#Medical PTSD

[crippledboyfriend]

I have this medical PTSD from last year that I still can't figure out how to seek comfort for. I just know I need it and can't come up with anything although I think about that doctors appointment multiple times every day.

[ofdinosanddais1]

Trying to convince myself that going to the doctor for broken skin from the cold drying it out even after all the measures that worked for all the other years I've had this and then even more measures is not a stupid reason to go to the doctors. (I already have an appointment requested. Just kinda anxious based on previous history with doctors even though my PCP is a good doctor).

[wheelchairbarbie]

[medical-angel]

Me with severe medical PTSD at the doctor's office as the nurse watches the oximeter read 150 BPM for five consecutive minutes:

[crumpledcellophane]

speaking of medical ptsd, my tachycardia is slightly terrifying right now, as it hit 120 while i was lying down, and like i know that part of it is probably post covid bullshit and another part is my current multiple antibiotics (and i plan on finding a way to ask a doctor what to do about that because yikes) but like the fact i had substantially calmed it down- like not good by any means but better - and my partner asked if i should go to the hospital and my heart rate immediately spiked until they reassured me i didn't have to 🫠🙃 like the thought of seeking emergency treatment should not make me feel this shit

[clatterbane]

While I am evidently on a ranting roll tonight, it also really fucking bothered me that the new endocrinologist that I happened to see for a routine yearly diabetes check-in a few weeks back, after the last one moved? She apparently decided that as essentially an ethnic minority of one here, I look weird enough that it might well be pathological.

(I would probably feel a little different about it if she weren't also from anothet ethnic minority--albeit one that is MUCH more common locally and in this country at large. It doesn't hit quite the same that way, but I still found it pretty damned offensive.)

It also didn't help that my basic build helped get me treated like garbage so much under the NHS--with definite racial undertones at times. I would just as soon never hear a single word about my meat form again, which is not very directly relevant to the issue I have come in over, and in a non-fatphobic way.

But yeah, I have ended up looking like a lot of my mother's family in middle age. If one of the thinner versions these days.

Shitty crop of me with my mom, 20 years and at least 50 lbs. ago.

We have big kinda flat faces with barrel chests and big shoulders--and our arms and legs also turn skinnier-looking by comparison to the big old torso as we get older. No matter how much meat is over it (and I am still fairly scrawny now!), you are still gonna be mostly shoulders and a ribcage which is NOT dainty. Mr. C half-laughingly backed me up that half my family is just Like This, and he hasn't even seen all the extended clan together.

And the (very) extended family resemblance kinda goes farther than that. (Thus the ethnic part being very fucking relevant.) I don't always necessarily like it, but that's just how we're made.

So yeah, that new endo decided to send me to be tested for Cushing's Syndrome, entirely based on eyeballing.

Look, it's me! Go off, I guess.

(She also asked some pointed questions like whether my freakishly skinny arms made it difficult to wheel myself around in the chair. Erm, NOPE, not at all. Absolutely no symptoms other than striking her as Wrong Looking. She also recorded in the notes which I can see online, that I was getting less exercise than I said I was--very possibly mentally filtering my actual answer through that Freakish Twig Limb perception.)

What gets me even worse is that I DO totally coincidentally have experience with Cushing's, from when I got that pituitary tumor in my teens. She knew nothing about this when she brought the subject up out of the blue.

As the first medical professional to ever do so over the past 30-odd years, I might add. Nobody who has actually been aware of that history has triggered on it either.

Cushing's is very noticeable and very hard to live with! I got extremely sick, gained like 80 lbs. over a year from it, and developed the actual corticosteroid moonface then! Nobody much wanted to listen to me at the time, likely mostly because AFAB teenager! But, I do know very well what that fucking feels like!

But yeah, that thankfully got fixed and I haven't experienced symptoms for like 30 years. That whole experience was also very freaking traumatic, which is probably not helping my reaction now with it getting brought back up so bizarrely and unexpectedly. (Also, could I somehow be secretly Very Sick now without realizing it?! I do very much rationally doubt it, but doubt still keeps nagging at me.)

I guess I had better play along for now. In a way, it is good to see another demonstration that they don't seem to do the same kind of foolish pennypinching here as under the NHS. They will refer you for whatever testing they think is necessary, even if that sometimes includes a labwork wild goose chase based on some terrible assumptions! I would rather have them be thorough, even when it's dumb as hell and kinda insulting.

I am indeed pretty confident that I just look like a middle-aged $SURNAME from another freaking continent, who is also recovering from malnutrition and still pretty scrawny. (Which the doc was aware of.) I am also still feeling some kind of way about this fact setting off weird alarm bells in some new doctor that I am stuck dealing with for the foreseeable future.

I could easily make some of my own unflattering speculations based on her appearance, which was very different from my own. Sorta Marfanoid, with buggy eyes possibly indicating thyroid issues? (Maybe there's also some wider ethnic thing going on there too, for all I know. I have seen a lot more folks from her part of the world than basically anyone here has from mine!)

But yeah, that really really would not go over too well. And it's not my place either.

[foor-beem]

having medical PTSD from my emergency surgery earlier this year is fucking ruining my life, every time i get stomach pain or cramps or anything vaguely similar to what i felt before i went to the hospital and my brian just goes YOU’RE DYING AGAIN YOU’RE DYING AGAIN YOU’RE DYING AGAIN until i just short circuit

[disabled-culture-is]

disabled culture is having medical ptsd and sobbing even at the possibility of going to the hospital again

-+-

[crumpledcellophane]

i love (hate) when doctors look at me, misgender the shit out of me, and then decide because i have trauma, i just "need a psychiatrist" and nothing could possibly have a physical cause ever 🫠

like ah shit, you're right, worstie, i forgot that being traumatized my whole life actually completely cancelled out literally every physiological problem ever, why even bother to check any of that out when you can try to shove me on mood stabilizers and call me a liar instead, so sorry i forgot you apparently got your medical license as a cereal box prize and don't know how to investigate people's symptoms unless their organs come with pre written post it notes of what's wrong 🙄

like yeah i know cptsd is a bitch, i know my symptoms could be at least somewhat somatic or whatever, that doesn't erase the impact they have on my fucking life, and that doesn't mean you get to write everything off as that to shut me up without even trying to do your job, fuck you

[adlibitur]

me continually dealing with the fallout of this medical situation pursuing litigation like

[chronically-crying]

the most fucked part about having ptsd for me is having intrusive thoughts so intense just having to visualize it is as visceral as if i were actually doing it, like I was fidgeting with this key ring i keep on my water bottle, which I do ALL THE TIME, but for like four solid minutes I was convinced that if I did close to my face I would poke out my left eye. Sometimes I'll be sewing up holes in my clothes and I'll have to stop because I can't stop imagining what it would feel like to stab myself directly in my chronic wounds with the needle. it's usually not even a problem but like. when it is a problem, it's awful

[clatterbane]

Medical PTSD be like...

Yeah, I'm still trying pretty hard not to beat myself up too much over a "bad' day yesterday.

With the 24-hour graph at the bottom. Those single red dots over to the far right were recalibration readings, because this sensor was actually running a little low before that. (Partial explanation for the red supposed hypoglycemia line while I was asleep. Found out that xDrip+'s alarms are very effective at waking me up! 😒)

What happened there? An awful lot of pasta, plus some misestimation of how much insulin it needed to cover it. Then some borderline "rage bolusing" as the numbers kept climbing.

That really is not a bad day at all by a lot of other T1 standards. The usual professional goal to aim for is 70% time in range or more. That 24-hour prriod still exceeded that. But, being wound too tight? Mine has been averaging around 99%, with mostly the occasional mild brief high.

With some backup, my pancreas is apparently still squeezing out a tiny amount of its own insulin in response to food--which probably helps too even if it's not so predictable. Those final few beta cells may well have been on strike last night. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The past week visualized. Where the white line is median levels, the more solid blue is the range it's stayed in 75% of the time. The lower dips during my night owl "overnight" are mostly from lying on the sensor funny, which is a very common way of getting false lows that bounce right back up after you move. (The other part of the equation with that red line earlier. I lay in a bad position for hours straight.)

Anyway, the more transparent blue is an outlier and should not be counted--or so I keep telling myself. That was HEAVILY affected by last night's pasta oopsie.

Guess I'm not actually doing too bad when that's the highest I've gone under my own power over the past several years since I got a CGM.

(They have done at least that bad with the IV glucose a couple of times during procedures, but I had fuck all control over that. What with being knocked out unconscious, and also a couple of hospital floors away from my insulin at the time.)

I do try to keep this in mind, and also take glucose readings as data points to learn from rather than hanging personal value judgments on them. [Strictly rhetorical] Lord, do I try. It ain't always easy, and it really doesn't help when you're feeling physically hungover from a rollercoaster. That can make it easier for some unhelpful mental scripts to start up.

[mandana-the-service-pup]

Mandana’s orthopedic consultation was not fun. Yesterday the neurologist offered to have his colleague look her over to make sure the back pain wasn’t an orthopedic issue. I was really happy to have another expert check her out before going ahead with the MRI.

What I wasn’t expecting was to be gaslit by an old white guy and his apprentice. From start to finish we were with him for 15 minutes. In that time I could only tell him a fraction of the problem and her medical history surrounding it before he declared Mandana perfectly healthy and “there’s nothing wrong with her” and “that’s just a sensitive spot on dogs, like between their toes”

She may not be in pain this morning but chronic back pain is something she has been dealing with since at least 2022. We’ve done massage, stretches, canine conditioning classes, acupuncture, chiropractor, red laser therapy, NSAIDs, Low Dose Naltrexone and now Librela. You can’t tell me I’ve been making it up this whole time and she’s actually fine. I watch her back twitch and her fur stand up in that spot. I feel the obvious heat coming from that area when she’s having a pain flare. I witness how she stops playing abruptly, avoids activity, has trouble sleeping and swings her head back towards her back when it hurts. I KNOW she is in pain.

So yeah I cried in the parking lot. I appreciate him checking her out. He didn’t charge me for the appointment even though I offered to pay. The neurologist is still moving forward with the MRI. He is a lot more convinced of her issues and that’s all that matters at this point. As far as pain management goes, the Librela injections are helping so much and she has her second scheduled for two weeks from now. She is able to do more and go longer without pain, so the MRI is to make sure we aren’t missing anything that could be made worse by her increased activity now that she’s feeling better.

I’m really hopeful the Librela will help and we can finally move past this. I know what it’s like to live in pain and it doesn’t matter if she can do mobility tasks or not I don’t want her limited because of this. Her appointment is scheduled for 8:15 am Thursday morning. She has separation anxiety at the vet so I made sure she will be first in line. I won’t be able to stay with her for the sedation in this scenario but she will be taken straight back to do the MRI so she won’t have to wait around in their kennels.

[theyofotherwhat]

Getting sick and having trauma due to sickness is such a fucking blow man.

My body is trying to get healthy, but at the same time, I'm getting flashes of hospital rooms in my head and this feeling of impending doom. Like... shut up PTSD it's just a cold. But here I am 😪

[shitcomscriptwriter]

One realisation I came to is the fact that I’m always going through trauma. I’m in serious pain from my condition (more than likely endometriosis) and no doctors will listen to me. I bled for a month straight and insurance didn’t cover my ER visit because it “wasn’t necessary”.

If I want treatment, I have to go through invasive, painful procedures with little to no pain control (looking at you, IUD placements) and sacrifice my dignity for basically a bandaid solution.

Even simple procedures are triggering for me. I have to basically interrogate every person I meet in order to ensure I’m not used as a lab rat against my will again.

Medical professionals are rarely honest, rarely caring, and rarely helpful.

[this-is-me19]

Sharing