Counseling 10

Counselor: So how have you been doing this past week? [He always starts this way.]

Wife: I've been sick.

That was how our session began, and it pretty much sums up the hour. Wife explained that she has been sicker than usual since ... well, more or less since January, actually, when her rheumatologist adjusted her medications. And he recently adjusted them again and asked for her to report back in a week, and she reported back but hasn't heard from him since then. And every muscle hurts, and her migraines have been worse than usual, and this probably has something to do with why she has been so depressed and so difficult to live with (her words!). Meanwhile she had an appointment with a new psychiatrist yesterday (since her long-standing one retired and his replacement was fired under mysterious circumstances): he seems OK, but he wanted to get her complete history during the first session and after 90 minutes he still hadn't been able to cover everything. (Anybody who has even a passing familiarity with Wife's medical and psychiatric history will find this no surprise.)

Sometimes these sessions require a lot of (emotional) work. Sometimes they can probe deeply. This was not one of those weeks. People who suffer from chronic pain or chronic illness have a reputation for never seeing any part of the world past their own narrow horizon, and I suppose this makes sense. When you are in pain, it is hard to think about something else. But as a result, we didn't really talk much today about how to make things better between us. The closest we got was to concede that we don't have much time together. Wife is home (or running errands) during the day, while I am at work; I usually get home somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30, and frequently one of the bambini has an evening commitment at 7:00. Wife can't stay awake past 7:30 or 8:00, so I take the child in question to the right activity; but by the time I get home, Wife is asleep or nearly so. And there is always stuff going on during the weekends. Bottom line? We get all our obligations met, but we never talk to each other. On the one hand, I guess this must mean we never fight. (And, truly, we fight a lot less than we used to.) On the other hand, we don't communicate much either, unless it is about the weekly schedule.

And that was our session with Counselor. Not a lot of depth today ...