After dealing with Theresa's medical situation for the last month, I felt it was important to touch on the point of medications.

I'm getting very annoyed with members of the medical profession who like to hand out pills like candy and don't take the time to explain them, particularly psychiatric medications getting doled out by doctors with no psychiatric experience.  Hopefully this practice will change soon, but in the meantime, before starting any medication ask your doctor 1. what it does, 2. what are the possible side effects, and 3. how do I stop taking the medication safely?

Theresa's condition was made a lot worse because her doctor had been trying her on a medication that made sense if you only paid attention to one of her symptoms, but since it wasn't what Theresa really needed, she changed doctors and stopped taking the medication cold turkey.  It did a number on her head and probably made her condition worse.

She's not the first young person I've seen this happen to.  One of my friend's little brother was on antidepressants.  He didn't feel like they were helping, so he just stopped taking them (again, he wasn't warned).  He was also a basket case for a while.

Be very, very careful about taking medications designed to repress emotions.  There are certainly people out there who are helped by psychiatric drugs, but there's also a growing amount of evidence that they can make some conditions worse rather than better.  In most cases, a drug alone is not enough.  Depression and Anxiety are often caused by factors outside a person as well as inside.  In Theresa's case, her situation was so bad that no amount of medication in the world was going to help unless she got out of it.  For many of us, small changes can make a big difference.  I'm reading a book now, that says merely cutting back on caffeine can make a huge difference for some people with anxiety. Depression is something I've struggled with most of my life, but I've learned a hundred different techniques to keep it from overwhelming me.  Volunteering with preschoolers has been the biggest help.

So again, it's very important to take an active interest in your own health.  Particularly your own mental health.

WebMD won't replace a doctor, but it's a great resource for those with medical questions and basically free as long as you have internet access.

It looks like Theresa may be suffering from a rare disorder, which for privacy reasons I won't name it here.  Now WebMD can't diagnose that for us, but it can give us information about symptoms and treatment options.  I think what she's suffering from falls outside her doctor's area of expertise, so I'm going to take the article I found with us to the next appointment and see if he could recommend a speciallist.

What's really helpful about WebMD is it can give you a better idea of whether you need to see a doctor in the first place, and sometimes it will list simple changes to diet, exercise, or lifestyle that may help.  I had some issues with being unusually tired back in college.  At first I thought it might be depression but ruled that out, then I worried it was mono.  I tried webmd's symptom checker.  One possibility was that I was anemic due to low iron levels in my diet.  Since that was the simplest thing to fix, I did a search on foods high in iron.  Turned out my favorite breakfast cereal Total was top on the list (just hadn't eaten any in a while).  I had a bowl and felt instantly better.  From that point on, I've been careful to keep some high iron foods as part of my routine.

There are other resources than webmd out there.  Your doctor probably knows more about medicine than you do, but doctors are still human.  Taking an active interest in your own health will save you a lot of time and money and can help your doctor treat you better.

I won't pretend to be an expert on health insurance.  I'm starting to get a handle on the terminology, but recommending one plan over another is beyond me.  So I'm not going to touch on anything that specific in this blog.  Nor am I going to get into the political aspects or soap box on that topic, because in many ways I'm out of my depth and not trying to make a political statement.

The way things are set up now though, it's in your best interest to have health insurance, and usually the best way to get it is through the company that you work for.  A lot of retailers hire part timers so they can avoid giving them benefits.  But there several companies out there that do offer health insurance to part timers.  I believe Starbucks does as well as Krogers, and I think Publix too.

My question is do any of you know of other chain stores that offer health insurance to part timers?

I'm asking partially to get a list going, and partially because Phillip is going to be seeking out a second part time job after he finishes writing the book (we're on chapter 10!).  Something that would give him health insurance would be a big plus.