Their Behavior Is Not Hole-Hearted
Hawaii, Hospital, USA | Healthy | December 7, 2017
(I’m a young woman who was born with an innocent heart murmur that gets checked every few years; arrhythmia and mitral valve prolapse. I have recently suffered some strong heart palpitations that lasted an hour and left me exhausted and terrified that something’s wrong. After spending the night at the hospital, and the X-ray, EKG, and echo tests showing nothing new, I’m sent to a cardiologist for a stress test. After being stuck with enough wires that I look like a cyborg and 20 hellish “Now a little bit faster” minutes on the treadmill, I float light-headedly over to the exam table and lie down while they check the scans.)
Nurse
#1 : “Oh, wow. [Nurse
#2 ], come look at this.”
Nurse
#2 : “Wow. I’ve never seen that outside of textbooks.”
Nurse
#1 : “Me, too! Hey, look at this part–”
(While the nurses are ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ at the picture on the screen, I’m staring at them with rising concern. My worry spikes when the doctor herself comes into the room, sees what they’re looking at, and proceeds to talk about it to them like she’s teaching a university lesson. Finally, I raise one of my trembling cyborg arms.)
Me: *weakly* “Um… excuse me?”
Doctor: *looking at me with surprise* “Yes?”
Me: “Is… is something wrong?”
Doctor: “Oh, no. You just have a hole in your heart.”
Me: “…I have a WHAT?”
Doctor: “But that’s not what’s causing your palpitations.”
Me: “It’s… not?”
Doctor: “Nope. It’s small and near the top of your heart; it shouldn’t be affecting you at all. It just happens sometimes when your heart muscle sinks to the bottom.”
Me: “Oh… okay. So there’s a hole in my heart, but… it’s not a problem. So it’s okay.
Doctor: “Yep. You can come back to keep an eye on it, though, just to make sure it doesn’t get any bigger.”
Me: “?!”
(That did not fill me with confidence, surprisingly. They never found a physical source for the palpitations, so eventually decided they were panic attacks, and I got to add ‘hole in the heart’ to my heart murmur repertoire.)
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Doesn’t Have 20/20 Psychiatry
Psychiatrist, USA | Healthy | December 7, 2017
(I’ve suffered from mental health issues since I was young, but I wasn’t able to do anything about it because my family has issues believing that mental illness is real. A few years ago, while I was in college, things got really bad so I finally tried to tell my parents about it. It took a few months of frustration and arguing, but I eventually managed to convince them it was actually an issue. They found a psychiatrist I could see and I was excited at first. I thought I’d be able to get some help! I’d hardly walked in the door before I realized there would be a problem.)
Psychiatrist: *shaking my hand* “So, how old are you?”
Me: “I’m turning 20 next month.”
Psychiatrist: *laughs* “20? You’re far too young to have any problems! Why are you even here?”
Me: “Young or not, I actually do have a lot of symptoms I’m worried about.”
(I hand her a list I’d made of symptoms I’d been struggling with, including some rather severe ones. She sets it aside after barely glancing at it.)
Psychiatrist: “Why don’t you just tell me about yourself? Do you have a boyfriend?”
Me: “Um… no, I don’t?”
Psychiatrist: “Why don’t we talk about that. It might be causing some of your ‘issues.’”
(It was only downhill from there. She dismissed all my symptoms, including my suicidal ideation and dissociation, as nothing more than school stress or lacking a boyfriend. I was told I just needed to get out of the house more often and make a few friends, something my parents insisted was a cure-all as well. Ever since that day, nothing I’ve said has been able to convince them otherwise. The only reason I’ve improved at all — and mostly stopped being suicidal — is because of my college’s psychologist. I’d only found out there was a doctor on campus afterwards, and after meeting him, he was shocked I’d managed to make it as far as I had without any help at all. I’m living back at home now that I’ve graduated, only until I can find work, but he helped me immensely while I was still enrolled. I don’t think I would have survived school without his help.)