Looks like I'm on my own, then

by Suw on June 14, 2004

Just got back from the doctors. Nice enough guy, but I could tell immediately that he wasn't a 'believer' in hypoglycemia. I knew exactly how the conversation was going to pan out the moment he said “So, what makes you think you have hypoglycemia, then?”.
Where in the justice system it's 'innocent until proven guilty', in the UK medical system it appears to be 'hypochondriac until proven ill'.
The only other explanation he offered was that the fainting was due to low blood pressure. Well, yes, ok, I can see that would cause fainting and dizziness, but I'm not sure – and he didn't tell me – how it fits in with the other symptoms.
I have been told to take my blood pressure every morning, and measure my blood sugar levels every time I feel faint or dizzy. I get the feeling he told me to do that more to give me something to do than because he thinks it’s going to show anything up.
Bugger it. I know for a fact that there’s a definite link between having not eaten and my fainting/feeling woozy and migraines – observations over the last 15+ year have shown that link up very clearly. If I don’t eat, and particularly if I exercise on an empty stomach, I either get a migraine or I faint/feel as if I’m about to. I eat something, that feeling goes away.
So really, it’s down to me to make this six meals a day thing work, to stay away from difficult foods like Coke and chocolate. I had had a feeling that it would pan out this way.

Anonymous June 14, 2004 at 1:56 pm

yah, that happens. you might want to try to cut down on all fructose sweetened things too, mainly soda's and fake juices, etc. fructose they say can give you a huge sugar spike quicker than other sugars and thus can cause you to crash quicker.

Anonymous June 14, 2004 at 1:59 pm

Sound like the “I have not heard that this anti-depressant is addictive therefore you are not addicted to it” conversation I had with my doctor some three years ago. if you experience extreme disorientation, have difficulty walking, sweat profusely, end up curled in a ball screaming and sobbing and simply cannot function on any level when you stop taking a drug, you are addicted. When it takes over a year to wean yourself off a prescription drug and still have to resort to going cold turkey, you are addicted.
The point is that there are not enough gigabytes of hard disk space on the entire planet to store all that your local GP doesn't know about medecine.

Anonymous June 14, 2004 at 2:57 pm

Actually, I've always been pretty good at not eating sweets or drinking too much in the way of crappy sweetend stuff. My only weaknesses are coke and Green & Black's 70% organic dark chocolate. I eat very little processed foods anyway, so my diet is pretty healthy and always has been.
right now, though, I could kill for a coke… lol

Anonymous June 14, 2004 at 2:59 pm

Bloody doctors. You try and do something positive for yourself, try and take control of your health and you get fuck all support or respect.
I just think doctors feel out of control – particularly when it comes to the more complex stuff. They're being left behind, and they know it, so they resort to pretending it's all in your mind. Tossers.

Anonymous June 15, 2004 at 9:48 am

Well, at least you have the brains to go find out what you need to know of your own accord. I only found out what the Seroxat was doing to me by surfing the internet. A year later Panorama make a documentary about it and now Glaxo are being sued for witholding their own test results that show that not only did Seroxat perform no better then a placebo on many test subjects but that in some cases it caused suicidal behaviour.
Bastards.

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