If The Cold Was Treated Like Mental Illness

This is mainly me ranting about the fact about not finding a right medication, and I kinda came up with this idea. If this doesn’t belong here, I’m sorry.

To people who don’t understand the frustration about medications to treat mental illness.

Imagine having a cold, your nose is stuffed, coughing, ears are changing pressures, you feel tired and awful, but this is with you for weeks. So you see a doctor. And then you get told to take this medication that has a chance to help you, but can cause you to have all these unwanted side effects like change in eating and sleeping, weight changes, increasing your cold symptoms, and very risky side effects that could cause death (insert something here). You are also told that it would take weeks before working. So you agree, though are not too happy about how long it will take to kick in, but nevertheless you agree, because you’ve had this cold for so long that you just want to feel some relief. And then you keep taking it and things aren’t getting better. You aren’t functioning at your normal levels still because your stuck with this severe cold. You can’t work as effectively as your head is clouded, you don’t go to events because you don’t want to infect everyone else with your cold, and you slowly withdrawal from society. So then you see your doctor again.

And they said that maybe this medication doesn’t work for you, though they don’t know why, and you should switch medications, and it will again take weeks to work. The doctor also recommends you do other things to help treat the cold like eating certain foods and exercising moderately. You listen to your doctor, and do your best to do that. You have little energy in the first place to do exercising and you don’t have the energy to cook. Plus the medication you take is quite expensive so you can’t buy much in terms of healthier foods because those are also a lot more expensive than carbs. But you try to do the best you can, and maybe your nose isn’t stuffed as often or you aren’t coughing 24/7, but you still can’t do what you normally do. And you wait more weeks again, and again, there isn’t much relief of symptoms.

You go back to your doctor, and they tell you that you have to be patient, since finding a treatment for you will take some time, and again, you leave with a new prescription. You are getting quite frustrated about all of this. You feel awful and are missing out in life and doing things you love because you feel awful and you can’t breathe because your nose is so stuffed and you are coughing all the time. A few days later, you have a severe side effect of having a seizure (or something else), and you need to seek more care. You are then told that you could change drugs, or you could stay on the same thing, as this was only caused because of coming off your last medication. And you are quite confused what to do, as you aren’t the doctor and aren’t really sure what is the best. You really don’t have to have a seizure again, but you don’t know if this medication actually works for you (this part is kinda related to me specifically, sorry). So you stick to it.

This cycle repeats over and over, and you start to question yourself if things will ever get fully better. Maybe you just have to deal with these symptoms for the rest of your life. No one knows the answer. People do their best to tell you that colds go away and that things will get better, but you start to lose faith in it all. Not many people are hanging around you, as they have their own life to attend to. You don’t do much, but you try as much as you can, but you know that that isn’t your best. People around you try to understand, but they fully can’t realize the impact and eventually, you end up quitting your job, or stopping school, because you aren’t having the performance you need. You stop playing hockey or soccer. And you are just so frustrated with everything that you want to yell or cry or both or something else to release this pain of not doing anything...

I would never want someone else to deal with what I do, but I just want people to understand that you just want to be better. No one wants to be stuck with the cold forever.

Yeah, but it seems my cold never goes away. If you are referring to the cold as mental illness, then it never goes away with or without medicine, but the severity just fluctuates with the mental illness being helped/aided-side effect problems=overall benefit. We all know this, but I concur being on meds forever is like having a cold that never goes away, but it is also like a cold not treating it, so either way the cold is there just changes forms like all stuff in science :P

I’m not saying this post is 100% accurate in any way. I’m just frustrated that I haven’t found something that works for me.

Thats a good analogy, I can relate to this a lot. It sucks.

Love the analogy! Trying to find a med, for me, was 26 yrs of heartache.
I’ll die from the common cold.

I enjoyed your post