Padded Rooms and Eating Habits: Part I

One of the program requirements is to meet with a Psychiatrist for a psychological assessment. With the Red Deer program the doctor we saw was Dr. Singh, a Psychiatrist outside of the program that they use to assess surgery candidates. Early on we got out referral in for the psychologist and we only had to wait three or four months to get the appointment. Now when making the appointment you need to remember that he is outside the program so this appointment won’t count as your mandatory monthly appointment at the clinic. Since we live in Calgary and can only come out to Red Deer once a month we made appointments to see others at the clinic on the same day, but more about those in part two of this post.

 We were both very nervous for this appointment as he will literally say “yes” you are mentally prepared/ready for surgery or “no” you are not, and just like that you can be out of the program. Both of us were picturing a long session in uncomfortable chairs having to watch what we said least he think we’re crazy. Thank god it was nothing like that.

When we arrived and checked in and sat down to wait. After 5 minutes Ally was called in to have her appointment first. She went in and they talked about family history, if she knew anybody who has had the surgery, what her expectations are, made sure she knew that surgery was just a tool and then told her that he would be sending a positive report to Dr. Farris (our surgeon). In total she was probably only in there for about twenty minutes.

After Ally is was my turn. I went in and sat down not really knowing what to expect, but hopeful because Ally was only in there for a short time and she had given me the thumbs up when she came out. My appointment was even shorter, at about ten to fifteen minutes because he didn’t have to go over family history having already done so with Ally. He went over the exact same things with me and then said he would be sending his report to our surgeon.

We left with a huge weight off our shoulders, having crossed off another step towards surgery. Our mandatory Clinic appointments will be coming in part 2 of this post.

XOXO, Evie & Ally