in treatment

I have been on my psychiatry rotation for the last week, at the state mental hospital. For some reason the way it is set up is that the work room where all the doctors and social workers and other staff putter around all day is at the end of a long hallway. Not too weird, right? Yet, this long hallway is the one where the patients hang out all day long, and they're sort of bored because all the funding got cut for extra programs, so in order to get from the work station to anywhere else you have to walk the entire length of the hallway with all the patients who are mostly in various degrees of recovery from debilitating schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and have nothing better to do than try to engage you, whatever that means to each of them. It can make one...consolidate one's trips. If only because it doesn't seem very nice to be totally engaged with people during their therapy and then have to blow them off because you're getting between me and my lunch.

As part of this rotation I am required to go to an AA meeting. I did the waddling in part, then promptly scuttled on down the hall to the Al-Anon meeting after the three 50-something men looked me up and down and cheerfully suggested that that was perhaps where I ought to be headed. So family, you can be assured that I am now getting the support I need to deal with your excesses.