Vicious Circles

One of the most frustrating characteristics of depression is that once something has affected you or scared you, it becomes more difficult to do said thing and then when you avoid it, you get totally down on yourself and hate yourself and therefore become rubbish at doing anything which then sparks of the frustration again and so on. Something that has always been a struggle for me is making an appointment and actually going to the doctors. Having had a few horrible experiences with doctors in the past, and being genuinely petrified of having to talk about things makes my minimum of a monthly appointment a really unpleasant experience. I always say that this blog is by no means a way for me to rant about things that upset me and I still stand by that however, something this week has reeeeally got to me and it is something I feel pretty strongly about. At uni, apart from the one doctor who made a point of telling me I had no reason to be depressed, I recieved some really wonderful care and support. Since moving home and returning to my old practice, I have had a number of negative experiences that culminated in a really awful day this week. Between working and panicking about going to see a different doctor to get my prescription, I missed my only chance to sort it out and therefore, ran out of my tablets. I am aware that as an adult this is all on me and believe me, I have beaten myself up about it a lot. However, I am still lucky enough to have people that support me and try to help me through things like this; I was told by a couple of people and one doctor that as I am not away for very long, and it was an emergency, my doctors should fax or post my prescription to a pharmacy here so I could get my tablets. When I rang my surgery requesting this, an extremely rude and mean receptionist simply said "no, we won't do that", this resulted in me sobbing and begging her to try and do it as I was starting to have withdrawl symptoms and was really struggling to which she replied "no, we won't do that". Once I had finished crying and panicking and actually started to think about this, it has infuriated me, that woman was not a professional, she had no right to brush me off without offering any alternatives or advice, mental health isn't exactly something you can take lightly and deal with tomorrow, it is an all consuming, life affecting illness. As someone with a history of suicidal tendancies, I would like to think that there is more help that could have been offered to me to avoid a weekend further off medication and on my own. What if something really bad had happened this weekend and it could have been avoided by a bit more support from the professionals who are your first port of call as a vunarable being? Surely she could have done more to help before hanging up on me and leaving me sobbing like a lunatic in town. 

Thankfully, with the support of my nearest and dearest, I have made it this far and am off to see my friends doctor tomorrow and hopefully sort it out. I just can't quite believe how badly this situation was handled. 

Becca.