How hard can it be for a doctor to realize that a patient’s symptoms are different than the rest, and that maybe her illness is different than the rest?
I’ve become increasingly frustrated with my endocrinologist’s response to my fluctuating blood sugar. Where many patients inject the same amount of long-acting insulin day after day, I have to adjust the dose constantly to keep my glucose in the single digits. I’ve had to more than double the dose over the last couple months, then halve it again. The doctor’s response? “Maybe you should try injecting in a different part of your body.”
How’s that going to help? My phone appointments with the endo usually leave me frustrated, with the persistent feeling I haven’t been heard. My situation may be different than most, but no practitioner seems the least bit curious about why my body does what it does. All I get is a shrug.
I was a hospital last week after what I suspect was a stress reaction to recent bad news. The spasms across my chest gave me pause, and I popped by the local hospital to make sure it wasn’t some weird version of a female heart attack. Initial tests proved it wasn’t, and I didn’t hang around for a second set of blood tests. The “bad news” was also health related — I’ve been diagnosed with glaucoma, a progressive illness where increasing pressure in the eyes can lead to blindness. I’ve been told to return to the eye specialist in 15 months to have needles poked in my eyes. That’s supposed to relieve pressure. A brief Google search indicates that a good portion (17%) of people don’t benefit from treatment, and blindness ensues. Thus the stress reaction.
The experience prompted a good bit of fear to arise, and that’s a powerful emotion. Some people cover it up with bluster, angry outbursts or denial. It’s the only feeling that makes me want to cry. But I was raised to believe tears are weakness, so I work hard to suppress them. All this leaves me in emotional catatonia.
Doctors have no interest in why my blood sugar reacts like it does. And now I have a new chronic illness to manage, a second one that has something in common with the first: potential blindness.
I wish I could come up with an uplifting ending for this post but I got nothing.
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