A soundtrack may help to paint this picture – the link opens in another tab. Turn the volume way to the right. Dave Wayman’s songwriting for Shannon Bourne used by permission
What’s a Little Pain? I’m quite unable to describe the impact of suffering from fibromyalgia, but hope that the noise in your head will help whilst trying to educate carers about hypersensitivity.
It isn’t so easy to give rheumatology specialists an insight, due to their being the fount of all knowledge. Prof Fred Wolfe removed the following unabridged text from a posting to his blog on the grounds that “We will not publish insulting or crude comments”. Despite the topic being Empathy!
I’m so mad right now. Steaming, boiling, ranting, raving, wanting to kick, hit or punch something mad and I’m not apologising for it – Don’t read it if you don’t wanna know, I don’t give a damn.
My GP is moving after Christmas, so I guess since he thought it’s probably his last visit with me, why not tell me how he really feels about me.
Apparently in all his wisdom of treating me for one year of my Fibro journey, he felt justified to make the comment that I rely too much on medicine to fix the problems I have. That I don’t try other things, I just reach for medication and see if I can increase the dose to make myself feel better and that’s whats led me to where I am now. That he has done his best to try and get me off the medications and stop me relying on them but its my choice and as such I have to accept the side effects.
Give him one week. One god damned week where he doesn’t understand his body, where he has to try a hundred homeopathic remedies that all fail and leave him worse than before, where he reads so much about his condition he can’t think of anything else. Where his family don’t understand the strange things he does any more and laugh at him because he swears they will work, one day. Where a remedy works on day one, but doesn’t on day two for the very same problem. Where he has to throw thousands of his own money – a gvt pension – on a swing and a prayer because he’s so desperate for something to work. Where he has to turn to his GP to prescribe medication because the GP admittedly knows very little about his condition and can not help any other way. Where the illness makes him feel like a different person and the medication makes him feel worse in 20 other areas but fixes the one big ailment flaring that week. Where he can not socialise with anyone because his friends don’t understand and don’t want to – he can’t drink alcohol any more, he can’t party with them, can’t play sport, can’t join social clubs because of the exposure to noise, lights, sensation of any kind. Where he has to walk naked around the house for 5 days in a row because fabric is too painful to wear, sit on or lay on.
Damn him for thinking he knows anything about my life just because he sees me once a month. I don’t ask my physio for scripts because its not his job!! I don’t ask my GP to Dry Needle me cos it’s not his job!! So many things go wrong and there is so much to fit into an appointment every month, why would I tell him all the things I tried that didn’t work?? I’m there as a last resort, not a drive through takeaway. I’m there asking him for help with medication because that’s what he’s trained in – he has told me he knows little about Fibro, treats his share of patients with it, tries to keep up with the latest info, thats it. If it was 7 years ago and he was my naturopath, I probably wouldn’t ask him about diagnoses criteria for Sjorgens. If it was 5 years ago and he was my acupuncturist, I wouldn’t ask him to adjust my back. It’s now and he is my GP – isn’t it reasonable that I ask him for medication and not exercises for my Vertigo??
To even imply he tried to get me off medication is a joke – he said in my first appointment, as all dr’s do when they freak out at my medications, “oh you can’t have all these, we’ll have to wean you off some of these” and proceeded to put me on a new medication that very appointment!!
The crappy thing is that I ruminate heavily and I know that because of my mental health problems, these comments will stay with me a long time and the anger will turn into much more self destructive emotions.
However, I am very proud that I ignored him in the moment and continued on with the appointment as if he hadn’t just struck a red hot poker into the deep core of my being and planted a deep seed of paranoia and mistrust in me about what Dr’s are really thinking and if I will get the same attitude from everyone on my journey.