Posted by Racer on September 1, 2005, at 13:03:08 [reposted on September 3, 2005, at 3:28:32 | original URL]
In reply to Re: Why should i let drs abuse me? please help:(, posted by kerria on September 1, 2005, at 2:55:43
That's just a warning, and I hope this isn't triggering. I do have a lot to say about all this, though, having experienced horrible health care myself.
First of all, keep in mind that DID can be a pretty controversial diagnosis, and even a lot of pdocs don't really understand it. The less you bring it up with the other docs, the better. Why? Well, let's think about the doctors from a psychological point of view: if they can't figure out what's going on, they're going to look for a way to blame the patient -- and ANY psychiatric diagnosis is perfect for that. "Gee, Doc, my leg has hurt ever since I was hit by a car. Could it maybe be broken?" "Well, it could be, and an x-ray would tell for sure -- but we won't bother with that because you have depression so that's probably causing your pain." (OK, that's a little extreme, but most of us have experienced something similarly ridiculous.) The best thing you can do while you're in the doctor's office is to force him to stay on the subject of your pain, without allowing him to lead you onto the tangent of your psych dx. "Yes, Doctor, I do have [insert any and all psych dx here] -- but that still doesn't adequately explain my pain." "Yes, Doc, there is such a thing as psychosomatic pain, but that doesn't explain the abnormal lab results and my pain." Just bring him back to the main point, over and over, without expressing yourself defensively -- this is something to practice with your therapist first -- and maybe he'll finally get the point. The only alternative I can think of to this is a two-by-four to get his attention, which is the old joke about training a mule, but that isn't legal in most states...
Secondly, see if you can find any of the newer pain management papers online and print them out. The basic idea is that pain MUST be managed, because otherwise it primes the nerves to be hyperresponsive and that creates chronic pain and neuropathy and all sorts of other things. What area of the country are you? If you're in a small community, find the nearest largish city and see a doctor there. The teaching hospitals, for all that they can be great, can also be the most stuck in the middle ages as far as pain management is concerned. The training doctors will be older, and still have that "less is more" approach to pain, while a doctor who has been in practice for a while and continues to read articles, etc, will maybe be more up to date about this. I know taht there was a PBS show called Medical Answers that did a two or three part series on pain management a while back. You could see if you can get transcripts of that.
Your husband's attitude is certainly making all this worse. Can you get him to attend marriage counseling with you? Or at least get him to go in to your therapy sessions once or twice to talk about how damaging his threats are to you? How his threats are making your whole situation worse, and maybe if he were a bit supportive -- at least not threatening you constantly -- things would maybe be a bit better for all of you?
Also, see if you can amend that SSI application to reflect your current physical condition as well as the psych problems.
I hope that something in here helps.
One of the worst things about all this is that you ahve to be so much more on top of everything and so much more capable that most of us are normally, all at the same time you're most vulnerable and least able to do it all yourself. Sucks a lot, huh?
Good luck.
poster:Racer
thread:550207
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/health/20050411/msgs/550219.html