I tend to go back an forth between what's worse, pharma or doctors.
to me, and i have fortunately been sheltered in my existence, while some people like yourself had had horrible and even tragic situations with medicines, pharma companies are just businesses. they are out there to make money. their hearts might have been in the right place at first, and maybe still are (the people researching anyway), not necessarily the heads of the companies, but for the most part, i would think that their products are as genuine as they could be. for me, one big problem is that everyone is different and can react differently, so we are really relying on the doctor to listen to us, and guide us properly
i have previously mentioned a lady from here to you before. she had never had suicidal thoughts in her life. she loved her life and was happily married with a loving family etc. around 12-18 months ago, she developed insomnia and was prescribed antipsychotics and (ironically tragic) antidepressants. these medications gave her akathisia, which led to her first ever suicidal thoughts. she told the medical staff where being treated about them, and it seems that they did not listen. they told her they could not do any more for her and sent her home. not long after she jumped from an 8th story. her survival instincts kicked in as she stepped off and she grabbed the railing which sealed her fate. she landed feet first and destroyed one of her legs. 12 operations and 12 months later, with another 2 years of chronic pain to go with many more operations and the chance of losing her leg, she took her sn around 6 weeks ago. she lost her job, her sanity, her husband left, her parents took her back in but almost disowned her and then the life she used to love so much. and all of this could be attributed to the medical staff who should not have let her out in her condition. to me, it is so tragic when someone doesn't really want to die but they have to. perhaps this situation is the reason i have become much more vocal on her trying to suggest to the young people especially to try and see how life goes before committing
i don't think so, because she thinks outside the square. she doesn't just take notice of case studies which can only tell her what she already knows. she is willing to try and learn new things for herself before a book can tell her about it. i know that i talk in riddles, and also, probably like many on here, i have no idea what being normal is like. i do tend to over analyze everything which means that when trying to describe something (or even post on here) i use 400 hundred words when just 10 would suffice. there was one time when i was talking about a chronic cough that i had and how i couldn't take it any longer especially since it gave me a hernia. she was typing out a prescription while i was dribbling, and it is like she suddenly heard a keyword. her ears seemed to prick up and she threw away the script she was making and gave me a new one. just like so many other things for me, she has been amazing. it is also nice to have my thoughts of something being wrong validated. we used to think my nanna was a bit of a worrier and a hypochondriac, but perhaps she was right, and the family doctor could not find her issues (understandable to some degree since this was over 45 years ago)
So you have your Angel and I was stuck with Satan's little helpers. No really, I'm happy you found her and those chronic illnesses have somewhat abated. No wonder you refer to her as an Angel! I do think that one of my doctor's really tried but what's weird is even after I pointed it out to him (serotonin toxicity with spikes and lows) that he was as dumb as a box of rocks. By that time I had been on all three meds for at least ten years (one of them was for all practical purposes a high dose opiate) and he was going to cold turkey me off of them ALL?? I told him he was crazy and that I'd certainly die before my third day was complete by blowing my head off.
it is easy to be critical and while doctors are human and can make errors, the treatment they prescribe or not prescribe can be a matter of life and death for the patient. sadly, most people only seem to care enough at work to cover their own butt, as opposed to doing their job correctly, but when it comes to medical "professionals", we should be able to expect them to take their responsibilities seriously. finding enough people who both care about their job, and are also smart enough to do it is close to an impossibility, and sadly when it comes to medical issues, people like yourself and many others have been made worse by what could be considered incompetence
i was so incredibly lucky to find my doctor. i mentioned the one before her briefly in another post and he was great too. he and my current doctor were possibly at opposite ends of the spectrum, but they were both awesome. until the age of 35, i had virtually only worked and slept. in year 10, in a science class, we were talking about the 3 dimensions and someone asked what the 4th dimension was. the teacher replied "time", and someone asked what was that like? he looked straight down at me and outstretched his arm and hand to point to me in a polite way. perhaps he had he had seen me sleeping previously, or even heard my snoring
. i figured that in 2004 it was time to cr@p or get off the pot, so to speak. i had been light headed for almost 10 years straight, and had even hoped that if and when i finally passed out, the person who found me was honest and didn't take my wallet and phone. i could not keep going that way, and did as much research as i could to try and find a new doctor who would listen to me. a few of my friends (virtually all of them) mentioned this one doctor, saying he was old school and very thorough. i went to see him, with a huge list that i had written down with every possible symptom that i could think of, and he said there was a suspicion of celiac disease. i instantly limited my gluten intake, and it worked wonders for me. in retrospect, i have fructose malabsorption, not celiac but most things that contain gluten also have fructose too, so while it was the wrong tree to be barking up, it was still very helpful. he was the one i suggested add to (there is no "h" in me, but officially i have adhd). he sent me to the psychiatrist who prescribed ritalin. sadly it took almost 20 more years to get the dosage right, but without being diagnosed i would not be here now. sorry, my point was in finding my current doctor, i needed something so went to the local clinic on a sunday. it was bulk billing, which means we do not have to pay for it, so i wasn't expecting to be impressed with any doctor there. why would a good doctor work in a bulk billing practice and on a sunday. from the first moment, she seemed very impressive, as if she cared and knew what she was doing. seeing the first doctor i mentioned for little things was a pain, because i had to finish work, rush down to the clinic to not be late and then wait close to an hour to get in. he was awesome, but because he was willing to help so much, he was always running late. so then i switched to my current doctor who is a 5 minute drive, rather than a 20 minute drive and haven't look back. she works 3 or 4 days a week, and now just every second sunday. it is rare to not have to wait 3 weeks to see her, but thankfully telehealth appoints are a little easier to get. she is amazing at her job, while still having a young family at home. she has probably sacrificed some of her family time helping patients, which proves to me how sweet she is, and i guess is why she now has every second sunday off - she certainly deserves it
You seem to really have it together though and that you would not want to ctb anymore. So can I guess correctly that your doctor and wife knows that you at least have SI? I hate to think that all of this time spent engaging with others and rarely mentioning your reasons for being here, that you would leave us at any time. It's something I've been wanting to ask but unsure how to approach it.
i wish :)
for my personality and my lack of ability to communicate outside of my own brain (the conversations i have in my own head are pure gold), i would like to think i know my strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly. for the most part, i have possibly extracted as much out of life as possible, but it is only the last 2.5 years where i feel i have actually been living as opposed to existing. i have my dream car and dream girl, and have always had a roof over my head and food, so i have been incredibly lucky. for the things that matter i am the luckiest person ever
people may suspect that i have a death wish, but i have not told my doctor. when doing the depression diagnosis, i cannot remember if there was anything on the questions relating specifically about suicide intentions, but i gave lesser values than what i really felt on all of the questions and still got a relatively high score. i have specifically told her at least once when i thank her for everything she has done, that "it is because of you, that i am still around".
i have not told my wife either. i mentioned it in a roundabout way to my psychiatrist once. i was trying to allude to possible depression and told him i spend too much time looking at gore sites. he asked me why i looked at pictures of dead people and i said in a way that could have been both convincing and non convincing "i don't know, maybe i just want to be in their place". the problem is that when talking to medical staff, we have to be very careful when discussing suicidal thoughts. by the time we know if they will help us through it, or just get us sectioned it can be too late. in that respect i feel that most mental health workers can never really how to treat anyone properly, because most of the time, their patients will hide stuff from them for fear of being put into a psyche ward
i have told one person and regretted it almost straight away. i was trying to help him but it would have just made him worry. it was on a day that i had lost a friend in a car accident and he said it was better that way than through suicide, which sadly he had experience of losing someone that way at the time. i naively told him he should be happy because his friend got what they wanted, and when he asked why, i told him about my death wish, which was cruel and hopefully he has no recollection of it, but he probably still does 26 years later. around 4 weeks ago, after 2.5 years of what i thought was pain, i finally got my car back on the road. we went for a drive up through the twisting bits. i gave him a drive as a thank you for all of his help and as we got back towards his place. he said he had been feeling depressed. i had no idea what to say, because my plans were to dispose of myself the next day. also the fact that boys do not talk about feelings, but the way i was feeling at the time, i might have just become a blubbering mess. it would not have been fair to open that can of worms which might have disclosed certain things, and still take my own life the next night
from the age of 5, i have either had a death wish or been fascinated with death. it will always be with me, and there is almost no chance of it disappearing forever. since being on ritalin and dexamphetamine there have been limited times when i have been able to tell myself that i definitely wanted to live, but not for very long. at present, this last week might very well be one of those times. i have found that having a desire to die isn't as bad as many people who do not have one would think it to be. that is why i posted what i did in my first reply in this thread, because while i may be a lost soul, i am not a tortured soul. so many people who lose someone to suicide believe they were a tortured soul and they should have seen the signs, but i do not believe that is the case at all. some of us just have a different view on how special life is and whether we should have to live at any cost. i do know that having these thoughts do help a lot - simply because there is a get out clause if things go wrong. it probably also has something to do with being in control of your own destiny. sadly for your own situation, neither believing that sean did not want to go, nor that he did wish to go can make you happy. you either feel that he didn't want what happened, or he had to be so incredibly sad to go ahead with it. but i can tell you for a fact that if i did take my own life, it wasn't because i was so sad and tortured. i was just willing to get off this merry go round on my own terms. i have never tried to take my own life or thought about it seriously when i have been at my lowest points. it could be suggested that most recently i did, but the thought and the ordering of sn started in late february, so while i might have actually done it in a very low point, the time of both doing it and the low point were just a coincidence
