Posted by alan on May 28, 1999, at 2:51:35
This is something I think important to share.
Quite a while ago, I can't say just when, I began to feel especially bad. I had abdominal pains, great tiredness no matter how much sleep, and, well, just plain sick. With all this I also felt increasingly depressed, or so I described myself, with my general terrible feeling all over. My pdoc seemed unable to help and the 'side-effects' of all the meds he prescribed seemed terrible. Finally, my pdoc suggested that some of the 'side-effects' seemed to be ulcers and I went to my internist who told me it was all depression, but prescribed for ulcers after a bit of a battle with my psydoc. They helped a bit, but only a bit. I returned to my internist, convinced by now that it was not 'all depression'. A psychologist and my body told me so. After a cursory bit of poking about, he again told me that my problem was depression, not organic, and,as it happens, not the thyroid which he had recently treated--tunnel vision? Well, finally, I went to another internist. Within a week or two, I was in hospital fairly well on my way to complete kidney failure. Fortunately, it was 'only' my prostate blocking my ureter (?) (so that my bladder extended into my chest) and, when catheterized, released six times the normalamount of urine. This was all causing my kidney to stop functioning as I naturally felt sicker and sicker. I suppose coma and death were at least possible. The happy ending was that I had prostate surgery, kidney function is returning rapidly, I feel much better, and I am now urinating like a normal person, having not noticed anything unusual before or interpreting it as 'nerves'. I am a lifelong depressive and will continue to be; but, my God, do I feel better now than I did a few weeks ago. The lesson is obvious. No matter how depressed you are, always take seriously the idea that when you feel sick 'organically', you may well be.
poster:alan
thread:6698
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19990501/msgs/6698.html