I went to the neurologist this morning and after all of his tests, he said he couldn’t find anything neurological that could be wrong with me. He thought it might be behavioral, but that wouldn’t explain the morning heaving. He sent all of my records back to the gastro doctor and we’ll see what they say when they get back to us. So I’m kind of feeling a bit deflated.
Meanwhile, my mother is driving me insane to the point that I had a minor breakdown in the car while she was yelling at me. I had to repeat over and over that she needed to be quiet and she kept saying things like, “you have so many rules!” Finally, I said, '“these are the code words. If you hear me say the exact sentence, ‘you are making me anxious’ she had to be quiet and count to 30 in her head.” She agreed. Angrily. She doesn’t find that reasonable.
She’s also quite hard of hearing despite having hearing aids, so I’m having my wife sit in during these evaluations via Facetime so I can tell my mother “the doctor didn’t say that” and have someone else agree. It still hasn’t worked 100% of the time, but it has worked.
Also, every single time there is a possible diagnosis or she reads something that she thinks sounds like my symptoms (and she’s always wrong about that), she decides that’s definitely what I have and she definitely knows what should be done about it.
This time it’s worse, because she was a psychotherapist and she actually knows a little about behavioral therapy. But I feel really bad for her clients, because they had a totally crazy lady for a therapist. And she kept some of them on for like a decade after she officially retired. They came to her house. So they actually liked whatever she did for them. All I can think is that she has a completely different personality as a therapist.
Oh, she also thinks that the dry heaving every morning is inconsequential and I should just accept that I’m going to have to live with it the rest of my life. What. The. Fuck?
I guess it’s been so long since I’ve spent more than a few hours with her that I forgot how truly nuts she is. And a bit on the narcissistic side.
Edit: Ugh. This fucking guy again.
I am sorry you’re having to experience this. It is a horrifying behavior that is very, very common among people with different social groups, and especially professions that ‘serve’ or help people. Doctors, EMTs, nurses, therapists, even cops or firefighters… I’ve seen it in all of them. They are exceptionally kind and caring until they clock out, and then are vehemently demanding of perfection, calculating in their coldness and disdain, and nearly psychopathic about other things that they find irritating in those they help while on the job. They completely suppress or sidestep their feelings about the issues while on the job, and let it all out on the people who are close, like family.
I know you’re having advice chucked at you from all directions, and in the last big post you said you had tired of that, so ignore everything after this if so and I’ll put it in spoilers.
spoiler
I knew of an individual who had issues (not similar to yours, but hauntingly parallel, in some ways) that were not responsive to medical interventions. The only thing we could do for him was seek psychological therapy for the depression that was plaguing him due to his health. Some of the physical symptoms were alleviated, and some became responsive to medications. While not completely healthy, the easing of the psychological illness altered the psychosomatic symptoms that blended with the more typical physical causes, enough that they weren’t masked and making the overall effects much, much worse.
I would really, really avoid your mother, who seems to be a negative spot in your world, and see if professional psychiatric/psychological intervention could help at all. I’m not saying you’re crazy, or it’s all in your head. Psychosomatic illnesses are real, and a horrible thing to suffer. They are definitely not something you can “just stop thinking that” away. I’m also not saying that’s what you have, but if no other doctor has suggested therapy while they continue their work in diagnosing you, maybe consider it.
Thanks. I avoid her overall aside from brief visits so my daughter can see her grandmother because she’s so nuts. This morning she told me that I’d probably have to do the lidocaine compound mouth numbing thing the rest of my life. I told her I literally wouldn’t want to live if I had to spend the rest of my life eating food I can’t taste with a numb mouth after tasting something so terrible I can’t even keep it in my mouth for the full minute in the instructions. I told her just thinking about that gives me self-harm thoughts. And then she said, “I don’t know what you’ll do if you get cancer.”
I said, “try everything and if that didn’t work, I would die.”
She said, “it’s highly unpleasant, so how would you handle it?”
I said, “do you think the past seven months have been pleasant for me?” She thinks I could psychologically handle eating without any taste for the rest of my life if I can even eat more than a few mouthfuls with the lidocaine compound. She says I’d get used to it. Like anyone could get used to that.
I wish I had someone else to go with me, but I don’t and I need someone.
Jesus is she ever crazy. I am so sorry. I’ve been following along with you OP, and I keep hoping you’ll get an answer.