Not in a good mood tonight. If you don't want to read a terse blog post right now, feel free to skip.
I'm nauseous from dizziness, weakness, and vertigo, and I'm worn out and exhausted from going, pushing, and working through ten tons of stressful crap since before Christmas. Wish sleeping helped make me feel better, but it doesn't.
So...I'm starting the whole rigmarole of testing and working towards an actual diagnosis and hopefully be able to get what I need in life. I'm going for an EEG next week. Haven't had one done before on myself, but I know what happens during them because I used to work in medical research doing admin work and I was trained as a medical transcriptionist. So, yeah, whatever. I'm not remotely worried about what testing entails.
Mostly I feel deep dread and extremely cynical and grumpy. Doing this is pulling up some bad, bad memories. Years ago I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in my early 20's. It went into remission eventually, but during that time it was the early '00's and it was an absolute nightmare.
It's a long story I don't want to get into because if I start thinking about it too deeply I'm going to throw myself into an anxiety attack, but I suffered a great deal of abuse at the hands of my doctors.
Because they couldn't figure out what was wrong and didn't have adequate technology testing for it, that MUST mean I was a drug-seeking malingering hypochondriac there to waste their time. Not to mention doctors hate dealing with Medicare/Medicaid and are extremely biased against poor patients, so that doubly didn't make them inclined to act like civilized and educated people.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of doctors and nurses in this world that should have switched careers decades ago because they can't cut the mustard as healing professionals. They get worn down, burnt out, pissed off, and sick of difficult insurance companies, paperwork, problems, and patients.
Mostly they sit there and try to gaslight me that it's all the fault of my Depression, Anxiety, and PTSD. They LOVE to use my Depression, Anxiety, and PTSD as an excuse so they never have to say "I don't know and I can't figure it out."
I really, REALLY want to say, "Cool story. Now why don't you quit pissing on my boots and telling me it's raining?"
I'd rather hear "I don't know" than have them sit there and try to convince me that balance problems, vision problems, wandering out in traffic, and dizziness/vertigo are psychological problems.
I'm trying not to be cynical, but I am probably going to be pushing out more cash for tests that come back saying I'm perfectly "normal." That's what ALWAYS happens. What I wouldn't GIVE for them to find scarring, a tumor, a bleed, SOMETHING they can take a bloody picture of!
Gods only know if I have to live my life differently-abled, I want as much of a paper trail as possible to back me up. I've worked both in medicine and in the courts, and if I have the documentation, I am perfectly capable of being one VICIOUS bear of a patient advocate for myself.
Any doctor or lawyer that gets in my face and tries to wave a cow-pat under my nostrils and tell me it's a kale-burger is getting a face-full of teeth.
/vent