Symptom: Hospital Avoidance
Any normal person feeling this pain would go to the hospital. But I know they will not do anything helpful for me there.
I am no longer a “normal person.”
To quote The Disabled Ginger’s “I Won’t Go to the ER Unless I’m Literally Dying”:
“If you were healthy previously – your expectation of the hospital is that you go in, they fix you, you go home. […]
Now that you’re chronically ill you will have to quickly adjust to the reality that there won’t be a “fix”. That ERs are designed to treat acute and immediately life threatening conditions and thus woefully ill equipped to deal with complex chronic illness. […]
When you spend years (or decades) being dismissed and told your symptoms are something you “have to get used to” it’s hardly surprising when you adapt to avoid the hospital. […]
The reality is the system is failing chronically ill patients – the patients are simply doing their best to survive. Healthy people can’t understand how difficult it is to live with the knowledge that there’s almost no help available to you no matter how much you suffer.”
Eli Wallach's favorite Bass July 22, 2024
@illmarks to this day, the main advice I get for my diverticulosis from my GP is
Don't worry about it
Inner Visioner July 23, 2024
@illmarks Shocked but not surprised at this. As an older person who’s worked in health, it’s sobering to realise the chronic patient failure is everywhere, not just our broken British NHS.
Coming from a newcontext, “Heal thyself” has never been more necessary .
laen (lily's new name) July 23, 2024
@illmarks oh my god this has made my cry. hospital avoidance and just general doctor avoidance too, from decades of being told that yeah, i'm sick, but unless i want to take these (dangerous*) drugs that won't even cure me and will just ease some symptoms but cause others, there's nothing they can do. nothing they want to do. i was told my a neurologist once that he was going to put me into this TDB (too-difficult box, he replied, when i asked what that was). he smiled, shook my hand, and showed me out of his office. that was that.
every so often, especially in recent months as things have got worse again, i feel the urge to chase doctors and tests again. and husband looks at me and says, "what do you want? because you know they can't give you what you need."
sigh.
i have a list of diagnoses a mile long, and no one can do anything about any of them. in the country where i live now, i was even told that a few of them don't exist! (they absolutely do)
modern medicine can do some marvellous things, but it's also entirely lost touch with why it exists. and how to heal people. and how to even care.
sending you hugs and love and care and understanding. and regret that you're here too.
*one with a risk of "grand mal seizures and death*, which is fine.
Broadwaybabyto July 23, 2024
@illmarks thank you for sharing this and I’m so glad it resonated with you (though I’m also sorry that you’re in the same boat).