My eating disorder diagnosis

Yesterday I had my initial eating disorder assessement. This is how it went.

My mom picked me up and took me there for moral support. She didn't plan to go into the assessment with me, she was just there to calm my nerves beforehand and discuss the experience afterward. As we sat in the waiting room, I felt pretty good. I was excited to finally get some hope. A very nice woman came and took my paperwork, and I was happy to hear that she was going to be one of the people assessing me. When I was ushered into the assessment room, there were many heartfelt apologies because they were running ten minutes behind. I told them it was no big deal because my psychiatrist has been almost an hour late before. (It's ok, she's a great psychiatrist, even the people at the assessment has heard of her and said she was great, which I already knew.)

There were three people doing the assessment as a team. There was a counselor, a psychiatric nurse, and a dietitian. They asked me questions for about an hour. They were so nice, and kept telling me I was doing a great job. (Later, my mom told them that I need a lot of positive feedback, and although that was news to me, it makes sense when I think about it.) The questions were fairly painless.

Next, they took me back to the waiting room and said they had to discuss my diagnosis privately for 5 or 10 minutes. Well, 20 minutes later I was still waiting, very anxiously I might add. My mom was there, and she did her best to calm my nerves. I was just nervous because I wasn't sure if the questions they had asked me captured exactly how much I'm struggling. My worst fear was that they wouldn't give me a diagnosis.

They finally came back for me, and they had (what was in my opinion) relieving news. Binge Eating Disorder isn't an official diagnosis because it currently falls under the category of Eating Disorders Not Otherwise Specified (NOS). However, Binge Eating Disorder is what I have.

They had a couple of treatment suggestions. The first one was Overeaters Anonymous. While I respect 12 step programs (AA works great for my dad) I've tried OA and it didn't work for me. I was excited to hear their next suggestion, though. They recommended that because of my bipolar disorder and my eating disorder, I should try partial hospitalization. The hospital where I went for this has very reputable psychiatric services. The partial hospitalization program isn't specifically for eating disorders, but they would work in an eating disorder counselor and a dietitian just to help me. Basically how it would work is that for about 6 hours a day three days a week, I would go to the hospital and participate in the program. I would go home every night. (Yay for seeing my husband!) Basically, it would be pretty intensive but I wouldn't have to go away from home. It sounds great to me!

This morning, I called the contact person for the program, and she and I set up an appointment for tomorrow to start the process of getting it pre-approved for my insurance. I'm nervous, but mostly excited to be moving forward!