About a year ago, I wrote in my Photography-blog about having PTSD.
I've been wanting to write more about it, but I thought it would be best to keep it out of the photography blog since this might not be as interesting to the rest of the world :P And even though my art and my health often intertwine, I would like to keep them separate as much as possible. Hence starting a new blog.
To start off this blog I would like to share something I wrote about a campaign to promote critical thinking here in Norway. It's called Ingen Liker å Bli Lurt (no one likes to be tricked), and it has had quite an impact on my life.
Because I must admit that I feel thoroughly tricked/cheated ..and it is thanks to the Ingen Liker å Bli Lurt campaign that I discovered it.
It turns out that my GP (general practitioner) doctor is quite "alternative" when it comes right down to it, which I have not thought much about before recently. I have been ill for many years, but the last few years I have become much worse, and the only thing my GP seemed interested in was to continue to refer me to acupuncture. I went to acupuncture together about 3 years, but I stopped going there a little after this campaign had gotten really up and running. When I saw how little evidence there is that acupuncture actually works, and how much side effects there may actually be, I stopped using acupuncture. And I realized how much of it was simply placebo from going to someone who took the time to listen to what I was struggling with and put pins in where it hurt while I heard reassuring words, and was in a relaxed atmosphere. (Thank goodness that acupuncture is one of the few things you get a tax refund for btw..)
But placebo is not enough! Although it had a sort of effect going to acupuncture, it is not proper treatment! And it never fixed my problems, it just made the symptoms a tiny bit better to live with there and then .. but eventually I became worse .. and worse. (Strange, when you go 3-4 years without actual treatment). And this summer it got so bad that I was practically an invalid .. several months of just laying on the couch / in bed hoping that I wouldn't throw up because of the pain.
I was also very afraid. I've never been THAT sick before. And when I went back to the doctor for the third time in a very short while (having been told every time that "no, we can not find anything new so just go home and rest") with the desperation of mind and a wish that someone could just help me for once, my GP managed to just giggle a little exasperated about my pain and suggest that hypnosis was probably the way to go!
I do not think I've ever been so discouraged .. or felt so incredibly ridiculed.
The more I think about it now the more I realize how odd my GP has behaved over the years, I've just never thought about it until now. For example, she always told me about patients that were right out of bed and just jumped right back into their lives without any hesitation or signs of depression, and that's how it should be! And that it was just to get up and keep working! As if willpower and attitude was all it was ever about, not the body and actually disease. And I was not "allowed" to get the pneumonia vaccine. I was just barely allowed to get the flu vaccine, despite the fact that I'm several high risk groups. She was also strangely concerned about my levels of vitamin D. Fair enough, it's probably got a lot to say when one has 22 of 100 (you don't exactly get out so much when you're sick all the time), so strong supplements are probably a good idea when you have so little (and happen to be allergic to all alternative sources of vitamin D), but she behaved as if it was going to fix everything. As if with enough vitamin D it would fix everything and I would be cured!
And when I was there last, with excruciating pains, so she began babbling about children with cancer and how brave they were and how much they endured .. and how THEY were used as guinea pigs for hypnosis in the U.S. so it had to be good. And when I asked about getting access to any reading material about this she just babbled on about it not being available for non-physicians and blablabla ..
I do not think I've ever felt so guilty for something that is not my fault before ..
And I must admit that this is quite sad to think about.
Luckily I have an amazing mother, who is not as poor as me, and she took me to a private clinic where I got an appointment the same day, with a private doctor. And that was something else entirely! There were lots of tests taken, they made proper investigations, and for the first time in a long time I got a feeling that I was treated like an actual human being and that someone was actually interested in helping me. It was also clearly stated that at the first sign that it was necessary as it was straight to the hospital! Thankfully I didn't have to go to the hospital, but it was good to know that they took me seriously .. and after several weeks of investigations, poking and prodding and countless conversations with doctors, specialists and people who had payed attention when they were doing their medical studies, I finally got some answers (and a whole bunch of scary crap got excluded as possibilities). And I am now on a whole cocktail of new drugs and finally things start to feel like they're going a bit in the right direction. It's slow, but I can now sit upright long enough to be able to write this post for example ..
But I can not resist the urge to wonder.. how my life could have been different if I had had this kind of help three or four years ago.. Instead of going along, with false hope, to acupuncture, and walking around completely without proper treatment.. I would probably never have had to experience the hell that the past year has been, and I would maybe even been on my way towards "functional" rather than sit here and think "oh, I've managed to take a shower! If I don't have to take painkillers today it is going to be quite a day!".
So with that I just want to thank the Ingen Liker å Bli Lurt campaign for having given me the knowledge and the tools to be able to stand against the "alternative doctors nonsense". And now I can finally see a little clearer in the jungle of misleading nonsense-treatment. And with the knowledge I have now, I finally managed (with an awesome mother's help of course) to find proper medical treatment that has made my life infinitely better (and worth living) although the way back is long and tiring.
And if you happen to be Norwegian, or able to read Norwegian, the campaign can be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ingenlikerablilurt
(PS.: I also have asthma and other health issues that interacts with the PTSD, but even without those I think it would still be as debilitating for me as it is now)
