Medical medical medical

That (of course) is what Grey's Anatomy writers put in as a placeholder when they know they need to go look up some medical stuff to put into an ongoing dramatic situation. Isn't that cool? I love that.

"We have to go now!"
"We can't, not with the medical medical medical!"
"Then medical medical medical and let's get the hell out of here!"

Yay!

Today I went to a new doctor and had to give the whole saga of the absurdly dysfunctional situation with the old doctor. And it made me think about story. I don't honestly know how doctors think, but I get the impression it's part puzzle solving, part confusion/red herring/BS sifting, and part flow chart in which there are major junctions with big arrows leading to:

Are you dying of this right now? YES/NO
Should I refer this to a specialist (and therefore make it someone else's problem? YES/NO

And so on.

But coming out of a dysfunctional doctor relationship, my story was full of, "And then they said this, and then next time said the opposite! And when I asked, they said they never said that! And then they thought I was crazy because I remembered them saying that, and then they put me on medication for that! And then I had hallucinations with that medication and they were SURE I was crazy! So then I stopped taking it and that's always totally a sign that you really are crazy! So I started taking it again! And then they refused to renew it so I had to stop taking it!"

Part of that is probably pretty much a direct quote. But I tried to sound very calm and rational. In fact at one point I said, "I probably sound kind of anxious and upset about this," and the doctor said, "No, actually, you sound very relaxed and funny and smiley."

Smiley! I was trying.

There IS a simple medical story behind all this. Something is happening. But what that story is has been buried in all these layers of doctors forgetting what they said, refusing to do what they said, sending me to the wrong specialist, not listening to the right specialist, doing tests that were inconclusive, and then not doing anything at all.

You can lay out the events/symptoms in a clear timeline. Or I could if I had any memory at this point. But you can also watch it unfold in the records that the medical system kept. And I requested copies of everything all along, not because I'm paranoid (not *just* because I'm paranoid) but because I sometimes need a doctor relative to translate for me.

Today the medical center's computer went down during my appointment. The doctor couldn't get at any of my records. But I was able to access all the stuff that was sent to me by opening up my account on my iphone. Yay!

It's worrying, trying to tell your story to someone new. Especially when the old one was so (as I keep saying) dysfunctional. She's going to read the note from the NP who, when I questioned why the old doctor consistently refused to follow up on the specialist's recommendations and send me to a particular specialist, wrote me down as a personality disorder. And then walked out of the room while I was talking, though that part isn't on the record, I'm sure.

But she already saw the part where the specialist recommended that particular specialist. And that it never happened. And that he recommended the pain center, because of my terrible back, and she saw that THAT never happened either. There's a consistent pattern of refusal of care, which is why I left.

When people don't believe you, or don't take your story seriously, it can be very easy to expect or fear that the next person won't believe you or take your story seriously either. I've been a basket case for days, going over and over this in my head, how to explain the dysfunctional office without sounding like a loon, never realizing that the written record would back me up so thoroughly.

The story is written in all of those office visits and in all of the things that never happened, too.

It's like a mystery, right? There's something that really happened, on one level, the medical history that is pure fact and incontrovertible. But that is only accessible through flawed resources. My memory, which is an absolute sieve. The dysfunctional office's notes. The history of prescriptions. The records of all the other specialists and MRI readers and everyone. And layers of interpretation. These pieces of data interpreted in this way, or that way. Someone deciding I'm lying, or mistaken, can mean that all sorts of data just disappears. I have absolute faith in facts and data, but there are an awful lot of filters the data has to get through to get to the person who can do something about it.

I'm so glad I got away from the gaslighting doctor's office and got to this one. There are almost never new openings in this town. Far too few doctors for too many patients. Dentists are even worse. But this doctor is new to her practice. I saw the listing open up when I was at work on New Year's Day and called in right then, surprising the person working there, and surprising myself because I had expected to leave a message. I called at least four more times in the next week to make sure I got an appointment and was added to the practice. It's HARD to get away from a dysfunctional doctor's office around here. But I finally did it.

Gaslighting is horrible and I don't think it's always intentional, but it's extremely destructive to the person it's done to. Sady wrote about gaslighting here. Very worth a read. In fact, for any writer, I'd say it's mandatory, even if you just want to use it for Evil Characters.

I find this sort of manipulative behavior to be more the norm than the exception, which says a lot about the people I've met over the years. And it's the subject of at least two works in progress. Power lends itself to abuse and neglect. People who have experienced abuse and neglect are much more easily manipulated by gaslighting and other methods. The more it happens, the more it happens, until you find yourself unable to trust anyone and isolated because it's far better than the alternative. If fact I've run into this exact situation in the workplace also. People who want to push buttons will check to see what works and then lean on those particular buttons, so if you have these, they will be delighted and make plentiful use of them. Sady's article is called Bad Romance but this interaction is far more common in hierarchical situations, and even in friendships, in my experience.

One of my scariest childhood memories about this is falling down and hurting myself, blood everywhere, and having my mom say scornfully, "That doesn't hurt." That's all of this, in a nutshell. Denying someone else's feelings is denying that story but it also creates a hideously disorienting conflict between the person's experience and how others will allow it to exist. If others outside you deny your experience, you're going to be in deep trouble until you find a way of making sure that you assert it again.

The common thread is that there is a story, a set of facts, but there are always people (multiples, in my life recently) who will twist those around and deny the facts and assign blame and push and manipulate until they've achieved their goal. I have no idea what the dysfunctional office hoped to achieve, honestly. I think they were just really bad at what they did. Others act out of insecurity and misery, like bullies, wanting to hurt other people to prove they can, or to feel powerful, or to drag people down, or acting out of some ancient damage in their lives. It doesn't even matter. And like Sady says, you can't make toxic people treat you better. It's impossible. All you can do is deny them any power over you. (Which makes them enraged, but what can you do?)

So I'm very glad this story took a turn for the better. I'm hoping that in the week before I see the new doctor again, nothing changes for the worse, though I'm already seeing nightmare scenarios where she gets convinced of whatever the dysfunctional place believed--accepts their story. Surely not, though, right?

All I want is a solution, an answer to the question, a resolution to the mystery. I want it named and fixed. I don't care about the past, just about the future. I'm really hoping this is going to round off the story and get to THE END in some kind of satisfying way.

I read Speak a while back and of course it deals with all of this, people denying and contradicting someone's experience, that person unable to assert her own version of events, and how destructive it is to suppress your experiences in the face of contradiction. It really is insanely destructive to be gaslighted like that. "That doesn't hurt." Well, you can shut up, because it DOES hurt.

Medical medical medical!