[KBear]

I'll pipe in...

I was told that I had not passed my psych exam and couldn't have surgery. I then had to do bio-feedback or hypno therapy to get the go ahead. I did 2 bio-feedback sessions, then the man that did them left for another job. I refused to do hyno-therapy (religious beliefs and I did not feel comfortable letting someone have 'control' or 'strong power of suggestion' over my mind). Anyway, so I then had to meet the therapist and talk about my current state of mind. I was then cleared for surgery. I honestly think that this is done for money. Want surgery? See our TBI therapist for 5-7 visits ($$$$) and then you can have it done. I am sure some insurances require it and it covers their backside if it turns out someone was not of sound mind and they had surgery done (that way they can say they did everything they could to check the person out).

Anyhow, according to them, "people who are depressed going in to surgery, don't have as good of outcomes, or not good at all outcomes, versus people who are not depressed. I think that is a crock ! I was never depressed, 25 years of living, never depressed. 3 years of chronic pain, 24/7, yeah I'm depressed. Yeah, I've just wanted to check out before (don't want to die, just sleep through this nightmare, or be really, really drugged, where I don't give a hoot). Sad thing is, I even lied about the severity of my depression, saying it wasn't that bad, and I STILL flunked. I think the worse part was, the psychologist didn't even let on that she was not giving me the go ahead. So then, I see the first surgeon (not using him); and he says, and I quote "I know this is hard to hear about yourself.... I will not do surgery on you until you get approval from the psychologist... We don't have good outcomes with people who have psychological problems... Surgery won't fix depression..." and on and on.

I was crying my eyes out, didn't see this coming and he just keeps blabbing. I left more depressed than I came in, I was ready to jump off a cliff. After crying for a couple of hours, I pulled it together and called the pyschologist to see what the heck was going on. She then says that their is a reason he is a surgeon and not a psychologist and that I just needed to learn some skills to cope with the pain. Anyways, I'm thinking, if someone was really unstable and had someone talk to them like that man talked to me, it could definitely push them over the edge. I mean, this is my last ditch effort and that man just sucked the hope out of it. I left thinking that I was at the end of my road and would have to live in pain forever... that's depressing. If they are so damn worried about your psychological well being, they need to train their people to be more sensitive to you. Oh, and that jerk of a surgeon practices out of TBI in Denton and Plano.