i had a rather poor session with austin-t the last time i saw him, but one good thing that came out of it was he encouraged me to keep trying to find a GP who would take my health concerns seriously.

i've been having problems for a long time now but any GP i've seen has done a routine blood test & dismissed me when they come back fine. doctors are ok at listening until they find out you've been seeing a psychiatrist and are on a rather last-resort antidepressant. so heart palpitations are interpreted as a panic attack, stomach cramps & nausea/vomiting = IBS, bruising/bleeding/blackouts are the result of everyone's suspicion that i have an eating disorder . bottom line: it's all in your head, just stress less and you'll be ok. pdoc is guilty of doing this also, but i can forgive him for it a bit more because he has seen me in periods of great distress.

anyway, austin-t told me to start being more assertive and just to keep looking for a GP until someone starts listening to me. so i went to the uni health service and found a doctor who is LOVELY and she sent me off for all these tests, but she was really good about explaining what everything involved also & drew me diagrams and stuff so that i could understand what she was looking for and why those specific tests were necessary. and i saw her again yesterday & she spent 40mins with me going through some of the results, which show i have a certain disorder but she thinks there's a 2nd one mixed in also which she needs to confirm. so i'm off for more tests next week.

but she was really lovely and treated me like an "interesting case" to puzzle over rather than a nuisance hypochondriac. the disorder i've got is easy enough to treat & i'll just need to monitor it in the future, but it goes a huge way to explaining some of my mood swings which even the antidepressants couldn't stabilise. so i'm super, super excited about that . she's not starting me on treatment though until we can figure the 2nd thing out, because she's worried treatment for one might mask the other (and the other is potentially serious).

but i'm just like YAY finally someone who is listening & taking me seriously, and also YAY for finding validation for what i've been complaining about for years now. it's nice to be seen as a person separate from my depressive disorder.