-state Medicaid program. For those unfamiliar with these programs, essentially they are publically funded health care plans that function like private health insurance plans.

Unfortunately the operational mind set is the same and is definitely not patient oriented. Numerous examples that underscore this opinion exist, but I will mention only a couple.

Idaho’s Medicaid program is notoriously averse to promoting sound dental health. There are many Medicaid clients trying to function normally in life despite having no teeth at al in their head.

For clients desiring bariatric surgery, Medicaid forces the patient and her doctor to deal with a paperwork and documentation chain that typically lasts two and a half to three years. At the end of this exhausting process, Medicaid reserves the right to still say “no.”

For me, the outcome of this medical appointment threw me into a deep, downward spiral that completely disrupted all creative processes and project progress. Only within the past month have I begun to emerge from this “dark night of my creative soul.” This blog post is one of the key steps I must pursue to fully break free of this lingering negativity.