Doctor Appointment Meltdowns

You know it's never a good doctor's appointment when your every urge is to just breakdown and cry after you leave. What so many people just don't understand is how hard it can be to stay focused in a doctor's appointment when you're not hearing the things you want to hear.

I used to look forward to appointments, because I knew once I left, I'd have a plan and hope on how I was going to get better. Often, I'd have a prescription to pick up from my pharmacy, and hand written instructions on how to take it from my doctor.

Now, I usually leave with way less answers than I'd hoped for going in. And when I leave, I'm usually just trying to keep it together so I can make it to the car, lean my head against the steering wheel and just cry. But I don't have the luxury of sitting there very long, because I need to get on my way before I need to use the bathroom again. Or else I have to walk back into the office to use the bathroom, this time with a puffy, just-got-done-crying face....

So I never look forward to doctors' appointments anymore. These days, it usually means that my dreams of trying some new alternative treatment are dashed faster than I can blink, and surgery is dangled in front me like some rancid meat on a stick that I want nothing to do with.

With my old doctor, it felt like a team effort, like we were in this fight together. But with my new doctor (it still feels new, even though I've been seeing him for two years now), it seems like anytime I ask him about some new thought or treatment, he steps back from our discussion and almost literally says, "Try it, if you want, but....[you're an idiot for even suggesting it.]" Okay, he doesn't call me an idiot, but sometimes I can hear it in the way he smiles when he answers my questions.

The thing is, is that all the signs are there that he's a great doctor. But I just haven't clicked with him, and I feel like an insolent child whenever I go to an appointment and I'm not better. Like somehow its my fault that medications just seem to have no effect, good or bad. If only I wished for it harder, I'd get better,

I wish it were that easy. If it was up to sheer will power, I would have been cured three years ago, and I'd have reserves.

Instead, I blinked and three years have passed. And I'm sicker than ever.