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Showing posts from 2019

Let's Talk About "All In Your Head"

If I had to vote for a phrase, just 4 short words, that cause more problems in our society than most others it would be these: All in your head. To hear these words as a person with medical symptoms brings about such a cascade of thoughts. Anything from " My doctor doesn't believe me " to " Are my symptoms really happening? " with corresponding emotions of anxiety, confusion, anger, even rage. I spend a lot of time undoing the damage these 4 words can do in the patients I see. They've been told, either directly or indirectly, their disease is psychologically based. And that means it's really not that bad, that they should just get over it and move on. It's a running thread in most of the patients with any "functional" diagnosis I've seen, such as irritable bowel syndrome, but also appears in those with "organic" conditions - those diseases perceived as real like inflammatory bowel disease. These 4 words are pa

Medical PTSD

“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”  - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five  A few years ago, my gastroenterologist wanted me to have something called an esophageal manometry to better understand how my newly diagnosed eosinophilic esophagitis may have been affecting how the muscles in my esophagus were functioning.  I work with the guys who wrote the book on esophageal disease, and these guys do a lot of manometries. I know all about esophageal manometry. My mind immediately went to images of a small bowel enteroclysis I'd had at least a decade prior. My body grew tense and it was almost as if I was back in that cold room with the cold metal table and the cold radiologist, who just didn't believe me when I told her how bad my gag reflex was before she placed a tube down my throat to inject my small intestines with barium. It took what seemed like forever