Author's Note: This is the third and final installment of John and Kara's little saga and I strongly suggest you read the first two chapters before continuing further. I hope you enjoy my story and thank you for coming with me this far. ~MLE
Chapter Three - Exhale Slowly
Doctor Gurskey had come highly recommended by my HMO, which is the nice way of saying that he was about the only psychiatrist in my area that specialized in sexual dysfunction. Thankfully, he was an older gentleman with kind eyes and a warm smile, and this was actually my second visit. The first had mostly been a handshake, a lot of questionnaires, and permission to transfer all of my recent medical history to his office. He wanted to see my lab results and presumably consult with my physician, if need be, before really getting down to brass tacks.
What made me uncomfortable this second go around was that he'd insisted that my wife come along. Normally, that wouldn't bother me, but all I knew about shrinks was that they liked getting into a person's head and start asking some very personal, private questions. I wasn't certain I wanted to be vulnerable in front of my wife like that. As if I hadn't been made vulnerable enough already to the one person in the world I wanted to respect me most? That's what this impotence thing was - a cruel attack on my pride. And I could feel it inside. Like way down deep, but what if that's where the key to my recovery was hiding - Way down deep?
"Relax," Kara whispered, squeezing my hand as we sat together in the waiting room. "God. You're so tense. What's wrong, honey?"
"Nothing," I answered. "I'm fine. I just, uh...I don't like shrinks."
"He's not a shrink." She rolled her big blue eyes. "He's a doctor, okay? He probably went to school and everything, so let's give him a chance."
"If he asks me about my mother, you have to plug your ears. Okay?"
"What?" She grinned. "You've never had any Mommy issues...Have you?"
"Not that you know of, but one time..."
"Mister Orchard?" a nurse called, smiling and holding a clip board the way they always do.
"Saved by the bell," I sighed, and my wife pinched me as we stood up together.
After introductions were made and we were all seated comfortably in that portion of his office which most resembled a living room, Dr. Gurskey began discussing my physical health. My wife and I sat together on a leather sofa and he had taken a matching armchair not quite directly opposite. We were close, but not so much that I felt claustrophobic or anything. I figured the guy had a dozen tricks up his sleeve to make me, and my wife, more relaxed. I was nervous enough to suspect everything was deliberate, put it that way, from the color of his carpeting to the color of his tie.
"So, your test results all looked good. Your bad cholesterol is slightly elevated, but well within norms. Likewise your blood sugar, and you'll probably need to watch that in twenty or thirty years," he said, smiling. Funny guy.
He went on to talk about my perfectly normal prostate and my consult with a neurologist, who reported that my odds of having Parkinsons were extremely low. Basically, everything on the physical side looked fine and other than too much coffee, perhaps, and not enough real exercise, I had a clean bill of health.
"Which brings us to the psychological factors," he said.
"Which brings us here," I said, somewhat impatiently.
"Exactly," Dr. Gurskey agreed. "Have you been prescribed Viagra or similar medication?"
"Yeah," I replied, rather annoyed because that question had been asked by every doctor and every nurse and on every questionnaire...
"And I believe you had no success?"
"If you already knew that..."
My wife squeezed my thigh and cut me off. "No, it didn't seem to do anything. We tried kind of, uh...He took two of them once and it just didn't work."
"Okay," he shrugged. "That's not really bad news. It indicates more of a psychological problem than physical..."
He rambled on, but the truth was that I was getting a little pissed. We already knew the problem was in my head. That's why we were in his office and this guy just seemed to be rehashing everything my GP had gone over with us the previous week. I wanted to cut to the chase and ask the learned doctor, "Why the fuck did my dick get hard when I started tossing my wife around the bed?"
It had been almost a week since our little argument over pegging and we just hadn't been able to talk about it, my wife and I. Kara wanted to, and she tried to bring it up, but I worried that if we started to examine that night too closely, we might not like what we found. I can't explain why, but it scared me. I'd forced my wife to have sex, although she didn't seem to feel that way at all, but she hadn't been inside my head at the time either.
So when Doctor Gurskey started talking about how my problems were almost certainly stress related, it was all I could do not to walk out of his office right then and there. Christ! I knew it was stress related. I was impotent, not brain dead.
"Look, how am I supposed to relax when I can't get it up?" I finally asked him. "It sure as hell seems like a catch-22 to me, ya know?"
"Honey..." Kara sighed.
"I agree with you," the doctor replied. "It's a very difficult situation, but there are things I can do to help, and things you and your wife can do at home."
He went on to talk about changes to my diet and drinking less coffee, less alcohol, more water. I'd heard all of this before. Get your rest. Eat better, I got it. Exercise, too. Once a week just wasn't enough. He suggested a short jog every morning before work as it would not only help with stress, but kick start my metabolism and boost my energy far better than another cup of coffee. And breathing exercises, which Kara seemed to think was just marvelous!
"Oh, we can do those together!" she exclaimed as Dr. Gurskey went into breathing techniques used in meditation.
I wasn't so sure about that stuff, but he'd struck gold with my wife. I could tell that she was already setting aside a little time for us every evening, just to sit on the floor and breathe. Yep, that was gonna put the wood back in my pants. Right.
And there were other things as well. I mean, this guy was just full of great ideas when it came to reducing stress. At one point in the middle of his rambling, I whispered to Kara, "He should be Doctor Google, not Gurskey."
She didn't laugh.
"Now, John, I'd like to ask if you're at all familiar with hypnotherapy."
"You want to hypnotize me??" I asked. Beside me, Kara actually giggled.
"It's not what you think, probably," Dr. Gurskey said. "Hypnotherapy is a tool much like the breathing exercises and meditation that I discussed earlier. I'm not a licensed hypnotherapist, but I can recommend a very good one, right here in town. If you'd like, I can give you her card, or my office can set up an appointment for you."
"Uhhh..." I started shaking my head, but I should have known better.
"Oh, that sounds great!" Kara said. "I have some friends in my yoga class that do self-hypnosis and they say it's amazing."
"Well, that will probably be one of the first things Dr. Carter will want to teach you," he said. "Self-hypnosis and the various exercises you can do at home or through video-conference. She's very good."
"Doctor Carter?" Kara seemed to recognize that name the way her shoulders stiffened with a sharp jerk of her head.
"What?" I mouthed, but she ignored me.
"Well, uh...If you can set up an appointment for us, uh..." Kara looked at me, sounding noticeably less enthusiastic. "Next week?"
"Sure," I sighed. I believed in hypnotism about as much as I believed in Santa Claus.
"Let me get that started," he said. "Excuse me for just a second."
Doctor Gurskey used the phone on his desk to get his staff to call this Dr. Carter person's office and make an appointment. I used that time to ask my wife if everything was okay.
"What was that about the hypnotherapist?" I pressed, just because I was genuinely curious.
"She's in my yoga class." Kara shrugged.
"Doctor Carter?" I half smiled. "Is that bad?"
"Well, I just, um..." Kara looked apologetic. "None of my friends know about our little problem."
"Oh." I nodded. "I get it. Don't worry, okay? None of my friends know either."
That actually made her giggle, but I could tell Kara wasn't very happy. I could see how it might be awkward for my wife having to share with her friend something so intimate. At least with Dr. Gurskey, we only saw him here, in his office. We didn't actually socialize with the guy. I sympathized with Kara, and felt bad for her, but what else could we do? This was just another example of how a problem that should have been private and kept only between us, seemed to worm its malicious way into every aspect of our lives. I thanked God for the umpteenth time that I'd married a woman as strong as Kara. If it wasn't for her...
"Are you going to be okay with this? I asked, taking her hand in mine. "We can always cancel and find something else."
"No, it's nothing," she said, forcing a cheerful smile and changing the subject completely. "I think I'm just getting a little hungry. How about you?"
"Didn't you hear the shrink," I joked. "I'm not allowed to get hungry anymore. Too much stress."
"Oh stop!" She rolled her eyes. "You've been a complete bore. He's just trying to help and I think we've got some great ideas here. We just have to work a little harder, that's all."
"Work harder." I grinned, sarcastically. "Good one, baby."
"Shut up."
A minute later Dr. Gurskey was sitting with us again. "We don't have a lot of time left, so I'd like to see you guys again a week from today, if that's alright."
"See us again?" I narrowed my eyes.
"It's an ongoing process and, frankly, I think we need to explore some of the causes of your stress."
"What do you mean?" I asked, and my wife nodded in agreement. She wasn't quite following either.
"I'm talking about your work, and perhaps more importantly, your home life," he replied. "I'd like to talk to both of you about your relationship."
"Oh." Kara sat back in the sofa, pursing her lips.
"I think we can do the next session in about an hour," he continued. "Twenty minutes with each of you separately, and then I'll speak with both of you, together. I think it would be a good idea and we can see what develops."
