Made an appointment to see a counsellor

[Sarah Tee]

About two weeks ago I made a very upsetting discovery that my doctor had not been looking after another health problem of mine properly, leading to irreparable damage. It’s not life threatening, but it is unpleasant and finding out about it at home alone late at night was a horrible shock.

I had been thinking of seeing a counsellor to talk about how to ease back into “normal” life, as two months ago I finally found a treatment that works on my OI.

Now I will be seeing her about this setback instead. GP clinic has been beyond useless about it, letting me down for a second time. Not one person has asked me if I am okay, do I need counselling, do I need to call a crisis line, etc.

Ironically I have now had two solid weeks of presyncope (VVS type), chest pain, extreme brain fog, GI upset, nausea, tremors, dyspnea, sleep disruption, etc. from emotional stress. So the symptoms I had before are all back, plus more. HR and BP were way high too.

(NB Despite all this, I am okay. My dad has been a staunch support. We are almost getting used to horrible things happening. We have a drill. Today I made pancakes even though it took me two hours to cook them all. Vitals normal now.)

Anyway, I will be talking to the counsellor a lot about illness, and the feelings of grief and loss it can bring. Plus how (most) doctors suck but I can’t break up with the medical profession 🙂

Will report back as to whether it is useful.

[Pistol]

@Sarah Tee I am so sorry! I want to let you know that a counselor can be extremely helpful in cases of emotional problems from chronic illness. When I became disabled ( after fighting for years to keep working despite passing out and having seizures at work all the time ) I sank into a deep depression. I felt useless and was full of self-pity. With the support of my wonderful PCP, family and friends as well as a counselor I regained my joy for life and my self worth. Becoming chronically disabled leads to all the stages of grief - and we all deal with grief differently. We have videos about this on our you tube channel, you may want to visit this. 

I also posting a link for information about NCS, since you mention having more episodes. I have NCS in addition to POTS and know how horrible it is to experience these episodes. 

https://www.dinet.org/info/ncs/

Be careful, and lie down as soon as your feel foggy - no matter where you are! 

https://www.dinet.org/info/ncs/

 

 

[Sarah Tee]

@Pistol, thanks for all the links. I will look at them soon.

I saw the counsellor yesterday. I think I talked the poor woman’s ear off! I must give her a printout next time with my illness timeline on it. I will go again in two weeks. (When she did get a word in she said helpful things.)

She hadn’t heard of POTS (I usually open with “You know POTS? Well, I have something similar”) or the auto-immune skin disease that has been the cause of my recent upset, so she must have felt like she was in a medical lecture, not a counselling session!