i hate doctors
I hate doctors. Yeah, they help people who are sick and some even go on to save some peoples’ lives, which is great, but I hate doctors for myself. I don’t really know how it started (maybe it was when I was still in utero while my fetus brain was developing), but even my earliest memories at doctors’ offices and stories told by my mother prove that it is true. I’ve always hated doctors.
When I was around four years old, there was an instance where two nurses and my mother had to hold me down as a doctor attempted to administer a shot to me to no avail. It took three grown human beings to restrain four-year-old me as I vehemently fought against what looked like the biggest needle I had ever seen. Looking back, it was probably a regular sized needle for a regular vaccine, but to a kid they all look so scary.
Four-year-old me played it cool for just a moment, relaxing long enough for the nurses to think that I finally believed their so-called soothing reassurances that the shot would be quick and painless. It was when the doctor with the needle came back around for the second (or maybe it was the third) attempt that I acted. I swiftly brought both of my chubby little four-year-old legs together and with all my might, kicked the doctor right in the stomach.
I read years later that a jiu-jitsu kick to the abdomen had actually sent someone to the hospital for severe blunt trauma. Fortunately for the doctor, my lack of form and strength at four years old only resulted in him being winded and maybe some bruising later on.
About a year or so after the kicking incident, my grandparents from my father’s side had finally immigrated to America from their home country of Albania. Like any time family is visiting from overseas, my grandparents brought bags full of gifts that our family and family’s friends offered to us.
The suitcase my grandparents brought us was full of these gifts: homemade toys carved of wood, blankets made of sheeps’ wool, various juices and candies that can only be found in Albania, and even Albanian lek, currency that’s essentially worthless here (even if it were to be converted to the dollar).
Image via Shutterstock
Now, if you didn’t know, Albanians are very superstitious people. We read and interpret the pictures in our coffee cups, we wear a red piece of thread to protect us from those who have ill wishes for us, the list goes on.
My equally superstitious mom says it was when my grandparents came with their gifts that I suddenly started having seizures. I had never had a seizure before but all of a sudden, a perfectly healthy five-year-old was falling face-first to the floor only to wake up a minute or so later with piss-soaked pants. Evil eye, my mom says. We later got matching ones on the back of our necks.
Anyway, of course, my mother freaked out and immediately took me to the fucking doctor—the absolute last place five year old (and honestly, even 27 year old) me would ever want to be. But doctors are good, they help people get better, right? After rigorous testing—sleep studies, EEG’s, EKG’s, MRI’s, MRA’s—all of my results came back perfectly normal.
They still prescribed an anticonvulsant anyway, Tegretol, and it turned me away from medication forever—I mean, I barely even take Tylenol for cramps. What was supposed to keep me from having seizures (which admittedly, it did) resulted in me not eating or sleeping. I had night terrors for the entirety of the six months I was on it, waking everyone in my house up in the middle of the night to the most chilling sound: high-pitched screams from a child. My teacher and classmates in school would ask me if everything was alright at home because it was so strange to see a once vibrant five-year-old suddenly in a zombie-like state with dark purple under eyes.
After I was off the meds, (which, fun fact: is apparently also used to treat bipolar disorder) I hadn’t had a seizure for over a decade. It wasn’t until I donated blood for the first (and last) time my sophomore year of high school that I had another one. And then another one the year after while I was waiting on line for a Khalid concert. And then three more my freshman year of college, and at least one every year I was in school.
I resisted going back to the doctor for a while, out of fear of them and of any medication they would undoubtedly prescribe, but eventually I had to go back. At the time, I was commuting an hour and a half to school and had no real idea if or when I’d have another episode. I even resorted to carrying a small back of extra clothes with me everywhere I went, just in case it would happen again.
The neurologist ran the tests again, only to tell me they still didn’t find anything abnormal in the results. When I cried about my situation, being an otherwise healthy 20-year-old with no underlying conditions, she mocked me: “I have patients that have five to six seizures a day, and you’re crying because you have a couple a year?”
She prescribed a new medication that I was very adamant about not wanting to take, but finally submitted to, only to again take myself off of it a few months after I noticed a severe increase in my anxiety and depression.
It was only then that a new neurologist—because I couldn’t be bothered to go back to that insensitive woman—said something that perpetuated my hatred for doctors: “You know, I don’t even think you’re suffering from seizures.”
Vasovagal syncopes. It’s just a fancy word for fainting spells, where my body randomly decides that we’re going to turn off and stop working for a bit.
“There’s nothing you can really do about it,” he said, explaining that I simply have to “monitor myself” as if I hadn’t been overanalyzing every strange sensation my body has felt for the past fifteen years of my life. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of misdiagnoses and wrong medication prescriptions, constant testing and retesting, and living in a constant state of anxiety over the next episode.
Over time it became easier to come to terms with, although I do catch myself overthinking any “weird feelings” in my body, and I still keep a change of clothes in my car. I guess the story has a happy ending since this year will mark seven years of being seizure, fainting, vasovagal syncope, whatever-they-want-to-call-it free.
But I still find it difficult to keep up with my medical appointments. Why? Because I hate doctors.