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Extremely efficient ways to piss me off
Apr. 10th, 2013 05:59 pm1. Tell me that my life has "shrunk down to nothing" as a result of chronic pain.
2. Tell me how I feel about my chronic pain.
3. Be so busy telling me how I feel about my chronic pain that you don't notice I'm having a pain spike and keep talking at me through it. Bonus points if it's bad enough that I've shut my eyes and my face and hands have tensed up. Extra bonus points if you pull this off several times.
4. Having directed me to sit in a really inconvenient place in the room, such that I have to twist myself uncomfortably in order to maintain socially-acceptable levels of eye contact, looking in your direction, etc -- tell me that I don't move enough and am insufficiently aware of my body.
5. Tell me that I "shouldn't be in that wheelchair", and our most important goal is to "get [me] out of it".
6. Tell me that I'm taking an extremely "negative and glass-half-empty view" when I repeat to you verbatim discussions about my conditions I have had with the relevant consultant-surgeons. Fuck you, mate, if my gynae has told me that at some stage in the next 5-10 years I'll probably need a bowel resection, you don't get to tell me that's me ~catastrophising~.
7. Patronisingly explain to me in painstaking detail that my background pain is different from the pain I get when I have an ovarian cyst burst. I know this.
8. Tell me that you're not at all interested in my symptoms diary, because all you care about is my activity levels, without determining whether I record activity levels in my symptoms diary.
9. Tell me in great and tedious detail that the effects of overdoing it one day won't show up til the next day, without... establishing whether this is something I know and record.
10. And as a bonus, because this one was actually just funny: get an "oh shit" look when I cheerfully tell you, after all of the above, that I've been engaging in self-led mindfulness-based therapy for several years.
... and so on. And so forth.
THAT, LADIES & GENTS & EVERYBODY ELSE, WAS MY FIRST PAIN CLINIC APPOINTMENT. :D
2. Tell me how I feel about my chronic pain.
3. Be so busy telling me how I feel about my chronic pain that you don't notice I'm having a pain spike and keep talking at me through it. Bonus points if it's bad enough that I've shut my eyes and my face and hands have tensed up. Extra bonus points if you pull this off several times.
4. Having directed me to sit in a really inconvenient place in the room, such that I have to twist myself uncomfortably in order to maintain socially-acceptable levels of eye contact, looking in your direction, etc -- tell me that I don't move enough and am insufficiently aware of my body.
5. Tell me that I "shouldn't be in that wheelchair", and our most important goal is to "get [me] out of it".
6. Tell me that I'm taking an extremely "negative and glass-half-empty view" when I repeat to you verbatim discussions about my conditions I have had with the relevant consultant-surgeons. Fuck you, mate, if my gynae has told me that at some stage in the next 5-10 years I'll probably need a bowel resection, you don't get to tell me that's me ~catastrophising~.
7. Patronisingly explain to me in painstaking detail that my background pain is different from the pain I get when I have an ovarian cyst burst. I know this.
8. Tell me that you're not at all interested in my symptoms diary, because all you care about is my activity levels, without determining whether I record activity levels in my symptoms diary.
9. Tell me in great and tedious detail that the effects of overdoing it one day won't show up til the next day, without... establishing whether this is something I know and record.
10. And as a bonus, because this one was actually just funny: get an "oh shit" look when I cheerfully tell you, after all of the above, that I've been engaging in self-led mindfulness-based therapy for several years.
... and so on. And so forth.
THAT, LADIES & GENTS & EVERYBODY ELSE, WAS MY FIRST PAIN CLINIC APPOINTMENT. :D