Venting Feeling let down by the healthcare system

[mediocre]

I never used to cry. Up until recently I probably hadn't shed tears for about 14 years. Now I can burst into tears several times a day I feel so overwhelmed with my physical health and my constant anxiety that I've been dealing with for years. I live on my own and I'm alone 99% of the time. Sometimes I wander aimlessly around my flat I don't know what do do. I never feel calm anymore. I used to go out sometimes but now I have no energy or will to go out at all. My GP doesn't listen. Doctors don't listen. My family doesn't listen. I'm left constantly trying to self-diagnose myself which is what my GP and doctors are supposed to do. I'm sitting around every day waiting for a gastroscopy appointment at the end of the month. The healthcare system is unbearably slow, not just for me but for everyone. I'm terrified that it won't show anything and I'll be dismissed. Then I'll have to back to my GP and explain my symptoms yet again. I've already done it several times. He thinks because I have aspergers its all in my head. I'm spoken down to like I'm stupid. There is no empathy, compassion or understanding. He just prescribes me generic pain medication which does absolutely nothing. I am so stressed I can barely function and I don't even have a job or any responsibilites unlike most people on SS and in the real world. This forum and all you amazing people is the only thing thats given me a little bit of hope. It's comforting to know that there are a lot of others out there who can understand the pain. I was adamant I was going to cbt in October and wasn't going to bother pursing treatment. Then I found this place and decided to give it a try. But I still have no faith in doctors or the healthcare system and I may cbt soon in December. The last thing I want is to start another year feeling like this. What I really want is someone to listen to me and try to help me but I know through dealing with doctors that this is impossible. It doesn't help that I have family who say "sometimes you just have to deal with the pain and go about your life" that would be okay if I had a diagnosis and guidance on how to deal with my pain. The people that tell me this are diagnosed with specific conditions. I am not. I'm not an angry person but when I'm told this I just want to lash out and punch them. I don't know whats wrong with me and nobody is interested to find out.

If you've read this thank you so much for listening and I'm sorry if I've rambled on too much.
I really appreciate everyone on this forum.

 

[Responsibleresident]

I share your despair. Crisis Chat often end the chats on me and dont help much. Occasionally i get a staff that helps but many are undercover cops and they dont care. It usually does not help to contact the 741741 crisis chat. I have a unusual situation. Perhaps other situations they are better trained to aid with. Give it a try and decide for yourself.

Mental health assume everything is mental illness. You go in complaining about real abuse from real people and they assume it is delusions and adjust medications. Sometimes the adjustments help. Other times it is futile. You end up damaging your brain chemistry instead of balancing your chemistry by being medicated for problems that are real and not delusions. Once again law enforcement is medically unsafe. The detectives target us endlessly and terrorize us into becoming suicidal and then we sound delusional to our doctor who has to make sense of this while prescribing medications that alter our brain chemistry. So dishonesty by detectives cause us to be wrongly medicated and this harm our chemical imbalance instead of help it. Detectives dont care in america. They are total frauds. They place us in danger and ruin our health intentionally. They try so hard to introduce us to crime and frame us as criminals and it is abusive. The medical community isnt prepared at all as a whole to deal with victims of law enforcement and homeland security. The domestic drone program is very cruel. The soldiers working at DHS show a military culture of sexually aggressive sadism and terrorism. I can only imagine how medically unsafe these soldiers and drones are to peoples overseas. Being targeted by a lynch mob of law enforcement here is brutally cruel. They refuse to admit error. Refuse to respect we are lawful and safe. They rather see us dead than free so they abuse and terrorize the wrongly accused. Medical institutions have no training for addressing victims of this.

 

[truthseeker]

Good that you know people here will listen. That's all I have personally and grateful for it. Sorry that those things are happening to you.

 

[Secrets1]

I've been there. Produces immense anxiety and is frightening. If you don't trust your doctor find another one ASAP and start fresh. Good ones are hard to find but exist and can make all the difference. Feel for ya

 

[mediocre]

I've been there. Produces immense anxiety and is frightening. If you don't trust your doctor find another one ASAP and start fresh. Good ones are hard to find but exist and can make all the difference. Feel for ya

Thank you so much
Unfortunately in the healthcare system here you cannot choose your doctor, unless perhaps you go private, but even then you need to be referred by a GP and still probably wouldn't be able to choose who you see. I absolutely hate it. I wish I had more options and choice.

Good that you know people here will listen. That's all I have personally and grateful for it. Sorry that those things are happening to you.

Thank you! I'm so grateful for people like you and others on the forum

 

[Deleted member 1465]

I feel for you. Similar sort of story here. Mental Health got involved and now all my physical needs and medical issues are marginalised by the very people who are supposed to have awareness of such things. I have avoided their drugs and that really posses them off so they will discharge me. Meanwhile the doctors still blame my messed up body on depression. Idiots the lot of them.

 

[clandestine]

Same. Once you're tarnished with a mental health problem, you could be literally on deaths door and they'll still find a way to link it back to your mental health.
You really have to be your own advocate in health care systems. I've found that the easiest way to get what I want from doctors is to be sure I know what I want before going in, but rather than just outright telling them, I'll act a bit dumb, and lead them around a bit by pointing to specific indications for whatever test I might be aiming for. This way they'll think the idea is their own and happily, usually, give me what I want.
For some reason doctors in the UK take an eager-to-get-better patient who's done research and has ideas ab their condition as an affront to their knowledge and authority, and would much more readily like a patient who would just blindly follow their orders. When in reality the doctors themselves just get orders from above on what pharmaceutical to doll out, pharmaceuticals which they say are safe but really, they don't know the full term effects until 30-40 years in circulation, when innocent patients have been irreversibly damaged by them. Sigh.

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Same. Once you're tarnished with a mental health problem, you could be literally on deaths door and they'll still find a way to link it back to your mental health.
You really have to be your own advocate in health care systems. I've found that the easiest way to get what I want from doctors is to be sure I know what I want before going in, but rather than just outright telling them, I'll act a bit dumb, and lead them around a bit by pointing to specific indications for whatever test I might be aiming for. This way they'll think the idea is their own and happily, usually, give me what I want.
For some reason doctors in the UK take an eager-to-get-better patient who's done research and has ideas ab their condition as an affront to their knowledge and authority, and would much more readily like a patient who would just blindly follow their orders. When in reality the doctors themselves just get orders from above on what pharmaceutical to doll out, pharmaceuticals which they say are safe but really, they don't know the full term effects until 30-40 years in circulation, when innocent patients have been irreversibly damaged by them. Sigh.

You have just described my experience perfectly. I came to the same conclusion. You have to steer them to the conclusion you want them to come to without telling them or they get Pissed off.
I have trouble with that. I often think I know more than they do, especially with some of the crap they come out with. That comes over as arrogance and doesn't help my case.

 

[clandestine]

I have trouble with that. I often think I know more than they do, especially with some of the crap they come out with. That comes over as arrogance and doesn't help my case.

haha you probably do for some of them. Sometimes it's best to just bite your tongue though (:

 

[Deleted member 1465]

haha you probably do for some of them. Sometimes it's best to just bite your tongue though (:

Yeah I've learned that. Zen and the art of manipulating docrors

 

[mediocre]

Same. Once you're tarnished with a mental health problem, you could be literally on deaths door and they'll still find a way to link it back to your mental health.
You really have to be your own advocate in health care systems. I've found that the easiest way to get what I want from doctors is to be sure I know what I want before going in, but rather than just outright telling them, I'll act a bit dumb, and lead them around a bit by pointing to specific indications for whatever test I might be aiming for. This way they'll think the idea is their own and happily, usually, give me what I want.
For some reason doctors in the UK take an eager-to-get-better patient who's done research and has ideas ab their condition as an affront to their knowledge and authority, and would much more readily like a patient who would just blindly follow their orders. When in reality the doctors themselves just get orders from above on what pharmaceutical to doll out, pharmaceuticals which they say are safe but really, they don't know the full term effects until 30-40 years in circulation, when innocent patients have been irreversibly damaged by them. Sigh.

I have tried this with my GP but to no avail. You wouldn't believe how long it took just to be referred for a gastroscopy. 2 years. Basically had to beg to get it. I really hate GP's in particular they have zero knowledge about anything they are basically just the receptionist! At least mine is. I swear when you tell him your symptoms he just Google's it on his computer! and it's so true about doctors not taking you seriously when you've done your own research and know your own symptoms. In fact when I went to the hospital for a consultation before my gastroscopy appointment the doctor only relied on what my GP wrote on the referral through the computer. Didn't ask me a single question and I didn't have any time to explain my symptoms I was there only a couple of minutes then kicked out. I despair.