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Originally Posted by junkDNA
good luck!!!!!
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Thank you, JunkDNA. I really appreciate it. Other than being told my T got promoted to an administrative role and is phasing out seeing patients, it was actually the least unpleasant appointment I've ever had. Very quick, questions only, no exam.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrazenApogee
No one can know what you are really experiencing until you tell them directly. Communicating is really important. I hope your appointment went ok.  |
Thanks again. You make a really good point, and I appreciate your response. Did not manage to say that today, but it turns out I didn't really need to. Relative painless exchange.
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Originally Posted by BudFox
Hope you don't mind if i ask some potentially irritating or insulting questions.
If you are doing much better, have you thought about tapering off the drugs?
Since going to doctors makes you unwell, have you thought about not going to doctors? Or more specifically not going to conventional doctors who wear scrubs or lab coats, and instead seeing other types of practitioners who will investigate physical causes and who will, in my experience, not trigger the type of fear and anxiety that regular doctors seem to cause many people?
BTW, why do you suppose you have adverse reactions to doctors?
Hope you're appointment went ok.
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I always appreciate your input, BF, and thank you for being interested and raising some good questions.
Last time I tried to quit the medication it was three months of utter misery. My depression returned with a vengeance and most of the people in my life gave me some version of "told you so." Granted, I went cold turkey off a heroic dosage of Wellbutrin, so maybe tapering down would yield a different result, but I'm afraid to risk it. I sometimes wonder if the reason wellbutrin (a norepinephrine re-uptake inhibitor) works so well for me, and not taking it works so badly, doesn't have something to do with the decade (ages 15-25) I spent abusing various legal and illegal varieties of speed (a norepinephrine enhancer). Maybe my brain has no idea how to function without all that extra norepinephrine bouncing around in there. I wonder if it ever will.
You know anything about this, out of curiosity?
I'd love to not see doctors! I would definitely look into this (contingent on my insurance paying--an issue all in its own) if I had other or ongoing health concerns, but I actually feel very well right now. (Cleaning all the ******** out of my diet and getting back into gardening did wonders.)
My doctor phobia is multi-causal and pretty well entrenched. A childhood of "playing doctor" plus a terminally ill parent will do that to a person. My therapist has actually been quite helpful in this regard. He takes me on walks through the clinic as exposure therapy (and if I behave myself I get a milkbone when we get back to his office.)
Kidding about that last bit, of course.