#szaspoonie

[szaspoonie]

I can hold my sanity in one hand.

[szaspoonie]

Are any of my fellow psychos wildly afraid of the dark? I absolutely cannot sleep in the dark or the monsters come out. Curious if it's just me.

[szaspoonie]

I'm at the doctors for my chronic nausea that I've been experiencing for the last 5 years. This nausea is well documented in my chart as I've been seeing a GI specialist since right after it started. The GI cant fund anything wrong so I'm at my GP to see if she has any ideas where I should go next but the nurse who took my vitals flat out didnt believe me. She questioned if it has "really been 5 years" or if I just FELT like it had been 5 years.... IT IS IN MY CHART IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES. This is a new GP for me, she comes highly recommended by another chronically ill friend but if shes anything like that nurse I'm going to legitimately cry. I just want to be able to eat. I just want to exist without feeling like I'm constantly going to vomit. This is not a quality life right now. Cross your fingers the doctor is a better person than her nurse.

[szaspoonie]

Quack Doctor Warning

I went to the doctor today because I've had a lump in my throat for two weeks that is making it very hard to swallow. My family has a strong history of thyroid disorders. 75% of my extended family either has a disorder or has had their thyroids removed. This includes my mother who has both. So, being rightfully concerned, I went to the doctor. Not my GP, I went to the soonest doctor that was available which couldn't have been a bigger mistake. First he was almost a half an hour late AFTER I was in the exam room, then he allowed not one but TWO nurses to inturrupt us. The first was to say she was going home (yes really, this is at a hospital not a small office, this is not something that you should interrupt an exam for, in my opinion, especially because he was one of SEVERAL doctors working today). The second time was a nurse asking if another patient needed further tests than the ones he had already ordered. He then left the room to handle the second nurse's situation. THEN he spent twenty minutes reading my chart to me. Clicking around trying to find some obvious reason for the lump in my throat from my chart. He argued with me that it must be residual issues from an edoscopy that I had in May of 2017.... except I never had an endoscopy so even if it did take a year for this problem to present itself (unlikely) I didn't have the test in the first place. He wouldn't accept me saying the test didn't happen. My chart stated that one had been ORDERED, which was true, but it was never scheduled or done. During that twenty minutes he didn't look up at me once. He stared at the computer reading bits and pieces to me as if I don't know my own medical history. When he couldn't find any obvious reason for the lump in my throat from my chart he started finally asking me about my other symptoms. He started this by asking "Do you have any other symptoms of thyroid problems?" without actually listing any of the symptoms, to which I replied "I don't know" because... I'm not a fucking doctor and I don't know what symptoms matter. WebMD is not accurate enough for me to start listing problems, and in my experience doctors that think you've done research yourself take you even LESS seriuosly. He finally started listing symptoms and despite the fact that I have a LOT of symptoms that my thyroid is acting up AND the fact that I had told him MORE THAN ONCE during this appointment about my mom and my family, he decided my lump is allergies. He hadn't even done an exam - or even looked at me - but he was confident. His reasoning was that I had said that I OCCASIONALLY experience post nasal drip so what was likely happening was that I had a wad of snot lodged in my throat that was causing my problem. In his theory the fact that I've been able to swallow some solid food AND I threw up (a lot) yesterday because of food getting stuck don't matter. Snot is apparently rock solid and undissolvable in his reality. Then he did the exam. He listened to my heart and my lungs, placed his hand on my neck and then sat back down. He sent me home with a prescription for zyrtec. I did get him to order thyroid blood tests but I had to beg for it. He told me to wait a month on the zyrtec and THEN if I'm still having problems he will schedule imaging to see if I have a growth on my thyroid. I CANNOT SWALLOW but he wants me to wait a month. Long story short, if you live in the North Bay area of California, "Dr" Pocholo Selpides is an absolute quack who will not take your concerns seriously on any level. AVOID. I have a referral pending to see an endocrinologist because my GP took me seriously since he's my moms doctor too. But it's probably just snot.

[szaspoonie]

OCD Bullshit

You aren’t ‘a little OCD’ about anything. That isn’t an option. You don’t get to claim bits and pieces of me for your own and leave the undesirable bits behind. You’re either OCD or you’re not. Fucking stop it. Your ignorance in the very basic aspects of this disorder are shown every time you say something stupid about being a neat freak and how that is somehow related to your ‘minor OCD’ - that isn’t OCD. That’s just being annoying. Let’s break down the OCD part real quick - * Obsessive - adj. of the nature of an obsession * Obsession - an idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a persons mind. * Compulsive - adj. resulting from or relating to an irresistible urge, especially one that is against one’s conscious wishes * Disorder - verb. to disrupt the systematic functioning or neat arrangement of, a state of confusion. We all know what each of those words mean independent of each other but put in this particular order the words change their meaning to be very very specific. Obsessive behavior, when it comes to OCD, isn’t just ‘I really like it when this is done in a certain way’, or ‘neatness keeps me sane’ or whatever other ablest ideas you have in your brain meats. In this order, obsessive compulsions literally amount to ‘if I don’t do this action, something HORRIFIC will happen. I know that logically my action won’t stop that HORRIFIC thing from happening especially since that HORRIFIC thing is entirely unlikely all around, but I cannot convince my brain of this logic.’ OCD is not a walk in the park. OCD is not synonymous with neatness. You know what is a symptom of OCD? Hoarding. It is incredibly invalidating to hear people that do NOT have OCD using it as an excuse for their mannerisms or habits - you wishing your house were neater before a guest arrived is not an appropriate moment to say ‘sorry for the mess, I’m so OCD I can’t even look at this place!’ In fact - unless you have OCD, that is literally never appropriate to say. OCD, like all mental illnesses, manifests differently in everyone that experiences but I can tell you from my experience that the obsessions and compulsions aren't cute or kitschy or something you wanna brag or even talk about. Get out of here with your ablism it will no longer be accepted.

[szaspoonie]

Do you ever feel guilty about talking about your ugly symptoms with people that don't experience them? Even people that are also mentally ill or otherwise disabled? I always feel like I'm burdening them with worrying about my safety when I'm struggling with self harm when really I just want to talk about it to keep myself from acting out.... I dunno... am I alone?

[szaspoonie]

I'm struggling really badly tonight. PTSD flashbacks. I'm stuck. I'm stuck. I can't get out.

[szaspoonie]

My new nausea meds dont work. I'm just doomed to suffer for the next 50 years.Today is a bad day. My tummy is super bad, my back is super bad, I'm super stressy, the lump in my throat is back and I just want something to go right. I'm super depressed. This chronic nausea is wearing on me in an increasingly serious way.