don't want any more damn doctoring

 Not that I have much choice but I just don't want to keep trying to see a doctor. They all, every fucking last one of them, conclude on the basis of a few minutes observation, that I'm crazy. Whatever lable of crazy they want, they all want to put me on SSRIs. A powerful drug that should only be used in conjunction with therapy and very close monitoring. 

Not one of those assholes ever takes a look at my lifestyle and social supports. Not one of them considers what life would be like with no direction, purpose, hope, dreams or goals, and not much more social interaction than a prisoner in solitary.  Except that much that is more, is more than I want. Because it sucks.

I've been to psychiatrists and therapists. Those who took time to sit and talk with me inevitably concluded that I am suffering an excess of sanity. That I am the person poorly adapted to a maladaptive world. The stress of this is what depresses me. The utter lack of support or resources depresses me. My autism is to blame, because it makes me unpleasant to visit with. Which isnt' really how I'd rather spend my time anyway.

And I can't articulate myself in person. I get strident, I cry, I lose the thread, the doctor interrupts and recommends drugs. I get mad and try to explain what's wrong with it. I keep losing the thread. He concludes I'm in denial and shrugs me off. I fail to get the attention I need. 

Nobody's cataloguing my pains and weaknesses and asthma attacks and I cannot. Firstly because mental survival means immediately putting it out of my mind. Secondly because I've never had that skill set. It was the reason I kept failing in grade school. I had no problem with the learning, but the record keeping was impossible. I didn't do it.  Notes? No. Dates?  huh? Just part of the unsupported autism. I've been going through life with a massive disability getting zero support for it. 

I hate it so much. it is why I feel suicidal and sometimes the longing for death overwhelms all other thoughts or intentions and I just sit there with a huge tension all over me like I'm waiting for an axe to fall, which it doesnt'. This tension stops my bowels till the contents turn to cement. The doctor just says more laxative and oh, I could give you SSRIs. 

Valium would actually probably be an effective medicine for me but the stuff has such a rotten reputation now, and asking for such things is utterly verboten. It proves you're just a sociopathic addict. 

I can't fucking take these people. They don't even bother getting to know me but judge me. Worse than street people. Doctors actually trust their own snap judgements. I guess a doctor who routinely treats the down-and-out maybe? No, I knew one of them, he was a prize asshole of the highest degree doing this "service" so he could lord it over his patients and earn accolades with his peers.  Before him, I wasn't the least phobic in offices of any kind. After five years with him, I would burst into tears the moment I sat down. It took a now-retired but actually compassionate doctor to take that from me.  He, as usual, didn't do much for me, but he didn't judge me or rush me or get annoyed or insist I need meds for my brain. He just tried to provide me with the medical service I requested. He's also the guy who never thought to get me tested for cancer when the symptoms began, so even then I was underserved.

I just have no more confidence in GPs overall. They seem like gatekeepers rather than service providers. They judge and they refuse service, all in the most inoffensive and polite of ways. Inscrutible would be a suitable word for my current doctor, if you can forgive the inherent racism of using that word on him, for he is asian in feature, although purely canadian. But thing is, I guess I presumed that since that other nice doc was asian heritage, that perhaps asians did a better job teaching compassion to their kids?

Well but the thing I need to remember is what kind of person it takes to get through med school. Success oriented.  Privileged. Healthy. Extensive support network. The odds of getting through without all of the above are lower, if you have none, you just won't even try.

So while we hear stories of people who came from poverty, don't forget to notice the times they mention someone's help.  Help from a boss in the form of not being a dick or working the schedule or permitting homework, for one who worked his way through. Which is categorically impossible now, the rates for tuition are much too high.  No unskilled work could afford it, most unskilled jobs aren't enough to pay basic living expenses so even with full scholarships a kid would need a stable home provided. All those little advantages.

All that being said, the kind of person who becomes a doctor is necessarily going to lack the empathy towards someone who has had the deck stacked against them in some way. 

I just assume anymore that people will tune me out before hearing me. That they aren't going to think anything but that I'm exaggerating. That because I'm actually minimizing to try and earn that trust, they really think I'm overreacting.

But I don't know what I'm doing to do the next time I'm writhing and moaning in pain. Because that is hella powerful stuff.  you just want them to fix you. But then they extract your self esteem with it. Leave you wrung out and feeling like you didn't deserve that and frankly didn't want it, and why does it have to be so painful? 

And go home and tell myself over and over that I'm going to will it away. But I'm still so tense I can't shit. 

Tension. Well I wake up in an asthma attack 3am every night. That lasts about an hour, the albuterol I take for it then wakes me up, I think that's what's causing me to get jacked a while later and sit up till 8am then I sleep an hour or three if it's not too hot and there's nothing for which I have to get up. So my sleep is crap. I wake up in pain and walk through my day managing pain. Pain in my back. Pain in my aches and pains. Pain in my belly.  Sometimes it's like my bowels have turned to a boa constrictor, a fat one. oh and the hernia slips in and out like taking a hat off and on. the belt doesn't help much at all. Plus it does't fit properly, it's a bit too big for my small torso. So I fight with it.

Oh ok, I've run down. I just wish I could tell these things to a medical care practitioner in a way they'd hear.