Monday 14 September 2009

This is Panic 12 – Hospitals and Doctors and Needles, oh my!

The above title came to me as more of a joke than anything else. The writing process for this blog is always a bit of a mish mash of ideas mixed in with trying to provide some sort of commentary on regular events. Having written last time out about having a dental phobia, initially I was a bit wary of going for another health topic so soon but once this title came to me, I knew it was worth trying to have a chat about all this.

Unless you have been living in a black hole (insert Bracknell/Guildford/name of your local hovel here) you won’t have missed the insane array of news on the virus called H1N1, known to us in the Joe Bloggs Brigade as Swine Flu. There’s more and more talk at the moment about the upcoming vaccine that is being produced, how it’s going to be administered, who is first in the cue and will it even work. My initial worry wasn’t any of that; it was more “uh oh, needles”.

I’ve been nervy of needles for ages, as long as I can remember. Going through school every so often you needed those all too crucial immunisations against those variety of diseases like polio and the ever dreaded BCG injection for tuberculosis and I would always go a bit funny looking at needles. I always gone for the tried and tested classic of not looking at it but of course you still know what’s coming and thus I still get really angsty just waiting for the needle to go in. I suppose the issue for me is, and this sounds so daft but it’s true, I don’t like pain. Some people don’t mind it but I hate pain and injections have always hurt me and unnerved me so my natural reaction when faced with one is to panic. Now I know full well that if I go to certain places I may need them and I will suck it up and do it but I will be warning the nurse/healthcare assistant that I am likely to get very agitated.

It got me into thinking about doctors and hospital appointments in general because sometimes they can be really scary places to go. It creates a bit of a crazy cycle where you’re ill and need to be seen but you’re scared of going to the appointment so you don’t get seen so you get more ill meaning the need to be seen increases.

Aside from what opponents of healthcare reform in the USA say, the NHS is there to help us when we are ill and that doesn’t just mean plastering your leg if you break it but with stuff like anxiety, panic, OCD and anything else you care to name.
Doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners are incredibly well trained professionals who want to do the best they can to help you with whatever’s wrong. We have a right to be scared but we need to relay that fear to whoever we’re dealing with. Psychic powers don’t come with a medical diploma so if you’re worried about something, tell your GP. If you’re worried about seeing your GP, tell someone and they may go with you.

I was a lot more worried about seeing the doctor when I was little than now. Little me thought that you only went to the doctor if something was really seriously wrong with you. This isn’t the case now of course and the only thing that bothers me at the moment is just having to wait. My GP’s good but he barely ever runs to time bless his cotton socks. Now we’re not always so lucky with our GPs I know but you are within your rights at your surgery to ask to see another doctor or to register elsewhere as long as you’re in the catchment area of that surgery. Don’t shop around though just because you don’t like what you hear! Doctors have a duty to tell you their opinion of the best treatment for you, in my opinion that’s what a good doctor will always do. I’ve disagreed with my doctor before but we reached a compromise on a few things.

There is of course that one step up from the GPs surgery that makes people feel even worse, the hospital.

It’s easy to associate hospitals with bad things. The media seems to leap on any story surrounding a hospital doing something wrong or a management failure of some description and it does little to calm the fears of people let alone people suffering from something like an anxiety condition!

Having worked in a hospital (and not out of choice, due to building works) for about 4 months, I feel somewhat desensitised to it all, apart from the room where they take blood for blood tests which never ceases to creep me out. Hospitals are just a place where people come to get better to me now but I know that I didn’t always feel that way and loads of us don’t.

You go to hospitals for the big things that need sorting. You go to Halfords if you need to buy a bulb for the headlight but you wouldn’t go to them for a new front axel would you? If you’re seeing a consultant then they will have spent years and years training for this. 5 years to be a doctor, then 2-3 years doing general bits then however many years it is to specialise in something, these people will know their stuff. They can’t make the procedures easier to bare physically but they can be honest and let you know the details you need to know and setting your mind at ease as to what might be coming is half the battle.

Being scared is alright, it’s perfectly natural and I’m not saying you should feel no fear because that’s just impossible. If fear however is stopping you from getting seen and more importantly getting better then something needs to be done about it. Whether it be dentist or doctor, we can be sure that the people we’re seeing are the best for the job. If you help them, they will help you.

The title of this blog is obviously a play off of the line in the ever popular film, Wizard of Oz and to an extent some of our fears about things over the last two posts are akin to when Dorothy finally meets The Wizard. What lies behind the curtain is unexpected and scary until we look at what it is we’re faced with which is ultimately less than we thought it was. The truth, sometimes, may be hard to take but it allows us to move on. For me, my anxiety is that curtain. It obscures the things that I know to be true and distorts reality and makes me afraid of things.

We have a bit of the cowardly lion in us all but for those of you who don’t remember the story, he had the courage all along. We all do. It’s that courage that will help us get well as much as anything else.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

This is Panic 11 - The Dentist

Now this one is not going to be fun to talk about because this is something that almost gives me attacks just thinking about it but it bares talking about.

According to Dentalphobia.co.uk somewhere in the region of 7-13% of the Western world suffers from some form of a fear of the dentist which means if you apply those numbers to here, somewhere in the region of 4.5 - 7.9 million people in the UK are afraid of the dentist and I am one of those people.

As ever with TIP, we revert back to a story from my past. My fear of the dentist stems from when I was 4 years old. I was with my mum getting a check up as you do when you're little. Being a small boy I didn't want to do as I was told. After a while the dentist decided she was fed up of me not playing along so she grabbed me by the nose and forced my jaw open so she could look inside. I have been a wreck ever since.

I wouldn't pull out any teeth growing up so the dentist needed to do it for me, normally by doping me sideways up to the eyeballs and doing a load in one go. I had too many teeth in my jaw so I had a couple of goes on that one. At one point I had a tooth get infected and collapse so I needed a root canal but no way in blue hell were they doing that while I was awake. It was decided they would knock me out, do the root canal AND pull out 7 remaining baby teeth. It was originally meant to be done over 2 appointments but someone "luckily" cancelled and they did it in one job lot. I had a panic as they put that plastic thing in your hand so they can attach syringes. The only upside was I got to have corned beef hash when I woke up.

I have only ever been to the dentist alone once when I was in Germany. Once...I haven't been for a while now because I can't bring myself to physically sit through it if I don't have to. If I need to be seen then yes I will go but I need to take someone with me. I have a really low gag reflex when anything is in my mouth like a dentist's tool and that's if they can even get me to lie back in the chair. I sit straight backed as long as I can, I really almost cannot sit back in one of those things without nearly hyperventilating.

The thing with me and the dentist is that I am a LOT better than I was. I know if it was just a check up where they can 100% say they won't do anything and just pull out the little mirror thing then yes, I can manage, just. I know it's another part of my anxiety that I need to battle but it's been pushed behind the other parts of the anxiety that I have to deal with normally.

As with anything, planning helps combat it.

If you don't want to go alone, don't! I won't go alone now to the dentist and it's a case of finding someone to go with you. Not everyone can be available all the time but don't be afraid to cancel an appointment if you can't find people to go with. I know dentist appointments are hard to come by but you decide how you want to be seen and treated.

The other thing to do is be honest off the bat. Dentists are people too and they are trained professionals so if you tell them all the facts, they can do the best job possible. Tell the receptionist when you book an appointment for the first time and mention it to the dentist as well. It doesn't make the treatment itself easier to take but the dentist will make more of an effort to help you out. At least that's the hope ha ha

Dental hygiene can't be avoided and is something we all need to do unless we want to all be on Fixadent adverts so that means the dentist. It's annoying and scary for a lot of us but you can chew-se (ouch that one really hurt) how you live your life and what you do with your teeth.

I realise that I am not the greatest of role models for this one but in keeping with the creed of honesty on here, I like to think that if I can make people realise how not to do it, that'll be helpful too.

I am also slowly going to build up to going again once work has settled a bit. Watch this space folks, more on this story to gum. (Wow where do I get these from?)

Tuesday 1 September 2009

Update 01/09/2009

Hey all, apologies for the radio silence. I have been a very busy boy recently away from the blog with trips to various corners of the country to see friends/relations/cats so that's why we've been lacking in posts recently but there is news on the horizon:

More of the wonder of the interwebs:
As a fair few of you will be aware, This is Panic now has a page on Facebook so you can become a "fan" of the blog on there. Remember to invite your friends along as the more people, the better a discussion we can all have about everything. Searching This is Panic on Facebook should give you the page. A big thanks to those of you who have already joined the party.

Everyone loves posts:
The next part of the series is in the works at the moment. As ever if there's anything that you want to see written about. Also don't forget that this is your space too! If you want to contribute anything to the blog itself then let me know either through the site itself or Facebook.

New series:
A new series of posts is in the works as well. It'll be called "Panic Buys" where I and you lovely lot will review some of the products on hand marketed to help us cope with anxiety conditions. I don't mean medications but things like books, herbal remedies, self help guides, anything we can get our grubby little hands on. Part 1 of that is in the pipeline to come out soon but as ever input people! Your reviews are welcome.

This is Panic in print:
I mentioned a while back that the blog was going to be featured in a national publication and as it's now September and the magazine is coming out soon, I think we can let the cat out of the bag.

A while back I sent an email to the national charity Anxiety UK (formally The National Phobics Society) asking them if they had a blog roll and if so could we be put on it. The response was essentially "sorry, no blog roll but we like the blog and would you mind writing something for it?"
Naturally I jumped at the chance.
Anxious Times is the quarterly magazine of Anxiety UK which has articles covering the gambit of conditions from GAD to OCD to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It's got regular articles from professionals and is a good publication for anyone who either suffers or works in the field of mental health. For you environmentally minded lot, you can even subscribe and get the magazine sent to you as a pdf!
The article I've written is called "Make it Write" and will feature in the September issue of the magazine, out this week. The article will come out in Anxious Times first and I will publish it at a later stage on here but it'd be great if some of you would go get the magazine and show some love.

That's all for now folks, stay happy and if you can't stay happy at least stay safe.

Anthony