Luft
madinamerica
Turning Patients into Numbers
By Bridget Mildon
April 18, 2015
Bridget Mildon is President and Founder of FND Hope, …. She has submitted commentary to the pertinent work groups connected with DSM and ICD coding changes, and a response in the British Medical Journal advocating for those with medically unexplained symptoms.
bitte, vielleicht kann jemand - alibiorangerl ? - einen guten Übersetzungs-Link anfügen. Ich weiß nicht, wie das geht. Danke
Turning Patients into Numbers
By Bridget Mildon
April 18, 2015
Bridget Mildon is President and Founder of FND Hope, …. She has submitted commentary to the pertinent work groups connected with DSM and ICD coding changes, and a response in the British Medical Journal advocating for those with medically unexplained symptoms.
Imagine your life turned upside down with chronic symptoms like fatigue, stroke-like symptoms, brain fog, sharp chest pain, coughing up blood … and doctors can’t seem to figure out what is wrong. Then imagine your feelings when one of the doctors decides that this spectrum of symptoms is psychosomatic or “all in your head.”
I felt persecuted from the moment I was given a psychosomatic label. I found myself hostage to a diagnosis that I hadn’t even known existed: “conversion disorder.” Even though the diagnosis was hidden deep within my medical file under piles of negative test results, it seemed to reveal itself at each new doctors appointment or ER visit. This diagnostic code was now part of me as if it were a scarlet letter on my forehead.
I was trapped not only by my pain and debilitating symptoms, but also by physicians who didn’t know how to provide effective care. In my most delicate state of mind and body, I was authoritatively told: I must trust and accept a mental health diagnosis in order to be cured.
I began scrutinizing and searching for skeletons in my closet, looking for a reason, an answer, anything, which I hoped would lead to my cure. I found myself lost in a world of medical uncertainty. I was an average carpooling mom going about my life until a trigger was pulled and entrapment of my body began. And make no mistake: it is an entrapment, which doctors since the 19th Century have attributed to suppressed emotional trauma, despite a lack of medical evidence.
After trying to uncover hidden or suppressed trauma to no avail and after years of illness, why wouldn’t I question this veneer of authority? Yet, patients like me are routinely told it is they themselves who cannot be trusted. Like me, they are said to be caught up in an illusion of fabricated symptoms crafted from unconscious trauma and their own pretense. They have built their illness out of myths, on a foundation of emotional escape or make believe.
I had sought out a doctor with hopes of getting my life back. But I became ever more confused as he confiscated my self-trust — the last fiber of my being that I had tightly held, guarded, and protected because it was all I had left. It was my soul that was afflicted the worst by psychiatric stigma, banished to solitary confinement, a horrible atrocity from which I had no escape.
There are many ways a doctor can deliver a psychosomatic diagnosis. Some physicians delicately pry self-assurance from the patient’s weak finger tips, consoling with a gentle tone and offering a warm smile. Others cavalierly rip it from the patient’s grasp with purpose and supremacy, when the patient least expects it. Some use an element of surprise, sneaking psychosomatic labels into medical records but failing to discuss them with their patient, so as not to be asked to justify their action.
I was damaged after a neurologist pick-pocketed down through my deepest layers of self and rifled through all my emotions, confiscating the last ounce of self-respect I had left. This theft left my mind fearfully exposed in complete nakedness, silently crying out for emotional security and yearning for my doctor to provide me with a definitive care plan. I was then left alone with a “care plan” that amounted to little beyond the reassurance that my cure lay with psychosomatic acceptance.
In order to “accept” a somatoform illness diagnosis, I would be required to abandon my inner self. I must sever all internal ties and deny the opinion of my most insightful observer - the self. After spending my entire life picking through my faults and analyzing my every move, I must now let go of everything I knew to be true about me. I must declare that my mind and what I feel is a lie. Instead, I must trust the authority of someone who knows very little about me, in order to be “cured.”
The professional who proclaims this strange notion of truth now gets to hold my health for ransom. After a psychosomatic diagnosis enters medical records, all further medical investigation and care are compromised.
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bitte, vielleicht kann jemand - alibiorangerl ? - einen guten Übersetzungs-Link anfügen. Ich weiß nicht, wie das geht. Danke