I've been relatively lucky and haven't experienced much discrimination and what little stigma I've encountered has tended to be funny in my opinion, or at least I prefer to laugh at it. For example about 10 years ago now I was having a problem - my blood wasn't clotting normally and I was covered in bruises. So I went to my GP and said I was having abnormal bruising and that my blood wasn't clotting properly. She did a bunch of tests and when she called me back to her office she said, sounding a little surprised. "You're right your blood isn't clotting properly - it's not just in your head." So she refered me to a haemotologist at the local cancer hospital. It was all very much a warm session, they work in teams there, so I was introduced to me Dr., my nurse, and asked if it was ok for a med student to sit in on the exam. I said it was. They then proceeded to ask me about my symptoms. I said that i'd noticed that my blood wasn't clotting normally. The nurse then asked "Oh are you a nurse?" I said no. The Dr.. asked, so how do you know what's normal. I smiled and said, I've self injured for years by cutting so I have a pretty good sense of how long it takes for my blood to clot and lately it's been taking a lot longer. It was totally worth it for the look on the med student's face. He looked like he wanted to run out of the room, and he could barely look at me throughout the exam. The nurse and the Dr. by contrast were perfectly professional.

I do know that my current psychiatrist is somewhat surprised that I'm capable of handling a high stress job, but he's adjusting.

My addictions Dr. on the other hand keeps telling me that I should look for something really easy and low stress. What she doesn't get is that being bored is the worst possible thing for me, and that it's when I'm not being challenged intellectually that I most want to drink.

So I'll be definitely looking for a hight paying, high stress job when I start job hunting in Sept.

--splitimage