What Happened To Treatment?

I started a blog and then I disappeared. So what happened? Well, that is quite a story - one that upsets me even now. Let me start by sharing with you the email that I sent out to my friends:

Here's the story: My eating disorder (EDNOS - not exactly anorexia or bulimia) is in full force right now. After much arm twisting, Hubby got the treatment center to give us a payment plan. We handed them $1100 that we had scraped together and they said my insurance had approved me so that I could start Partial Hospital treatment (10 hours per day, 7 days a week).

I started treatment on Monday. I thought I was going to die. I have studiously avoided having any relationship with food for a very long time. All of the sudden, they had me picking out menus (of food I do NOT like) and eating 3 meals and 3 snacks a day. Plus drinking lots of water. It was sometimes hard not to cry when I saw the food on my plate. If I didn't eat everything, they would ask me to drink a supplement called Peptimin (sp?) so that I would still get nutrition. 

Eating all of that food affected me in two ways - it "woke up" my body and it "woke up" lots of emotions. The therapy sessions did the same thing. On the first day I got pulled out of sessions by the direct care staff, the nurse, the psychiatrist, and the dietitian to tell the story of my eating disorder in minute detail to each one of them. So I had to keep repeating it. I had to keep remembering how it started and why it was active now. 

Also, I had been so depressed and tired for so many months that I had not been up and active for 10 hours (plus getting ready plus travel) for a LONG time. So I was exhausted. The only reason I went back for Day 2 and Day 3 was because I knew Hubby wanted me to get the help. 

So yesterday, Day 3, I got pulled out of session by the intake coordinator (some time after lunch). I was reading some hard stuff about my disorder at the time, so I was already emotional. I was told by the intake coordinator that my insurance had denied Partial Hospital Treatment and only wanted to approve IOP (Intense OutPatient). IOP is actually aftercare for people who have received treatment. It is 4 hours a day, 3 days a week. So we are looking at 12 hours a week versus 70 hours a week. And no therapist. Just "check in" and a dietitian appointment once per week. No help with behavior modification or a safe place to face my fears. Hours upon hours a week by myself to try to figure this thing out.

The intake coordinator tried to make it seem as if IOP would be a good thing. Honestly, I am not that stupid. If all I needed was IOP, I never would have been put in Partial Hospital in the first place. 

I did talk to the woman who was going to become my therapist, Jane, later on. I told her that I felt like the treatment center had taken what little money I had and brought me into treatment on a gamble. They needed me there so that all of their practitioners could do assessments on me so that they could convince the insurance that I needed to be there. But they didn't tell me that. They did not tell me, "we need you in a here for a few days to see if the insurance will go for it". They told me that I was approved and that I could start treatment.

For those of you who are not familiar with this type of thing, I wish I had the words to express how dangerous it is to start someone on a path that will get knocked off of almost immediately. As a social worker myself, I would never suggest this type of thing for one of my clients. 

Of course the treatment center is going through the appeals process with my insurance, but until then, I can only be there 12 hours a week and not participate in most of the therapeutic work. It would probably be better for me to just find individual therapists and dietitians to work with, but I cannot afford the co-pays because I gave all of my money to the treatment center.

As you might imagine, I am raw, angry, and scared. I would not usually admit to this type of thing, but you need to know what shape I am in: Last night I screamed curses and threw a blunt object at my husband (he deflected it, thankfully). I am scared and lost. I am angry in the way a wounded animal might be angry. I feel betrayed by the unethical intake coordinator (whom the therapist is reporting to the executive director). 

Probably the worst part is that I feel hopeless. Yes, I know there are many reasons why I should not feel hopeless. Please, please don't flood my inbox with explanations of hope. I know that in my head, but the feeling I have is hopelessness. I do not actively want to hurt myself, but I wish that I could just die. Fade away, I guess. Just sort of be here one moment and then gone the next. Unfortunately, as each moment comes, I still find myself here and in a horrible situation.

So if you pray, please pray for me. If you send energy out into the universe, do that. If you have recently won the lottery, please share. If you do not want to hear about this again, let me know and I will not send you more emails about it.

That is the basics of what happened to me at treatment. I'll tell you how I decided to deal with it in my next post. 

Are we having fun yet?