Frodo Baggins (theseabell) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2012-03-08 17:45:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, frodo baggins, nienor niniel |
Doctor's Visit
Who: Nienor & Frodo
What: Frodo comes to his neurologist for help.
When: Thursday, March 8, 2012
Where: Nienor’s practice
Rating: PG
Status: Complete.
**Some discussed events are still threading here**
Nienor always did her best to clear her calendar when it came to Frodo. He had been one of her first patients ever and certainly her longest lasting. So, when he called up in the morning she did a bit of shuffling and was able to make a time for him. He seemed concerned and if nothing else Nienor figured she could give Frodo a sense of calm. It had been a while, but she was confident that Frodo would get his memories back. He had to.
When Nienor got the call from the front desk that Frodo was waiting for her in the lobby she prepared herself. She pulled his file out of the drawer, placed it on the table, took out the tissues just in case and tied her hair up with a pencil. With a deep breath she made her way to the lobby and smiled when she saw Frodo. He was a good man and she really felt like she was doing good when she worked with him.
“Hello, Frodo. Please come in,” she told him.
Frodo lifted his eyes from the January issue of Good Housekeeping and popped out of his seat. With a smile--and he always did his best to greet her with a smile, no matter what state he was in--he strolled across the room and through the door she was holding for him. Of course, there was less and less space for him to squeeze by these days, what with the baby inside her. She looked about ready to burst, he thought, though he would never say so aloud. He had trouble even thinking about it, or even looking at her belly for very long, without blushing a bit. There was something sort of mystical about a pregnant woman and this was the closest he had ever been to one.
Once inside, he took his usual seat on the exam table, which included a long-practiced and well-executed backwards lift using his the heels of his palms. His hands then fell into his lap, not entirely unlike a Catholic schoolboy--which he technically was.
Frodo had been seeing Neinor since the accident, as he had come to call it. It was almost five years, now. Five years since he had awoken one morning not in his own bed, but in a hospital, stripped, plastered, and plugged into what seemed like dozens of machines. The only thing he could remember was his own name, and even that came haltingly. His brain had turned to rot. He’d been in a coma for twelve days.
The attendings explained to him what had happened, or at least as much as they could theorize. He’d been discovered in the garage by his chauffeur, bleeding out, from a stab wound to the chest. His skull had taken a beating. The ring finger on his left hand was missing.
The day before he had buried his uncle, Bilbo; for all intents and purposes, he’d just buried his father. Frodo was told he’d likely suffered a nervous breakdown and attempted to take his own life. He ought to be thankful he’d survived.
Five years later, he was more thankful he’d been placed in the care of such a good doctor.
Nienor followed Frodo back to her exam room and took a seat across from him as he perched himself on the exam table. It always made patients more comfortable when she sat and she didn’t really like being on her feet these days anyway. She felt about as large as a house if the truth was to be told.
“How are you, Frodo?” she opened with a concerned smile. She’d been seeing Frodo for long enough to know when something was wrong, even if he was trying to hide it from her.
“Everything’s the same. Nothing new. Well, no, that’s not--clearly that’s not exactly true. I’ve been having these headaches, mostly back here, at the base of my skull.” He gestured by rubbing the back of his neck. “They come and go, but they keep coming back, so I thought I ought to come in.”
“Headaches?” Nienor raised an eyebrow and stood to take a look. “On a scale from one to ten how bad would you say the pain is?” she asked, pulling a small flashlight out of her pocket. She flashed the light in Frodo’s eyes and guided them with two fingers and then reached around to the back of his neck to feel if there was any swelling. There wasn’t.
Frodo felt his pupils constrict as the light pierced them. He drew a quick breath and held it, waiting for her medical opinion to register on her face. His neck tensed. It didn’t matter how many doctors he’d seen in the last five years, his pulse still sprinted with each examination.
“Actually, it’s more like a constant dull ache, like a band around my entire head. I’d say that’s about a two or a three, but then I get sharp pains right where my skull meets my neck: like, a six or seven.” He was nothing if not thorough. Frodo shook his head. “Also--and I don’t know if it means anything--I’ve just been exhausted lately.”
“Have you tried taking anything for the pain?” Nienor asked. She didn’t like the sound of the ache being constant, but she knew Frodo’s brain like the back of her own hand. There was no trauma there. She had come to believe that a lot of what was going on with his was some kind of post traumatic stress disorder, which could sometimes cause memory loss. The problem was that they couldn’t really get anywhere with him if he couldn’t remember what had happened to him. Nienor hated feeling helpless and she wanted to help him to remember so that they could work on getting past what had happened and Frodo could move on with his life.
Nienor took in a deep breath and sat back down, clicking the flashlight off and sticking it back in her pocket. “Honestly, Frodo?” she said, her voice soft. “It sounds like stress. Is there anything going on right now at home that would cause you to be stressed? It’s amazing what stress can do to a body,” and Nienor knew that Frodo hoarded stress as much as anything of his Uncle’s.
He emitted a grim chuckle, stealing a moment to glance out the window. “Stress. I was sure I’d maxed out that already.” With a long sigh, he continued. “Yeah... I lost my uncle’s car. I guess that’s been stressful.”
He wasn’t sure if he ought to go into the details: the late night of vigilante justice, the crazy woman with the cat, the hired gun, and the plethera of guns themselves; but he thought about each fact of the previous night and, as his ears turned red, he realized he was embarrassed. He was only glad that there weren’t any visible wounds to show for it.
“I’m surprised you’re not getting gray hairs,” Nienor replied. She was obviously joking. Well, sort of. Frodo did have a way of stressing about everything possible ever. She couldn’t blame him. He’d been through quite a lot over the years.
“I’m going to prescribe something to you for the pain, but it’s one of those medications that can’t turn into a habit or it will cause more health problems for you down the line. So, we need to get down to the bottom of this stress. That’s the real issue here. Would you be willing to try out some anti-anxiety medication? Some people finds it helps. We’ll just need to monitor you and see what works and what doesn’t.”
Frodo tilted his head. “Oh. Can you prescribe that?” And then he shook his head. “Of course you can, what am I saying?”
He breathed another sigh. He hadn’t been on any psychiatric medications in a long time, though they’d all but forced them on him the moment he awoke from the accident, from the alleged suicide attempt. But he’d found alcohol to be much more affective, and it was difficult to do both at once anyway. Then again, the pain medication was about to interfere with all of that. “If you think it would help,” he finally said.
“I know how you feel about psychiatric medications,” Nienor replied. “I’m not suggesting this as the end all be all of what is going to make you feel better, but for the time being I think we should give it a try. We can revisit it again when things are a little less stressful for you at home and wean you off of them. “
Nienor pulled out her prescription pad and scribbled down the prescriptions. She tore it off and handed it to Frodo. “Ultimately it’s up to you what you decide to do, but I’m just giving you what I think might help for now. Why don’t we set up an appointment next month to revisit the situation? You can talk to Beth up front.”
Frodo looked at the piece of paper in his hand and realized he understood much more than he felt comfortable with, so many of these had he seen. He had thought that part of his life had finally passed. Still, he put on his best face for her, and thanked her graciously. He was lucky to have her on this journey with him.
“Yes,” he said. “Sure. A month sounds... appropriate. Good, I mean. A month sounds good.”