Money Well Spent?

The great thing about living in a country with universal health care is that everyone, eventually gets access to all kinds of health practitioners. The down side to living in a country with universal health care is that the government places limits on how often you can access different areas of medical treatment, because of the need to keep total governmental spending down.

October last, when I first received the (tres classe) e-mail from Game Boy that he was ending our marriage, I confess to spiralling into kind of despair that would leave most people suicidal at best. Fully aware that I was the only stable parental figure in Sweetpea's life, I hotfooted it to the doctors to request counselling help. I was referred to a mental health specialist and informed that the government would pay for a grand total of six sessions for me to get my act together. Talk about putting a band aid over a open heart surgery wound.

In three weeks time I will have used my six sessions, and I have to say that I am fairly unimpressed with the whole system. Not that my psychologist isn’t caring; she truly is. But the whole time I have felt like she has had a list on her mental clip board of all my problems that she is duty bound to report as fixed to receive her government pay packet.

Insomnia – I sleep depending on my ability to keep fears at bay – check.
Midnight comfort eating – I haven’t eaten past 9pm in the last 8 weeks – check
Wanting to kill myself – I now want to kill him – check

Check. Check. Check. Its hard to not notice the small smile of self congratulations that plays on the psychologists lips as she sees that my presenting issues are resolved, in a manner of speaking. So has the money the Australian government poured into my health care been well spent? Have I really gotten anything out of the sessions I've spent with the psychologist? No.

Well to be really honest, that isn’t completely true. After four sessions with the psychologist I decided that the only way I was going to heal my heart and get my life back on track was to run back to the (often tough) loving arms of my life coach and take charge of things myself. Its thanks to my life coach that I have come so far in the course of four months. So maybe the government hasn’t wasted its money after all. After all, I'm now working with a Canadian life coach, and I'm not suicidal with grief. Its all good in the end. Now if I could work out of my system the murderous thoughts I harbour towards Game Boy I would sleep even better at night.