feeling very annoyed (rant alert!!!)

so today i saw the cons who specialises in just the vocal cords. she said that she couldnt see any obvious problem, and that she therefore concluded it was psychological. i am however going to start vocal rehabilitation, and go back to see her at the therapists discretion.

this is problematic with me for two reasons. first, the various cons are agreed that theyre sure i have Wegener's vasculitis, and its now just a case of waiting for confirmation from a biopsy or bloodtest before starting chemo (this could take another 7 years yet!) and Wegeners is known to cause problems in the throat etc, so could the docs be missing something? i am rather sceptical, since i went for years accumulating serious and rare health problems (kidneys, heart, stroke, intestines, lungs, nose, skin...) before anybody thought it could all be related. so i now somewhat doubt hasty conclusions!

also, i know i already suffer from a quite severe mental illness. but for most of my family, this is an embarassement and a humiliation to them (and its not theyre illness!) i seem to have inherited some of these feelings of guilt, embarassement and humiliation when it is question of psychological problems.

sorry, just needed to rant. ooops!!

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Hi Rose,

Grrr! Seems you have enough to put up with already. I think I would be annoyed too in your position; maybe it's not even that you are embarrassed about having something deemed psychological but that you feel, as you say, that it's a bit hasty and you don't want them to miss something physical? Also perhaps that the attitude of doctors who aren't specialists in mental health can be rather dismissive when they think it's 'psychological'. I think for some of them it can be a way of saying 'you're a hypochondriac and not really ill' even though anxiety and other things which can mimic physical symptoms can be a huge problem which needs treating just as much.

I know I felt very annoyed and dismissed when I was told it was hyperventilation and suggested it was down to stress. Partly because I felt they were missing something, which it turns out they were, and partly because I felt however much they said it wasn't that, there was a sense of 'you aren't really ill even though you think you are, so don't keep coming with symptoms'.

Anyway sorry for my ramble! Hope this helps or at least venting did.