The "D" word

I've been hearing a lot lately about clinical depression, and how people who suffer from it are afraid to tell their doctor about it because of the stigmata that is still attached to people who suffer from it.

What I'm hearing has a lot of merit, and I'll out myself right here and say that I have a history of clinical depression--two hospitalizations for it, in fact, along with another one for a suicide attempt. And years of psychotherapy and intense self-reflection and stubborn determination to get over it have helped to create the shining example of humanity sitting here typing these words today.

Really, I know depression. Very well. I've been there. Maybe I don't experience it to the depths I felt before but it's still there and always will be. And I'll never forget the suffering I went through. For most of my life.

This to establish my bona fides, for the point I want to make.

There is another reason people who suffer from depression are reluctant to tell their doctor. It's because of the reaction they get from their doctor the second the "D" word is mentioned.

I made the mistake a few years ago of noting that I had a history of clinical depression on a medical history form when I went to see a hand specialist about the excruciating pain I was feeling in my left hand. It was getting worse daily--so much so, in fact, that the lightest touch on the fingers of that hand would result in my doubling up in pain for a good ten minutes, until the searing agony faded to just an extremely painful throbbing.

The doc fiddled and farted around with me for months--physical therapy, a couple of steroid injections, what have you. Nothing worked. It kept getting worse. Finally I begged the doc to do something--at that point amputation would have been acceptable. He decided to send me for a bone scan.

During the scan I could see my left hand lighting up in all the areas where I was having pain--which was pretty much the whole hand, by that point. Right hand, which was also on the scanner, was barely visible.

I go back to my doc and when he comes into the room he says, "Wow. I guess you really are in pain!" He then looked AT THE VERY FIRST X-RAY HE'D TAKEN OF MY HAND and saw the problem right away. We'd pissed away five or six months because he thought I was either a:) trying to get on workman's comp, b:) trying to score some opiates, or c:) both of the above. There was no d:) the pain actually has a physical cause, in the doc's mind, until I begged him to send me for a test to prove it, and he referred me for it just to shut me up. (For the record--problem was the radius--one of the bones in my forearm-was putting pressure on another bone, cutting off the blood flow. Surgery to shorten the radius relieved the problem. And no, I didn't slap the shit out of him for his condescending tone and the pointless pain he had me go through, though the only reason I didn't is because my slapping hand is my left hand.)

Why did he feel that way, you ask? Because I was stupid enough to indicate that I had a history of the "D" word. When a doc sees that checked on the medical history then the visit--no matter what you're there for--becomes about that. They don't even seem to consider that maybe you really are feeling unusually fatigued, or have a migraine, or an ear ache, or something like that. You become someone who is just desperate for attention, or who is self-medicating with prescription drugs, or who is just too sorry to get out bed and go to work.

I won't go into the arguments I've had with those guys who work in urgent care centers when I go because I have an ear ache, which happens to me every year or so. I'll just say that getting one of those guys to actually look in my ear is a struggle. Because they see that old "D" word indicated on my chart, and we all know that depressed people can't suffer from anything else besides the "D" word. You can't, say, have the "D" word and also experience cardiac arrest. Chest pains are just a "D" word sufferer's way of getting attention or medication.

Okay, I feel better now. That's about all I was hoping for.