My little tensions with doctors

It is true that I sometimes focus my ideas on doctors, in this document you will see, rest assured, I am not completely crazy either :). There are several things to say about this.

It probably comes in part from my illness that makes me worry too much about it, that I'm too susceptible and that it bothers me not to be taken seriously when I tell a doctor about a strange symptom, that I'm mistaken for a dangerous madman, or that we don't take into account a symptom that is important.

une giraffe dans un parc qui mange dans sa gamelle tenue en hauteur
You should not feel above others as a doctor, I had this feeling thinking that patients were stupid since they were far from having been able to succeed in the first year of medicine, and I thought I saw that in this environment.

In reality, even if on some points, we doctors have better abilities, patients may have good reasoning, or even false sometimes, but we must seek to understand patients in a discussion of equals where we can be wrong from time to time, rather than in an approach of overwhelming superiority.

Also because having been a medical student I saw some colleagues have a fear of schizophrenic patients almost insane, that is, even taking them for dirty dangerous mabouls, although taking schizophrenics for dirty types was not widespread among doctors, on the other hand being afraid of schizophrenics, among my acquaintances, was quite common and that I think is due to the bad explanations they were given on schizophrenia and people with psychiatric problems in general during their study.

But then, when I meet a doctor to whom I learn that I am schizophrenic, if the contact goes badly right after, I am led to ask myself the question: "is he taking me for a dangerous madman who will invent symptoms in his head" because I have already seen this sometimes in the medical community, and it's painful to have this impression that the more we tell him about his symptoms, the less he believes us, this is not the case with all the doctors, and those with whom I have this impression, I'm not sure it's totally true, but sometimes the contact is tense.

This impression of not being believed, it must be admitted, is also a little too present at home because I am too worried because of my illness, most certainly.

In front of the doctor, the idea that when I tell a strange symptom they do not believe me and take me for a crazy, it worries me and annoys me a little because it means that they do not believe me and that they will believe me for nothing, that I will see other doctors, it won't help, it's the door open to all the worries that I could not be well cared for.

If ever this kind of impression is present too often in my home, that it becomes heavy and worrying for me, I will end up increasing the treatment a little.

This evening when I retouch this text, I feel serene and I realize that classically I feel guilty for having the impression of not being believed by the doctor, because that is what creates this tension with the doctor, and that suddenly, I tell myself that I am responsible for this, that it is because I am crazy that the contact goes wrong and the doctor will come out of the consultation with a bad impression on me. Tonight when I complete this text a little, I tell myself that it pisses me off all the time to feel guilty for everything 🙁 That I would like my brain to let go of my sneakers a little on this subject:)

It must be recognized that there is sometimes a little truth in this impression, indeed, according to the feeling of a lot of my friends with their doctor, they sometimes testify to this, that sometimes the doctor seems to think that their symptoms are in their heads. There's also the fact that the doctor friends I still meet today are a bit like that, and when I meet them, it makes me feel like they're all like that, sorry friends, but that's the way it is. We must also recognize that a lot of doctors are smarter than that, and although they are not sure that the strange anecdotes I tell about my health are real, they still take them into account in case it is real, it is the right behavior to have when you are a doctor.

Doctors who are afraid that I will reduce the treatment who tell me: "be careful, it must not decrease it a little" with a panicked look as if they were convinced that I was going to do it, as if when I reduce the treatment I was going to switch to a world without logic where I do not understand that I must take the treatment, it's also a bit of a pain (I really feel like my former GP was like that). As if the so-called anosognosis of schizophrenia was going to make me stop all treatment overnight while the treatment relieves my worries, my deep discomfort and my paranoia that I may be afraid will push me to do stupid things or get too angry in inappropriate situations, no, I will not stop my treatment definitively, it seems to me that this is the case for the vast majority of schizophrenics.

A patient who reduces his treatment, will not, in my opinion, fall into a senseless world where, after that, he will never want to resume his treatment. Most certainly if it goes wrong again, he will resume his treatment.

However I add an important clarification, a person with schizophrenia told me that he was convinced of the veracity of his delirium during his first seizures, I will not tell you what proportion of schizophrenic people are aware or not of his delusions and especially want to no longer have them, I know that there is a continuum in schizophrenia between these two extremes, and I believe that at the beginning of schizophrenia, it is common to adhere to delirium.

As I already said in a previous chapter, psychosis is not something completely abnormal where logic would have disappeared.

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