A few weeks ago, I had one of those incidents that triggered something deep and dark within that sent me into an emotional tailspin. After fifty odd years of sorting through my issues and tediously digging into my mental health, must I still have these sorts of things happen?! Well yes, apparently I must.
It started with an eye exam.
As per usual, I had to fill out forms and of course, health history. I ticked the boxes next to diabetes and high blood pressure, listed my meds and felt a little bit smug that I was on my one little pill daily for each and managing them just fine, thank you. Maybe pride was setting me up that day. I certainly sound as though it was!
And then I met the doctor.
The doctor was insistent that the only reason I was having any issue with my eyes at all was because my blood sugar was out of control. He had not checked my eyes. He'd simply glanced at my current list of meds and read my medical history. "No one has blurry vision unless their blood sugar is going up and down! You aren't taking care of the diabetes, and this is why you are having eye problems!" I had not checked my blood sugar that morning and he wanted that number. When I told him I'd not checked it, I was lectured further. I had my kit with me and was about to tell him I would check it right away, but he began the eye exam.
Each time I failed to clearly read a line, I was told again, "It's the diabetes! You are not going to see because you are out of control."
On and on he lectured with each step of the exam. I was not monitoring my health and wasn't doing a thing to promote being healthy. I was eating the wrong things. My A1c number failed to impress him. I wasn't taking medication. I wasn't doing this or that.
I found myself getting very frustrated and very defensive. I went in with a great attitude, feeling healthy and well and strong. I went out feeling I'd been telling myself and everyone else lies and had just been publicly outed, defensive as heck and ready to weep. I had to remind myself that my personal physician is more than happy with my numbers and results.
The conclusion of my eye exam was that I had had a 'significant' vision change from when I was last examined. There is no sign of glaucoma, no macular degeneration. The small cataract I was diagnosed with three or four years ago at the time of the last exam, is still a very small cataract. The doctor had no concern over that at all. I'd looked up what to do to improve eye health with diet and supplements and have taken those religiously over the past three/four years.
No kudos from doc. None. In his mind, every single thing came right back to diabetes and mismanagement on my part. Period. Finished. Done.
I had a horrible feeling inside. I was left with a feeling of shame.
I felt that appointment with the eye doctor on an emotional level. I did. What I wanted to do more than anything was to march right back to that aisle with the beautiful display of thick frosted sugar cookies I'd walked past earlier and buy two boxes, then eat myself sick, just like I used to do when I was depressed and mentally unable to cope.
What did I do that day? I insisted we finish our other shopping and stayed well away from areas with trigger foods, drank a full container of water when we got back to the car and refused to stop for food on the way home. I knew I had good foods at home. Nor did I fall back on the equally as old habit of shopping to feel better in order to soothe my feelings. I stuck hard to my list. Small victories are small victories but they're big ones when you've fought addictions and don't succumb in a time of upset. Why didn't I feel like I was winning?
We got in the car and on the way home, John spoke of a post made on a social media platform that I went to read. It was a candid post about a near and dear soul's battle with mental health: the victories won and the very hard facts of dealing with mental illness daily.
I told John how very proud I was of the poster, not only because it was well written but because it was totally honest. I felt the author was brave in a way I'd never dared to be. John's reaction was different. John's been nothing less than encouraging to this person. He takes it as a personal rejection that despite his best efforts this person is not convinced of their value and worth.
I tried to explain to John what a huge thing that post was, much as he might dislike reading the things it said. I tried to explain to him how a mind tethered by both depression and a chemical imbalance works. I struggled with my words. I dumbed it down a lot because there are portions of this particular mental illness that I don't fully understand. I finally told him this: It has to do with what we hear inside our own heads and that voice is louder, clearer, and drowns out every truth anyone else might speak to us.
I've shared before that I've dealt with my share of mental health issues in the past. I wasn't very open about my mental health history at the time I was in the hard and fast places of depression because that was the day and age when you had to keep quiet about those sorts of things. It was a time when society was only on the cusp of people beginning to speak of emotional and mental issues. There was no societal understanding about mental health at all. You didn't tell an employer or friends and likely few of your family.
Mention depression and most likely you'd hear some very pat phrases, none of which were helpful in the least. "Just think how much better off you are than most people." "Just look at how bad someone else has it." "Just look on the bright side." There is no bright side, no comparison that can possibly be made when the things inside you are deep and dark and suffocating. Whether it is a chemical imbalance or whether there were past traumas, there is no bright side.
I told John this. John asked, "Well what did you do about it?" "The same as she has. I went to therapy. I took medications. I self-examined and self-abused, and I kept on trying to be better until I didn't self-abuse anymore."
I went to therapy.
At 18, I went to my first therapist at my mother's insistence. We had sessions together. I felt I had nothing to say...Or nothing I was willing to pay for later for saying. Eventually the therapist felt it would be best if she spoke to us in separate therapy sessions. Needless to say, I was grilled hard after each session. That too did not make me feel I could speak my mind.
The therapist determined I was sexually repressed and sat me down for one session with a coffee table sized photography book in which couples of all sorts were making love. I wasn't shocked or horrified but I was embarrassed. I wasn't quite sure what the therapist thought I might gain from being exposed to such things. Soon after our sessions ended. Was it Mama's choice? The therapist's decision? I couldn't possibly tell you. I was so unaccustomed to having any say in anything that I am certain only that it wasn't myself who ended it.
Later in my mid-20s I suffered a number of mental breakdowns. I functioned long enough to get my children fed and out the door to nursery and school each day. Then I went home and lay in bed all day long, shaking like a leaf and crying. I seldom left my house except to drop off and pick up the children. In the afternoon and evening, I kept it together until the children were fed and bathed and put to bed, then fell into the bed shaking and crying all over again. It was at this time I sought therapy once more.
I was a model patient. I said the right things and revealed the right things, and the therapist was happy. But one day, I didn't want to make the therapist happy. I wanted the therapist to HEAR me, and I said how I felt. I told her the things I struggled with, how unhappy I was in my life, in my marriage. And do you know what she said in return? "You only feel that way because you are fat."
What?! My whole life boils down to this? I'm fat?
This was the memory that popped up as I was trying to explain to John how a person with mental health issues and depression feels.
"I never said to this therapist, 'I've been abused.' I never told of the deeper inner hurts and the lack of understanding about a very difficult and overbearing relationship in my life. I never told this therapist a single thing except that I was depressed until that day and that was her reply."
I dealt with that hurt and misunderstanding the same way I dealt with most of my hurts: I shoved it all back into that deep dark hole where it had been wreaking havoc for years and kept saying the right things until the therapist felt I was ready to be dismissed. And this day, 30 something years later, this is the memory that resurfaced.
I started sobbing for the girl I had been, the one who had tried to be brave only to be slapped back down, the one who didn't believe her feelings were valid, that she had anything of value to offer anyone because she was overweight. I felt only shame.
I have always said my children 'saved' me. I didn't lean on them emotionally and make them my co-dependents. I'd been through that. I saw their vulnerability and their need of safety, their need of care, their need of love. Because of them I got up each day and took care of their needs. It was they whom I thought of daily when the thought of suicide was strongest each day. I couldn't bear to think of them raised by their father and that's the truth. So, I fought the battle every day, though the enemy offered me every weapon right at hand over and over again with which I might end my own life. I didn't see the victory in that. I do now.
I didn't feel particularly strong that day a week ago following the visit to the eye doctor and the memory that surfaced. I always feel I've backslidden when I feel the urge to overeat in a compulsive way. I was very emotional that day and a goodly part of the next. I talked to the two people I trust to understand, and both were supportive as I shared my story.
My emotions ranged from anger at myself for accepting sub-par behavior from medical professionals and anger at them for being sub-par in their patient care. There was grief at all the years I might have been happier had I not just accepted the statement of a very stupid therapist. I was sad at the time wasted and wondered what I might have been had I been brave and told people "This is how it is for me." I was angry at myself for allowing someone else to make me feel powerless. I should have gotten up and walked out on that therapist and found another. I should have walked out on that doctor the other day. But I didn't.
And yet, I also feel thankful to that doctor. Because of him, I pulled out the very deep root of something hidden that was preventing me from healing fully. That is no small gift, for all that it might have caused me pain.
19 comments:
I am so sorry all this happened to you---in the past and now. I had a hard upbringing and sometimes an event will trigger feelings from back then and I am horrified that events from now 50 years ago can still have such power. My brother once said to me that he wondered how much more successful he would have been in life if he had not had to spend so much energy constantly battling the emotions caused by past abuse.
I wish you could see the strength you exhibited to keep going for your kids, when so many other people just can't do that and end up committing suicide or giving up their children. You may have felt weak, but from where I am sitting you were pretty darn strong!
A pox on people like your therapists and eye doctor.
I am so sorry you had a "therapist"? who spoke this to you this way,and that eye doctor sounds like he may need some more schooling. I hope you will find a better eye doctor next time.
I have had only one doctor who really hit a wrong note with me about my weight. He was an orthopedic doctor I went to a couple of times for my bad knees. He had a very big ego and was going on about my weight and then he told me that I needed to have a real Come to Jesus moment about my weight. It left me speechless, because the only speech that came to mind had many expletives that I would not speak aloud or even write here. This doctor did not know me, nor know how quickly I gained weight after my Grave's disease was treated with radioactive iodine,that helped the Graves disease, but took away part of my thyroid gland function permanently, so losing weight is a bit more difficult. But the thing that really annoyed me about that doctor was that he didn't really know me and had no idea about how many times I had already had "come to Jesus moments" about my weight, or how hard I had struggled, or how many times I had regained weight, only to start struggling once again to lose weight. I never went back to him,but a year or two later, I found a listing on the internet rating surgeons and their surgery success rates. I discovered that he had the lowest surgery success rate in that large group of orthopedic surgeons at that particular hospital. (That information must have been an answer to one of my many "Come to Jesus moments through the years.) I eventually found a very good orthopedic surgeon who had no issues working with some one of my weight. And from looking around in his waiting room it looked like he helped adults of all shapes, sizes, ages. I looked at his surgical success ratings in the same place where I found the other orthopedic surgeon's ratings, and this surgeon, who worked on fat,thin and in between people , had one of the very highest ratings for surgical successes in that hospital's rating index. After that, I think that we sometimes get answers to questions we didn't even know to ask in our Come to Jesus moments.
I live in an area that is well stocked with hospitals and health care workers, I will never sit quiet after a doctor has spoken to me in any way I consider insulting, or just plain prejudiced. I will politely tell him whatever I disagreed with calmly, if I can get the words out before he has already jumped up and left the room.
You have been through a lot and lived an interesting life. You are intelligent and well read. There is no excuse for anyone in a medical profession to treat you the way you have been treated, by those doctors. I hope that never happens to you again.
Take care. Hugs,
Susie D.
I am really sorry you were triggered like that, and can so so relate to you. I often wonder myself what I could have been if not for all the abuse. Every day is a struggle, yet I work full time, help with my grandchildren, am there at the drop of a hat for my daughter. You know, I never drank, never smoked, never drugged, never had as much as a parking ticket because I knew since I was age 12 I only had myself to rely on and would need to be a hard worker. My thoughts are with you today and I think you are a pretty special woman!
I thought of something after I posted my first comment. At 32 I had to have open heart surgery for a birth defect. The surgeon was horrid, going on and on about my weight and how it made it unlikely that I would survive the surgery due to that alone. It got so bad a nurse actually intervened and told him now was not the time. (He told me I should get rid of my fridge so I would have to walk to the store anytime I wanted something to eat.) Anyway, 20 years later it looked like I needed more surgery and he was still the only surgeon on the west coast with the expertise in my particular defect. I dreaded seeing him and hearing how I was still fat and so on. Well, this time he was so different that at the end of the first consultation I asked him if something traumatic had happened in his life, like a spouse or child dying. I explained how I had dreaded seeing him but how this time he was very matter of fact about the surgery with no weight comments or scare tactics. He told me that in the intervening years his young daughter had grown up and that she had a severe weight problem. He found it very enlightening and painful to watch her constantly feel guilty about how much she ate, how she dieted all the time and exercised a lot but still had trouble controlling her weight. Until he lived with someone struggling with weight, he had never believed that there were things like metabolism differences as well as hormones that pushed you to eat no matter what. He had thought it was all laziness and lack of will power. And then he apologized for how he had treated me the first time. I ended up crying like some blubbering idiot.
Oh, Terri...I check your blog once in awhile and just saw this post. I am horrified by how you were treated by medical professionals in the past and by this eye dr. Even if it were true that your eyes were worse because of your diabetes, etc., he could've talked to you about it in a kind, professional manner - not berated and shamed you. I hope you won't ever go back to this eye dr and perhaps it would help someone else in the future if you left a negative Google review?
Girlfriend, you are amazing.
Mental health is intricate and delicate and and the mind protects us by burying all that harmful stuff so we can function. You handled that sudden memory the way you needed to and came out the other side stronger. ♥
Oh my, I’m so angry you’ve been treated so badly by these medical people. They are 100% wrong.
Hugs and love to you ❤️
Hi Terri,
I’m so sorry! I do hope writing about it has been cathartic. There’s no excuse for either doctor’s behavior! I once saw a cardiologist who basically did the same thing as you experienced with the eye doctor. My primary care physician had referred me to this doctor. I decided it was the equivalent of a blind date and there would be no further “dates.” I found a cardiologist I felt I could work with and it’s been much, much better! I hope you can find another eye doctor as well.
Blessings.
When I read another commenters comment I was reminded of a therapist I had seen years ago. She did speak on and on about my weight,but not in an insulting way,and pretty much information I already knew.
About 4 years later, I had an occasion to go to see her again. Due to my severe Graves disease and the weight loss I had from it (I didn't know I had Graves disease, and thought I finally had found a secret to not eating much (part of the secret turned out to be the huge enlargement of my thyroid gland which caused problems swallowing food).
When I first saw her at this visit, I almost didn't recognize her due to her weight gain. She noticed my weight loss, and then explained how she had gained a lot of weight from a medical condition she was dealing with. I didn't realize yet that I had lost a lot of weight from a medical condition. Unfortunately, my weight loss stopped, and I started gaining weight back after my treatment for the Grave's Disease. It makes one wonder how many people have undiscovered health conditions behind the scenes of their weight. Some doctors would do a lot more healing if they didn't have such a judgmental attitude about people with weight problems.
I went to a doctor about sinus problems or something. My blood pressure was so high he was ready to call an ambulance. I had to tell him I walked from another building because I went to the wrong place and that my back had some problems that caused lots of pain. The nurse talked to me and took my history. I did not get a chance to sit and calm down.
I asked the doctor if I could have my blood pressure taken again as the first was not correct. He flatly refused. The doctor took care of me curtly. Then, he turned to me and said,"park as far as you can from walmart and walk to the store. And, lay off the Mt. Dew!" Then, he walked out the door. Needless to say, I never went back.
I left the exam room and a nurse was sitting at a station right outside the door. I asked her if she would take my blood pressure again and tried to explain why. She was tight-lipped, telling me quietly to sit down. She said I was right. Obviously, she could hear us in the room. My blood pressure was about 95/55. I think I hate that man!
I have lived with 76 years of abuse. Even in the womb I was bombarded with my father's violence visited on my mother.
I'm sorry for your struggles, but glad for the healing that resulted. We are all works in progress until the day we die. We all have our troubles. Thank God we have faith to uphold us in tough times!
Doctors are only humans. Very fallible humans. I've had my share of snide ones, as well as weirdo therapists, some who seemed obsessed with s-e-x. Makes you wonder if they're the ones who have defective mental health!
It is getting more difficult to find a good doctor these days. So sad.
I just went through this with my primary, blaming my high BP for not taking me BP meds. I looked in straight in the eye and told him I take my BP meds every night like I am suppose to. Hubby backed me as 90 % of the time he is handing them to me when he takes his own. I also pointed out I had my back injections of high dosage of steroids the day before , not even 24 hrs. before my appt with him. He backed down, apologized and asked me to track it. If it only lasts a week we might want to increase my BP meds when I take injections twice a year.
I had a therapist once in the middle of a nasty custody suit not only with my ex but my mother also. I was the last one to see the therapist the court ordered. He talked to me 30 minutes. Looked me in the eye and asked how I dealt with either of them. I pointed to the window and said I put the screen in. I hear what they say but I don't let is stay inside my head, it goes through the screen. Told me he was going to start suggesting that to a couple others. Ex and mother showed they had psychotic disorders and advised the judge to not allow visitation alone with the children.
Part of me felt justified, but there was voice wondering if I was to blame for Mother having it. Mental illness wasn't something talked about when I was growing up. My generation is the one that opened that door.
Oh, Terri, I can relate to everything you wrote. First, I have had therapy twice in my life and got nothing from it either time. Neither of them were bad people but they had nothing to offer me. I have actually gotten more info from books. I have been on an anti depressant for over 20 years and I still struggle with anxiety and depression. I'm pretty sure this is as good as it gets.
One thing I truly learned from my years working in doctor's offices, is that there are some pretty bad ones out there. My husband and I interviewed surgeons before his prostate surgery. Even if you have an HMO you are allowed to change specialists or even your primary care doctor. Also, we have universally found women to be better surgeons and doctors, and we almost always pick a female. Our primary is a female.
Not because of medical skill but because men tend to be poor listeners. Even my husband agrees with this.
I must inject a note of business here.
1. I have been buying from Amazon and using your site. Are you getting rebates?
2. The only way I find that I can go to Amazon through your website, is to go back through your posts until I find one in which you recommend a book or something else that can be found on Amazon, then I click on that link. But this is a lot of work. Can't you set up a permanent link that would automatically appear with each post, something like Brandy has?
Thanks.
Thank you to all of you for your stories and your sympathy. I went back over paperwork a week or so ago and found the doctor's notes on my visit stating that I my diabetes was controlled. So why did he fuss so?
Anne, on the business side: I am going to see if I can do something like that with Amazon. I may have to physically do it but I'd like to have it be an automatic thing. Amazon did away with the previous side link thingy that allowed anyone to use it easily.
Please give me time to figure out how I can do this routinely without interrupting a post or whatever unless I'm deliberately creating a link to a book, movie or product.
And yes, I did get a commission last month for the first time in six months. Thank you so much! Every little bit does help and I do so appreciate it!
Oh Terri! I teared up reading this. I have been fortunate enough not to have to deal with depression, but my mother did, and I have seen how debilitating it can be. And I have had identical experiences to yours with doctors. I worked in the medical field for years and there are some real jerks in the field. It is terrible how some unkind remark from someone in a position of authority (for that is how we usually view medical people, whether justified or not) can re-open old wounds. I had a doctor once keep me in the room for 20 minutes, lecturing me about my weight. I felt terrible (and at the time I was in size 8 clothing! My BMI said I was overweight -- not obese -- but I, too, have struggled with thyroid disease. I had to have my thyroid removed.) Never mind my otherwise good health -- he was fixated on that BMI. Anyway, I admire how you have overcome so much -- it is not easy and we are all continual works in progress.
Cindi, I too worked in the medical field, mostly in the office/admin positions but know first hand that some doctors and nurses too can just plain be jerks. I've been fat shamed before by medical professionals. I do not have a thyroid issue and from the beginning of life was 'healthy' compared to the slender classmates but my weight ballooned when I became a compulsive eater. I have overcome that and after years of maintining the non-compulsive eating, I went on a diet and lost about 100 pounds and kept off 93 of them. That 7 pounds goes and comes in different seasons. I would still, however, be considered obese.
When I worked in a nursing home the head nurse approached patient weights on a totally different scale and the doctors working with the nursing home worked with her reasoning very well. She asked when patients came in how much they weighed and then asked "Is this about what you've always weighed? Do you typically weigh less or more?" It's suprising how many of those, especially the women said "Well I've been this size all my life!" It was just their body type/metabolism and had nothing to do with their work ethic or overeating.
I think I never would have begun eating compulsively if anyone had ever once just looked at me accepted that I was who I was, but there was a weight/size range everyone felt I should fit into and they assumed overeating put there. It was no such thing, but when I began compulsive eating and bingeing/purging after my way really went up high.
Terri, I am so sorry you had to endure that kind of treatment from those doctors. I am wondering where they got their medical licenses - from a Cracker Jacks box?
What a horrible experience and how very unprofessional of that doctor, and especially that therapist years ago! My husband used to deal with the "you're fat" being the cause of everything but thankfully we've found some really good doctors and therapist. The reality is, he weighs twice what I do and it honestly healthier than me and always has been.
The beauty I see in this post is the growth you've found in yourself - the ability to see the root and pull it out, the wonderful way you encouraged the poster and understood the power of that act, the way you patiently explained to someone who didn't understand. Mostly the way you were able to see just how far you've come. And learn to love yourself the way you need to be loved.
Much love to you.
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