I want my menopause, dammit.

re: pathologists--I thought they were medical examiners, or is it that medical examiners are pathologists but pathologists are not necessarily medical examiners?

I shouldn't get so much of my medical knowledge from detective shows.

It's also something anyone visiting a medical professional should learn and probably could.

But its not something they'd necessarily KNOW to learn or quite HOW to learn.

An example. My Mother the teacher. (This is all very hypothetical) She has more of a sense of how do discuss with the principal if she thinks Christy Jones shouldn't be in Mrs. Smith's fourth grade class next year.

She can say, "Christy gets really anxious and stops communicating when she's put on the spot. Fourth grade teacher Mr. Jackson is really good at encouraging a kid like that to feel confident enough to raise her hand and participate."

Mrs. Jones, Christy's mother, wants to go to the principal and say, "Mrs. Smith is mean. She made my older daughter cry ever day after school. I don't want Christy in her class."

That's a reasonable thing for a mom to think and feel. It's a bad thing for her to say. Particulary to this principal who quickly digs in his heels when told what to do - he won't be pushed around.

So, in the medical example (and now I'm completely hypothetical so please bear with me) someone with a sense of "the doctor knows best, the doctor is always right, just do what he says" gets scolded for being fat before she even mentions her breathing problems. Or in response to mentioning her breathing problems. She might not know that's inappropriate, unhelpful, could be handled better, etc. Have this happen a dozen times.

She eventually starts avoiding the doctor. Unlike yourself (who knows she's avoiding the doctor because the doctor makes her uncomfortable), she could easily (and logically) think, "Well, if I wasn't fat I wouldn't be having breathing problems. There's nothing they can really DO since I'm so fat. If I loose weight it'll go away. If it doesn't go away, well, that's my fault."

billytea, Ryan is just adorable! Also, allow me to throw a few new ones of my son (holy shit, I have a son - yes, still surprised over here) into the mix: [link]

Also, they said once before that it hurt when people said those things, and yet people continued on without acknowledging that.

There was something I said on Sunday that painted the medical profession with a broad, ugly stroke. I made a generalization based on painful experiences. I have apologized for expressing myself that way. I am not sane on the topic of this horrifying, disgusting, hideous thing, and once again I apologize for allowing it to annoy anyone, doctors and those that love them included.

I have been imprisoned without trial in this thing. I do not know how to force this thing to function correctly. I cannot figure out how to force medical professionals to treat me as something that is worth listening to. I spend a lot of time fantasizing about building a guillotine - I could shove a lot of the fat through it, and chop a bunch of it off. I keep waiting for my turn to be young and pretty and skinny - I've been old and fat and ugly since grade school. This isn't my life. It's marking time until I'm allowed to die. I'm never going to get my turn, am I? It's not like I'm asking for someone else's turn. I understand why it has to be fat when I'm doing the wrong things, but no one will tell me why doing the right things doesn't make the thing skinny. I'm being punished for being fat by being forced to be fat. No one will help me. because it has to be punished for being fat. Punish it. Make it want to be dead. punish it for b eing fat never let it be skinny. never let it have a life that is worth living because it needs to be punihsed.

I went to a nightclub once with a wonderful singer who was a woman of decided size. She said she'd trained for years, and one day her teacher said, "You should go perform." She said, "I want to lose some weight first." Her teacher told her that if she was waiting for that she might never get to a point where she was willing to perform, so she might as well just go out, be a big woman with a big voice, and knock 'em dead.

It's a hard thing to get past, "I'll do X when I've achieved Y." Especially when Y is a hundred extra pounds huddled lovingly on your frame.

This isn't my life. It's marking time until I'm allowed to die. I'm never going to get my turn, am I?

Isn't that a nasty, ugly place to be in? Where you want to push the Redo button because the game you've gotten so far into is just tied up into nasty knots and there aren't any moves left that will do any good? You can look at the chessboard and say, "This isn't going anywhere, let's start over," but it's not so easy with life.

But its not something they'd necessarily KNOW to learn or quite HOW to learn.

True, but that's also true of almost any form of self advocacy.

And going to the doctor makes me uncomfortable because I feel guilty that I haven't managed to re-lose the weight I regained, and then there's a guilt spiral, and I'm constantly worried that I won't be treated for whatever could be wrong because it's all my fault for liking to chow down on cookies and more deserving patients should be treated before me. So, umm. Actually not that different from the ignorant patient, in reality.

(And, yes, I'm very bad at practicing what I preach, and am dealing with currently unmedicated depression and anxiety. Because the hump of getting a doctor for that is too big and sets off the anxiety. VICIOUS IS THE CIRCLE OF MY BRAIN.)

Wow, I just hung up on someone! I don't normally do that. Someone called our drug safety hotline, so I answered, and it was someone from the Oakland Tribune. I told him that I thought he had the wrong number, and he said, oh no, he did not! Was I the business owner? Uh, no, which is why he had the wrong number. Well, would I know who was in charge of ordering newspapers? No, sorry, I couldn't help him. Oh well, that was okay, because his boss told him never to discriminate against nice guys like me, so did I want to order the newspaper? No, I wasn't interested, sorry. Oh, but it was only this many cents a day! I...did not want a newspaper. Oh, but—

"I'm going to stop wasting both our time," I said and hung up. And then wondered whether it should be "both our times."

Relatedly (and feel free to give me all the shit I deserve for being so heartless [no pun intended]), I have a call in to my doctor b/c the symptoms I've been having that COULD be heart-related, yet could also be explained away by other things, have persisted for over a week and aren't going away, and my dad has had 5 heart attacks, and my jaw and arm hurt and my chestal area feels heavy and I've been extremely exhausted and I'm just worried and simultaneously totally, utterly ashamed.

I started a new AD last week, whose 2 biggest side effects are nausea and fatigue. Well, there's the exhaustion, and nausea (which I haven't been having) is a stomach thing, and the stomach is far too close to the heart when it comes to trying to suss out symptoms. And also I have IBS, which could be the source of other stomach-but-possibly-heart-related symptoms.

And I've been working out a lot, which could make me fatigued AND sore.

But I can't stop worrying. And I'm going to be embarrassed if it's nothing and I'm going to be even more mortified if it IS heart stuff. Because of the whole fat-out-of-shape thingie.

So. Waiting for doctor to call me back and tell me if they want me to come in or go to the ER (I'm sort of assuming that this is what they'll tell me) or just suck it up.

When I told the receptionist that my dad had had 5 heart attacks, her whole tone of voice changed from humoring-the-paranoid-patient to holy-crap-she's-about-to-keel-over. It was amusing.

I feel stupid.

t edit Also, I *desperately* don't want to be like Dick Cheney.

And then wondered whether it should be "both our times."

You're going to have to call him back and give a correction.