Doctors find me confusing

I wanted to make a thead of shit people have said to their Doctors/Therapists that confused or shocked them. I figured that since a lot of people are delayed in being diagnosed there are bound to be some interesting stories.

For example, when I was officially diagnosed with depression I had already known I was depressed for a while and had a lot of coping machanisms, so the therapist asked me "You seem pretty knowledgeable, how long have you been experiencing symptoms?" And I guess the answer she was expecting was not "I dunno, maybe 8 years?" Because she looked like I'd grown a second head. At the time I didn't realize most people don't manage as well as I did without meds or a real diagnosis when suicidally depressed.

 

Haha lmao same. I keep telling psychs that I've been suicidal since about 5th grade, and they're consistently surprised that I've only made one attempt to date, and that it was recent.

Psychs can also generally pick up on the fact that I'm autistic, but most medical doctors can't, and are extremely confused when I tell them. "But you're so intelligent/composed/capable of holding a conversation" is a thing I've heard a l o t.

 

Yikes! Sorry to hear that, that is hella unprofessional imo.

Good to know I am not the only depression georg tho.

 

My docs dont seem to ever understand why i can most of the time figure out where my depression is coming from and/or why its happening in the moment and then proceed to still be depressed. Im always just like its? An emotional thing??? My chemicals are not doing their job i cant just magically stop feeling sad cause i know why im sad?????????

 

"But if know why you're sad why is still sad????" Is such a weird thing. Like if you know you're sad because your grandma is sick you aren't gonna magically feel better because you understand how emotions work.

And if your brain decides that neurotransmitters are for the birds you can't ask your brain to reconsider. But what do I know lol.

 

My psychiatrist asked me to track my sleep and body temperature (I forget if it was when I was going to sleep or waking up or both) for like ten days and bring in the results. I was really proud that I managed to do it. He looked at the results and said yep, there is no pattern here. I didn't just have a fucked up circadian rhythm, I apparently had no real circadian rhythm at all.

We decided I should try the revolutionary method of not trying to sleep until I was tired. It sounds kinda weird that I never thought of that as a valid thing. I installed a phone app to track my sleep for me, so that helped, and after a few weeks I was delighted to report that it had settled into a regular cycle and I was feeling so much better.

My doctor looked at my data and seemed quite puzzled. Apparently the longest experimentally recorded non-24 sleep cycle is like 27 or 28 hours long? Mine was like 32-34 hours.

Yep.

 

oh boy, lemme think. most doctor experiences have been in a flurry while near base in italy.

talking with psych who already knew all my formerly given diagnoses from last doc and was meant to talk to me and help me keep on meds that helped:

"Intrusive thoughts aren't a normal thing for ANYONE, only people with severe mental illness have any kind of intrusive thoughts ever."
"Wanting to survive isn't good enough." (in response to my very literal statement of 'I can't bullshit a dream I don't have for you, I WANT TO LIVE)

internal doc ignoring all of my questions and comments prior to refusing future appointments + me getting diagnosed with POTS and other shit by a specialist in Germany
"Lose weight and ask your doctor about anxiety." "....I have anxiety, I'm on medication. Am I anxious about standing up??? IT ONLY HAPPENS WHEN I STAND, USUALLY!" "Lose weight, your heart is struggling." "...But.." "://// If it's about the pain, it's fibromyalgia, I don't know what you want from me if you're not going to follow my instructions for treatment."

physical therapist:

"So, we need to do cardio for you." "...Uhm. btw, what do you count as cardio?" "Exercises that raise the heart rate to a certain point and keep it there!" "...Mine does that when I sit upright. And I get very sick, and have uncontrolled pain issues. What can I do that'll help me lose weight/help my joints if I'm like this? Do you know these conditions?" "I went to school, yes, thank you for pointing that out. :) You need cardio." "WHAT cardio??" "To raise your heart rate!" "... :STANDS UP WITH PULSE/OX ON TO SHOW PULSE RISE:" "... You're not stable enough to be here. :/ "

 

Wow! That's wild! Glad you found a good sleep rhythm and also now hold a record for weird sleep cycles.

 

Thank you, @Alaspooralice. It's happily gotten a bit less... strange... since someone finally invented an insomnia med that works for me. It still isn't 24 hours, but it's not almost a day and a half, either. So that's something.

Oh man, and then there was the GP who tried to argue with my sister that her thyroid meds were akin to crack, and her psychiatric meds were all terrible. My sister is a doctor of neuroscience.

 

@TheMockingCrows Yikes! That is like a horror story right there. Were those military docs or just regular docs outside base?

 

Oooh i also have a lot of "shit doctors say" stories, is that relevent to thread? I assumed it was just a "competent doctors are a surprised" thread

 

@Verily Omg that GP has the same ideas as my very much not a doctor who also thinks cellphone towers will give him cancer. That is scary.

 

@Deresto sure, I'd also love some "shit docs say" stories to baffle the resonable.

 

Yeah, she was Not Impressed. Also, yikes. Where do med schools even find these people. :/

 

all docs on base :cries: the docs I saw on the economy were usually for individual visits or tests or exams being done. the ones who gave my diagnosis eventually was a military doc on another base. Landstuhl does not fuck around. diagnosis of mental stuff was on our base, but the doc got cycled out and had to leave to do desk job instead. :// economy docs lead to situations like "that time a nun saw me naked in thigh highs before my surgery" or "why did the nurse just slap the doctor? oh right, she basically adopted me and was keeping me calm through my withdrawal from my psych meds because hospitalized and no way to communicate this particular need and they were ignoring my distress over the IV continually jacking up"

 

multiple doctors missed my chronic illness for 7 years because it's usually caught and fixed at birth, so they werent even thinking of it as a possibility :V

one of those doctors no longer works in this state

 

@TheMockingCrows I had heard military docs were difficult but I did not know the half of it damn.

I remember when I was in the shrink clink (what we call the mental health ward I was in for a week) there was an older lady who was ex military who would normally be with the military only ward but they had overflow and she got moved to our ward and after sitting in on our group sessions she asked to placed there full time because she said it was loads better than her old ward. (This is saying something because that mental health center is notorious for being awful and I was never sicker than after I got out of there)

 

yeah it's... hit of miss sadly. some of them either believe they know Everything And Are Always Right (even when they're dangerously wrong), some actually ARE always right and know damn near everything and thus are worked to absolute death and half the time treated like garbage by higher-ups, people who know bare minimum of what's happening and whose answer is basically 'a bandaid, some antibiotics and a slap on the ass to go home'. .... It's nuts. The people who like their job and are good at it are put under so much strain that they have a huge desire to leave, and then everyone's stuck with really shitty docs sometimes. :(

 

Alright, ive got tons:

So whenever i take decongestants my blood pressure spikes really badly, and the way we found this out was when i had a cold once and my mom gave me some. About three days in i was seemingly getting a lot sicker instead of better, so she rushed me to the hospital where they saw my blood pressure was dangerously high

Cue some years later, a doctor is asking how i could be "allergic" to decongestants, i explain that thats an over simplification i put on forms and things so im not given them. I said "yeah last time i took them my blood pressure ended up spiking to like 200/110 or something close, i almost died" The docs response was "thats impossible, you would have died or come close" And i was like...yes??? I just said that

Another time i had an allergic reaction to an antidepressant and my next appointment wasnt for like, six months (texas psychiatric system is fucked). I was breaking out in hives, had really bad stomach stuff, and couldnt breathe right. I somehow got ahold of my doc and his delightful answer was "cant you just keep taking it or stop completely, i cant see you any time soon" like. DUDE.

There was also the time i got a full psych eval (like, one of the super long ones that takes 4 hours) and about an hour of that was the evaluator trying to convince me to stop taking the medication that stops me from hallucinating/having intense paranoid episodes and saying i just needed to exercise more, because "meds are just a bandaid, they dont really do much". A real actual brain doctor said this to me.

In the same vein theres the doc i have to go to for blood pressure meds (its a charity thing where doctors volunteer their time and resources b/c im poor as shit) whos constantly trying to get me to stop taking them.

Theres also the dentist thing, where the guy was doing the chatty expecting me to respond thing IN THE MIDDLE OF A WISDOM TEETH REMOVAL like buddy, nevermind that my mouth is full of tools and shit, i cant even feel my mouth. Wat r u doing. This is the same time this guy said "we're not very good at this surgery here" before my surgery. I also learned i process some pain meds faster than a normal person, so that was "fun".

 

I have an army friend whose doctor gave him an antiviral for a fungal infection. After he realized that, he was a bit less ticked at his fellow soldiers for nicking his meds to manage their herpes. (I wonder what the doctor would have given them for that.)