First, your body must comply by having an ongoing issue that is not easily solved with a round of brutal antibiotics. Then you must prove that is not Just Depression or Just Anxiety or Just Your Questionable Life Choices that are making you ill or think you are ill.
This is harder than it sounds.
Find doctors through personal referrals, your ears perking up when you hear, “These are the doctors doctors use.” Apologize for your insurance. Pay your co-pays in cash. Pay follow-up bills the same day you get them. Pretend you have the money. Pretend the money simply doesn’t matter.
Arrive at least twenty minutes early to every appointment. Fill your paperwork out with a careful blue pen. Print. Think of the person who will have to transcribe this nonsense.
Though you arrive twenty minutes early, you won’t see the exam room until thirty minutes after your appointment time. Do not complain or question. Just wait.
Learn to identify pharmaceutical reps by their fit bodies, slick haircuts, bright eyes and perky faces. They’re the reason the exam rooms often smell of pizza or Chinese food. They make the entire staff happy and excited, so it’s good when they’re there, even if they’re the reason you won’t see a doctor until an hour after your appointment time. They make the staff happy, maybe some of that will trickle down to you.
Pretend you have never used Google for anything other than recipes and turn-by-turn directions. Pretend you’ve never talked to another soul about these troubles, often referred to as “tummy troubles” which makes it sound adorable and not like your entire digestive system, from stem to stern, is working to make your life an unpredictable humiliation.
Learn that the ways your body shock you are just a list of symptoms to everyone else. The blood, the pain, the total loss of control? There’s something reassuring about how these symptoms terrify you but seem to bore your doctors.
Give vial after vial of blood. One nurse exclaims that you have good veins and she takes four vials of blood without bruising you. Another nurse explains your veins are impossible to find and she takes two vials of blood that leave your entire inner arm painted with a rainbow bruise. On future visits, don’t you dare ask for the nurse who likes your veins, you will never see her again.
Pee into little cups and clean the exterior obsessively before leaving the bathroom and handing it to a tech, golden and still body-warm. Poop into a little bowl that looks like an upside down cowboy hat. Howdy howdy howdy. Then dig little samples of poo out with little sticks into little vials, all the while hating yourself and everyone else but mostly yourself. Make that final delivery with a sad smile and an earnest apology.
When your labs come back, you’ve got an elevated white cell count and your iron is so low, it makes your doctor laugh, “I’m amazed you’re walking around! You’ve got some internal bleeding going on for sure.” He prescribes iron pills that blast through your guts, leaving you crying and sweating on your bathroom floor.
Don’t tell anyone at work what’s going on. Don’t take any time off.
When you learn you must have an endoscopy and colonoscopy and there’s an opening four days from now because of a cancellation, call your spouse from the appointment desk and say, “Guess what, baby, I’m getting double stuffed!” This will make the woman in charge of scheduling laugh and tell you, “You’ve got a sense of humor, you’ll be alright.”
Study for your endoscopy/colonoscopy like you studied for midterms in college. You’re going to prep for that procedure better than anyone else that came before you. Chug GoLytely and imagine your guts lit up on a computer screen, all pink and gooey, and the doctor saying, “My god, have you ever seen a cleaner colon?”
When you wake up during the procedure, and you feel the camera rolling through your guts, the biopsies being grabbed from your intestinal walls, moan but don’t scream. Watch the screen and see your inner beauty, much redder than pink. Later, spin it and say, “I’m so glad I wasn’t overmedicated.”
Still loggy from the drugs, your doctor will rush up to you and says the words you’ve wanted to hear so badly. “You had no polyps, no tumors, it isn’t cancer.” It isn’t cancer! But then, “It’s Crohn’s disease or ulcerative colitus, it doesn’t really matter which.” Fight to remember these words so you can tell your spouse because the doctor will be long gone by the time you’re allowed to see anyone who knows you.
Defer. Always defer. Defer to the nurse with the clucking tongue. Defer to the insurance representative and admit it probably wasn’t necessary. Defer to the doctor with the soft hands and wet sympathetic eyes and no answers. Talk about your body as if it’s a faraway country ravaged by stupid disasters.
Always respond positively to any dismissal of alternative therapies or treatment. Nod and chuckle when the good doctor says gluten is no one’s enemy but the celiacs. Meanwhile, the date you last had bread is burned into your memory.
When one doctor tells you results from acupuncture are purely placebo, don’t say, “Hey, placebo sounds great, sign me up!” Something about that response will really piss him off.
Be good because if you’re not, you’ll find yourself labeled hysterical, depressed, bored, lonely, a drug-seeker, attention-seeker, perfectly healthy with a low threshold for discomfort. Bad behavior includes crying when talking about the time you pooped your pants in Trader Joe’s or expressing anything other than gratitude when you have to wait three months to see the magic specialist who might know what’s wrong.
Think about dying all the time. Plan your funeral but never get further than thinking about Adele’s “Take It All” and Mary Oliver poems and how cliche the whole thing would be.
Live with pain. Walk around with it like a ratty security blanket wrapped around your throat, smelling of pee and saliva and sneezes. Some days it chokes you, some days you cry and cry but most days you just trudge and push through and try not to mention it to anyone because you know it leads to questions about your doctors, what do the doctors say, what medications have you tried, and then a list of woo woo suggestions, most of which you have earnestly tried.
When people ask what’s wrong with you, be cheeky. “I have Dead-On-The-Prairie Syndrome” or “I’ve got the vapors” or “My humours are out of balance.”
Adopt a strict diet and exercise regimen. Bring your own food everywhere and make fun of yourself at every turn. Take handfuls of supplements. Meditate. Go to sleep at nine p.m. every night. Trudge through your days but always with a quick smile, an easy sense of humor, and an appreciation for how hard everyone else’s life is. Be cheerful and easy and then maybe someone will want to help you.
Google “Am I dying?” You’re pretty sure you’re dying. But if you were dying, wouldn’t other people notice?
Take all the medications prescribed, even when they make everything much, much worse. Call the doctor, call the doctor, call the doctor. Leave a message, leave a message, leave a message.
Be good. Be so good. Deep inside you believe that if you are good, maybe this pain and humiliation will somehow lift, pull away from you and simply disappear as easily as it came.
When you’re finally called back after two weeks of chasing the doctor, be jovial and grateful and fast, he’s got a lot of people to call back. When you tell him the medications are no good, he gives you permission to quit but has nothing else for you. “Let’s hope you get pregnant soon, you might go into remission then.”
You know you wrote Infertility in your list of issues in that careful blue pen. You wrote it over and over and over again. But okay, let’s hope. It’s all you’ve got.
Tags: health, healthcare, illness, natalie dougall, writing
I lost it with laughter when I got to the part about good veins – SO TRUE! I feel like taking that with me to my blood draw next week.
A nurse once said to my father, who has lean, muscled arms with veins that stand out enough to be found by touch alone, “I could draw blood from you in the dark!” I’m pretty sure his reply was “Please don’t.”
Thank you for this. I’m not sure how to say this, but I am here to hear about chronic pain. I never feel like I have enough words to express what a migraine is like and I’m aware that most well people don’t really want to know. But I identified with so much of this.
The only thing I ever really want people to say to me is “God that sucks, I’m sorry” so allow me to say that to you now, sincerely.
Sometimes people say that to me, and I just want to burst into tears and hug them.
I worry it will trigger a migraine when someone who does not get actual migraines cheerfully tells me they get them, all the time. Or maybe a rage stroke. That would probably hurt less, right?
Oh god this is my life right now.
Why do WE have to be the reasonable ones? I know my body the best and when I say its fucked, its fucked!
Oh the encapsulates so much. I’ve been constantly menstruating for nearly 3 months now and I can’t find a doctor who will do anything but refer to me to another doctor who should have openings a month from now. How can nobody care?!
The “really?! this is actually happening and no one cares?!” is the worst.
Alternatively:
When the doctor from the world renowned research hospital, in the clinic specially built for this Leader In Her Field to see patients with your condition suggests acupuncture, do not mention the Cochrane Review that indicates that there is no evidence that it will help. She is a doctor, she is expected to provide you with a solution to your pain. There is no current solution to your pain, only management, and she can’t admit that, because that would be weakness, so accept the suggestion of an expensive treatment that’s not covered by insurance and is unlikely to help gratefully. It is, after all, what you asked for.
This is heartbreaking and so, so true. Why will no one believe us about what we are experiencing in our own bodies???
It is shitty and unfair that you or anyone else is treated this way.
Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. I’ve been seeing specialists for my weird and stupid and painful digestive problems for 9 years and no one has yet asked to test my poop, so I guess I have that to look forward to. Although, shouldn’t they have by now? Fuckers. Every single meal is some sort of psychological crisis because I’m negotiating which crappy feelings I want to deal with after I eat. Not feeling horrible isn’t actually an option, and wow I am really really getting sick of it.
Also, chronic depression starting age 7? Fucks your whole world over. There are so many basic human things that I struggle with because I just didn’t learn when it was a natural progression for my peers, because I was always tired from crying myself to sleep and in a constant anxious mental fog, always putting myself down because I thought all the other kids felt the way I did and man, they were all so much better at coping with life than I was. In my mid-twenties I finally learned that I’m the owner of a non-neurotypical brain, but when I was a kid the quiet, obedient, sad, smart girls weren’t considered to be worthy of aid. I wasn’t causing trouble for anyone else, just in constant internal crisis, and if there’s one thing this world doesn’t give a single shit about it’s the little girls. I mattered to my parents, obviously, and they tried to do what they could, but you know how it goes with ignorance and limited resources and living in a rural, backwards town.
All that to say that the digestive issues are probably closely related to the childhood bullshit. Blargh, y’all.
I had terrible GI issues for years. Turns out they were stress-/anxiety-related and went away after I cut ties with my insane family. Now they only crop up rarely when I’m super-stressed about something else. These things are definitely related. *hug*
Awww, I’m so glad that you were able to get away from your main triggers. That is huge and awesome!
Ditto. Changed jobs to one where I was appreciated, and after several months of positive reinforcement and HUGE life changes, could magically eat again. They crop up from time to time, but the last time I stared mournfully at a plate of food thinking “if I just eat a few bites, it’ll be ok if I don’t eat the rest” before bursting into tears feels like forever ago.
My Dr. thought that i had a parasite. I could not bring myself to do the poop test. Now I cannot bring myself to go back to the Dr, because I am clearly a Bad Patient.
ah i also was wondering why no one has asked for my poop yet? i give urine and blood all the time so why not that… seems weird to volunteer though.
“Also, chronic depression starting age 7? Fucks your whole world over. There are so many basic human things that I struggle with because I just didn’t learn when it was a natural progression for my peers, because I was always tired from crying myself to sleep and in a constant anxious mental fog, always putting myself down because I thought all the other kids felt the way I did and man, they were all so much better at coping with life than I was. …when I was a kid the quiet, obedient, sad, smart girls weren’t considered to be worthy of aid. I wasn’t causing trouble for anyone else, just in constant internal crisis, and if there’s one thing this world doesn’t give a single shit about it’s the little girls.”
OMG, I’m not alone! I am so sorry you had this experience. And I am deeply grateful for your sharing it here. You put into words my own experiences better than I can articulate. I hope your parents continue to merit your esteem. Mine were included in those not considering girls worthy of care.
I do not share your digestive troubles. I cannot know your struggles but I imagine they must be awful. Wishing you pleasurable meals and easy, unnoticeable digestion.
I’m sorry that your parents’ response to your struggles was so terrible. Every child deserves adults in their lives who care about how they feel, and it is horrible that you were treated so badly, and so failed by them. I wish I could give you a hug. As much as I’m sorry that you also have/had these experiences, it’s giving me some serious tears that you understand what I mean. Thank you.
I’M NOT A DOCTOR SO PLEASE ALWAYS CHECK WITH ONE BEFORE DOING ANY OF THIS…
Okay I just have started to recover/am mostly recovered from some bad stomach issues (off and on for three years, kept dropping weight from not eating, SUPER bad heartburn so couldn’t sleep much). Several doctors told me it was stress, I was overly anxious, overly sensitive, low pain tolderance….. FINALLY, I got a doctor who was actually helpful and tested my poop. His theory number one: H Pylori http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/h-pylori…
Not super common but not super uncommon.
Theory number two: I was sensitive to gluten (which I initially scoffed at)
It turned out to be theory number two but could have been number one just as easily.
Other things that helped that he suggested: Slippery elm drops (helps with tummy inflammation) and licorice pills (helps rebuild tummy lining. Just keep going to different doctors, I had to see like three or four or something before anyone took me seriously.
Crohnie here, can confirm it’s all true.
I’m so sorry. 🙁
I want to take all of us who relate to this, who relate oh so much, and gather us all together somewhere comfortable and restful and soft, with endless food and drink (all of which will, miraculously, make us feel good and nourished, and never bad or sick), where we can all just rest for a nice long time.
We’ll all have to go back into the fray — after all, our friends and family are out there! — but wouldn’t it be so nice to rest from the endless humiliating scramble of seeking medical treatment, just for a while?
I would, in the middle of my current episode of depression, settle for a “voodoo doll”. O:-)
it’s all true. this was beautifully written– sending empathy & internet-support your way. <333
a friend just emailed this to me with the subject heading “did you write this?” to which the answer is “no, but only because i have reached the point where my advice on how to be a patient is simply ‘hold all doctors upside down by their ankles and shake them until they are sorry'”
It’s all true. Heck, I work in a healthcare-related job, and I didn’t realize how fucked up things were until I called the GI practice to schedule my first colonoscopy, and the scheduler matter-of-factly told me that, if the procedure didn’t actually find anything, I wouldn’t even have a copay, but if it did, I could be charged full price (thousands of dollars) for it, and no, she couldn’t tell me if my insurance would cover it–I’d have to spend however much time it took on hold with the insurance company to find out. Then, after I did and found out that my insurance would cover it regardless and scheduled it, then they send me instructions that include the ICD-9 codes that I needed to give to my insurance company. And this is for a “routine” procedure.
Don’t think too hard about where all your friends have gone. Didn’t you used to have friends? Like, kind of a lot of them? It’s statistically unlikely that ALL of them were of the fair-weather variety, so it’s best to assume that their disappearance is your fault. Despite all the smiling and laughing at yourself, you must have become too depressing to be around. Try to work on that. Maybe they’ll come back.
Why yes I’d love to attend your wedding now that I’m feeling/looking better! Even though you couldn’t bother visiting me in the hospital when I thought I was dying…
Preach it.
good lord this hits home. adding: be ready to explain your history to every medical person you come in contact with, sheepishly defend your symptoms when they say “didn’t medicine x work” or “that’s not supposed to do that.” let them tell you that this is totally expected and then when you visit again tell them that “that couldn’t be how you felt because that’s not expected.”
i’ve discovered having chronic pain is just trying constantly to convince yourself that you’re not crazy.
“i’ve discovered having chronic pain is just trying constantly to convince yourself that you’re not crazy.” That is a perfect encapsulation, thank you for this sentence.
“i’ve discovered having chronic pain is just trying constantly to convince yourself that you’re not crazy.” So much this.
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes. God. Yes.
Never, ever ask questions.
If you have a symptom that doesn’t match what the doctor thinks your illness is, don’t tell him/her. S/He won’t believe you, nor should s/he, because if what you’re experiencing doesn’t match what the textbook says then you’re wrong. Ignore the symptom, it’s not really there.
If you get an unusual side effect to a medication, don’t tell your doctor because s/he will become frustrated. If you must tell, be very apologetic when the doctor tells you you shouldn’t be experiencing this side effect.
Being thrilled to hear you have an ovarian cyst, just because it proves your mystery pain doesn’t mean you’re crazy.
Today I’m seeing the doctor for mystery abdominal pain, where I’ll be told it’s something I’m doing wrong, or there’s nothing wrong. Maybe they’re refer me to the chronic pain psychiatrist again. I actually had a dream last night about my doctor giving up on me.
I was SO RELIEVED to be diagnosed with ovarian cancer (20 years ago this fall) because it meant that there really, legitimately was something wrong with me and it wasn’t my imagination.
(That said, in that situation I actually had a much better patient experience than described above, for which I am thankful.)
“You’re pretty sure you’re dying. But if you were dying, wouldn’t other people notice?”
No. They never notice. And if they do, they don’t care. (Present company excepted, of course.)
Once the phlebotomist (their specialist! their vaunted vein-whisperer!) tried & failed to draw my blood six times before giving up. Then the doctor came in and told me to come in the next week, after eating a salty meal and doing some pushups. That has been my pre-blood-draw ritual ever since.
(this is meant to be a reply to Elysia)
HOLY CRAP. That sort of happened to my little sister once; she had a high pain tolerance when she was younger, but had to have some outpatient procedure done and they needed blood first. When the nurse who had tried and failed (and failed and failed) to draw came back into the room, she crawled behind my dad, who was sitting next to her on the hospital bed. (Or at least that was my impression of what happened. I was at school at the time.) Blood draws: fodder for all sorts of anecdotes.
I’m so glad you have a ritual that works for you now!
Ulcerative Colitis 20+ years. Shit my pants in Grand Central Station (my favourite place thus far, it makes such a good First Date story). Have been in remission (it is possible: for me it was sleep, water, no dairy, exercise and time) a very long time. But your story…my gawd, your story. Yes. I was always the good patient, in hopes that if I was good and biddable the doctors would treat me with more respect, would believe me, would cure me. I’ve had so many colonoscopies I am practically the review board for local GI docs & procedures. I know them ALL. And never once have I been asked about diet. I wish you healing and finding a doc who listens.
Oh so relatable! A++++
Doctors have given up trying to diagnose me, they just say ‘hmm yes anxiety, you should take some antidepressants/diazepam.’ HOW ABOUT NO
I feel this. I have autism, GI issues, depression, anxiety and sleep issues. The autism was speculated about, tested for (results: autistic) but I was never diagnosed because I was too social.
The GI issues were well known. One doctor said I had a lazy bowel. I don’t know what that means. One specialist – I was on the waiting list to see her for months and it was presented to me like she would just *know* – never looked at me, never spoke to me, let alone listening to me. She decided I was drinking too much Irn Bru because I had drank it once, one time, and noted it down on my incoming and outgoing fluids chart. (It was a joy being 13 years old and having to piss into a measuring jug every single time, I can tell you.) So she just kept prescribing not drinking Irn Bru and I continued to have issues. I was hospitalised for the mental sides of things, well basically I was hospitalised because I was harming myself literally the second someone took their eyes off me, but anyway I was hospitalised. I had to go to an appointment with the Irn Bru Crusader from hospital, accompanied by a nurse who I had never met that day. IBC directed every single question about my bladder and bowels to this nurse, no matter how many times the nurse tried to deflect and refocus the IBC on me. I feel sick thinking about the humiliation.
The mental health issues were, I realise now, so wrapped up in the autism. I still have depression cyclically, and I still have anxiety often, but understanding my neurotype has cleared up so much of that self-hating fog that made everything so much more…feverish… But as I say, I was ‘too social to be autistic.’ So I was put on various medications from antidepressants to anxiolytics to antipsychotics which gave me movement disorders…that was the worst. All the while I had to endure hours of ‘talking therapy’ every week which genuinely amounted to the various therapists trying to get me to admit one of two things:
1) I was sexually abused (I wasn’t)
2) I’m just a bad person
Since that was all I had to go on, I firmly believed option two until this year (I am 20) which was a considerable factor in why I was so determined to harm myself…
Oh, they also refused to believe my mum when she told them that being constipated turned me into a different person. Daily screaming meltdowns and zero patience, zero tolerance for anything. I was about to melt down the other day because I couldn’t tolerate the sound of my neighbour thumping shit, and he ALWAYS thumps shit so I was confused as to why I was taking it so much worse than usual…then I realised how bloated I was. I mentioned this to my mum and she was like “I KNEW it!” But who’d have thought that extreme physical discomfort and pain could impact someone’s mental state? (/sarcasm)
Ahhhh the medical model.
Yep. This is my life. And almost no one wants to hear about it. I don’t even have the spouse to call and wisecrack to about my issues.
Although my digestive problems are only falling under the vague default category of IBS because no actual cause can be found, even though it’s my entire freaking digestive system that’s haywire, not just the bowels. After about 15 years I’ve also been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease and fibromyalgia, which are probably related; who knows?
To this list, I would add “be told by multiple doctors that you just need to reduce stress, and get absolutely no sympathy or different advice when you insist to them that your health issues are your only source of stress”.
FWIW, acupuncture and Chinese medicine herbs are the only thing that have made a difference for me. I don’t have nearly as many crippling gut incidents as I used to.
GOD YES. I’m currently stuck at home with a busted shoulder (related to the joint disease that took eight years to diagnose). My last appointment ended rather abruptly when I told the orthopedics doctor that I just wanted to get the rogue ligament checked out before going back to work and she informed me that the ligament that I busted apparently DOESN’T EXIST. Never mind that the urgent care doctor seemed pretty damn sure that there was ligament there, gave me a printout of it and everything. I am generally a fan of medical professionals but seriously, it is the year two-thousand-and-fifteen, you have all kinds of imaging machines, how can this possibly be an argument we need to have?
My first reaction to reading this piece was: Has she been following me to all my doctors appointments, and watching and writing about them? My second reaction was: I can’t possibly tell them about my illnesses, because I have so many and they vary so much and it woul;d be the longest comment in Toastie history. I guess I’ll give you the highlights. When my chronic pain first started, my doctors gave me codeine. when my pain got so bad that didn’t work they upped and upped and upped my dose until I was drinking morphine. Eventually I got to see a specialist who told me that my doctor had been slowly poisoning me, and I had something called “narcotic bowel syndrome” Where you take painkiller to stop your stomach hurting, the painkillers gently erode your stomach and intestines, this makes them hurt more, so you take more painkiller, which gently erode…. and so on. I had to go into hopspital and basically go through opium withdrawal, because my intestines had become chemically addicted to them. they never explained any of my other symptoms, putting them down to depression, anxiety, IBS (tell me how ibs makes your joints swell and your whole body become massively oversensitized again?) and eventually, it was physchosomatic. We all believed this for years, until and friend of a friend spenty a short car journey with me, whilst I was having many symptoms and promtly said “you’ve got fibromyalgia” I promptly went home and looked it up, stared with shock at the screen which described all of my symptoms in detail, then made my parents read it. I went with my diagnoses to my doctor the next day, and asked “could I have fibromyalgia?” and he sort of frowned, a thought dawning visibly on his face as he said “Oh….yes.” I am now suddenly realising I have written the long post I promised I wouldn’t write, and that leaving out many surgeries, funny poop stories and SO MANY blood tests. Anyway, this is a great article, I want to hug you (gently) for writing it.
Do not mention that seeing a doctor (particularly specialists) triggers your PTSD. Do not tell your fancy specialist to be quiet after he triggers you, so you can compose yourself. Do not tell your fancy specialist to be quiet while a resident is in the exam room. Do not run from an exam room sobbing hysterically. Do not have PTSD.
I’m a doctor and this post makes me feel ashamed and my heart hurt because it’s so true.. I’m sorry medicine can be so cruel to people who refuse to be “good.”
Try to make jokes because then the doctor might like you, and might spend more time with you, or even start to see you as a real person instead of a symptom jigsaw that reveals the kitten of anxiety in a bouquet of work stress or something equally 80s – but don’t make the jokes too funny or too often because then the doctor will think you’re not really suffering. (Unless you’re actually been diagnosed and are receiving treatment, then you must make jokes and maintain a cheery attitude constantly to endear yourself to the nurses who control your morphine.) If you’re old, don’t make any jokes at all, because then doctors will think you’re trying to get your human interaction needs met through their precious time and will therefore give you less, or are else assume you are demented if they don’t understand the cultural references.
Spend the better part of your evening (the bit where you can sit up straight without vomiting) suspecting you have a withdrawal syndrome from ceasing one of your medications, then trying to plan ways to inoffensively discuss this idea with the doctor who prescribed it to you in the first place and then told you to stop taking it when it was revealed it was destroying your liver.
I am so so sorry for those who have to deal with vulturistic insurance companies when they go to the doctor. I can’t even navigate the vacuuming when I’m unwell, let alone hostile bureaucracy, and I bet they make it especially incomprehensible on purpose to get extra money. It really sucks. (In a somewhat related note, I wish there was medicare for the vet, my cat makes awful jokes so he always gets charged full price)
And also, I am not pregnant, I am not pregnant, I am not pregnant, I am a single lesbian on the pill! But you have given me pregnancy tests every fortnight for the past two months! I appreciate your thoroughness, but goodness gracious!
Thank you so much for this. It’s so hard to get better when you are fighting this battle. From my experience, I would add:
“Sign an agreement to pay your entire bill, even though no one (including your insurance company) can tell you what you will owe. Stay silent when you are treated like a deadbeat for not paying the entire bill as soon as you get it.”
This brought me to tears. We share a reality.
I think there are a lot of us in this reality. I vote that we move.
OH! also; to be a good patient, never ask your doctor to do anything. anything at all. I once asked my doctor to change a date that was wrong and kept popping up on my repeat prescriptions. He had the screen open in front of him, he would have literally needed to delete two digits, and replace them with the correct two. He looked at me with absolute contempt, crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back and said “No” When I plaintively asked him why, he smirked, and said “I can’t be bothered”. CAN’T BE BOTHERED?! The fuss I made nearly got me permanently banned from the surgery, and his staff accused me of violent verbal harassment (he of course, denied it had happened). This happened a few months ago now, and I am STILL fuming. Excuse me, I have to go and take a xanax so neither my head nor stomach explodes.
Multiple, unrelated illnesses/disorders. I take so many medications . . . so many. I won’t stop them, because they help, but when you take medications, and then different medication to deal with the side effects of that medication, and then even a few medications to deal with the side effects of the medications taken for side effects.
Oh, and the rationing of pain medication. Because what if it runs out, and then the dr doesn’t believe you? So you skimp and always go around in half pain.
Thank you so much for posting this. I wish I had the courage to do so. And I wish this description didn’t so accurately reflect my own experience. Hang in there!
He's lucky you didn't kill him. You would have done the world a service. I have had some horrible doctors, but never someone that blatantly rude. Bless you for your patience.
Crohn’s disease here, and right now I’m very lucky to have a fantastic medical team, but oh, the stories I have from the preceding years… 🙁
My partner is chronically ill. I sympathize completely with you.. Over the last decade or so, I have learned so very, very much about the Medical Industrial Complex. Thank you for writing about it.
My partner is chronically ill. I sympathize completely with you.. Over the last decade or so, I have learned so very, very much about the Medical Industrial Complex. Thank you for writing about it.
I think you have a very hard job – you deal with the fallout of patients angry and upset with having to deal with their doctor's attitudes. I've seen patients extremely overwrought and taking it out on the staff because they are too afraid to state to their doctors how they feel lest they be dismissed even more.
I feel relief knowing there are others out there surviving with pain and living day after day, even when it seems impossible. Thanks for sharing 🙂
I worry it will trigger a migraine when someone who does not get actual migraines cheerfully tells me they get them, all the time. Or maybe a rage stroke. That would probably hurt less, right?
The "really?! this is actually happening and no one cares?!" is the worst.
Preach it.
I think there are a lot of us in this reality. I vote that we move.