Hello! Is anybody out there?

Hey all! It's Monday and I'm a-bloggin'! I want to share with you my experience presenting lasat Thursday night. I was the keynote speaker at an open house at Skyline Medical Center in Madison, TN (not far from Nashville). Skyline has developed a new "treatment mall" concept for treating their psych patients. It is a great concept. The patients don't spend much time on the floor. They get out and have a selections of the different kinds of groups that they want to attend. Kind of like a college setting. Anyway, they had called Fox 17 TV to the event. They wanted to interview me. So I sat down and did a television interview that played on the 10:00 news. When it was time to speak, I was prepared with notes and had timed it out in my mind so that I wouldn't speak too long. I was sitting up on the stage with a couple of big wigs in Skyline who spoke before me. As I was sitting there, I noticed a man walked into the room. It was my first psychiatrist. He was the one who sent me to Skyline when I was very sick. I saw him for 8 years.

At first, I was very nervous. My heart started to race and I wasn't sure if I could speak. But since I got into recovery, I had always wanted him to see me well. This was my chance. So I swallowed my fear and gave the best speech I could. People were crying and smiling. Y'all know, that means it touched people and was effective. My dr. didn't say anything about knowing me, but I recognized him in the speech. You see, my stay at Skyline was my last hospitalization. It was in large part because of the care that they gave me.

I left the stage and went to Dr. Mathews. He had a big smile on his face and said "I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud you are giving back." We hugged big and I felt like I had truly closed a chapter in my life. I finally was able to let him see what his hard work with me had produced.

Yeah, I got on TV. Yeah, everyone came up to me afterward and hugged me and all of that stuff. But the best part of the night was getting that smile from my dr.

Lisa