My Doctor Doesn’t Care if I’m Suicidal
Trigger warning, I will be talking about depression and suicidal thoughts.
I don’t enjoy writing about this, but this past year, after scaring the crap out of my parents because I expressed my suicidal thoughts, I had to come to terms with something.
I have suicidal thoughts. I’ve made plans. I have depression. I have tried to take medication for it. I have taken myself to the hospital before because I was close to trying something and I was scared. The hospital scared me more, so I pretended I was okay to go home.
I have downplayed the severity of my suicidal thoughts my whole life, even to myself. I took those tests very often at doctor appointments, where they ask you questions specifically for depression. It’s easy to lie. To make sure they know you’re still depressed, but not to a dangerous point.
It’s so easy to lie. Even to myself.
Most medication that have those “this medication can cause severe depression and suicidal thoughts or actions” tend to make my depression worse. No matter how many times I’ve told doctors this, they still perscribe these medicines for me, then are baffled when I call telling them I almost committed suicide after taking the medication.
Once, when I was living with my ex, I took a medication for my OCD and depression. I completely stopped caring. I was far more calm anxiety wise, but I simply stopped caring about being alive. I didn’t care who it would hurt if I was gone, which is one of the things that’s always held me back.
I waited until my boyfriend at the time fell asleep, went downstairs, grabbed a knife, and started cutting and stabbing myself. Before I did any bad damage, I was able to pull myself away, texted my therapist, and paced for hours and hours, until the sun came up, until the grips of the medicine started to fade.
Now I live somewhere where I have an easier way out, and a plan. I went through a bad bout of depression a few months ago, and came to terms that I do have suicidal thoughts on my own, not just with medication.
So when I had a Neurologist appointment about my migraines and explained I had seen the big huge warning about how the medicine can make depression much worse, to the point of severe suicidal thoughts and/or actions, I decided not to take it because at that time, all I needed was an extra push and I would have done it.
She sat impassive, staring at her computer as I spoke to her. She didn’t care, and after expressing how I’d tried before, shrugged and said, “You just have to take the medicine.”
So my neurologist doesn’t care. Maybe she wants me to. One less patient for her.
I told her I won’t take the medicine without someone watching me, and since I live alone, I don’t have anyone to watch me. I expressed I have a plan. I know exactly how I’ll do it, and I’ve come very close. But she just wants me to take them. It doesn’t matter that medical MJ has helped me a great deal more than any other medication has. She wants me to take the suicide pills.
I do have a lot of them.
I’d like to end it here, but again, I promise, I’m not going to do anything. And even though this is something I’ve told people to get them off my back, and I can easily be lying, like I’ve lied time and time again, this is something I’ve worked on alone for a long, long time.
I’m discouraged with doctors who don’t care if their patients die or kill themselves. I don’t know why they even get into the field when they don’t care about people.
