medical care

[snugglekitty]

I'm just curious - does anybody else really dislike doctor and dentist appointments, and feel very anxious before and during them?

It's not that I'm really worried they're going to find something awful. It's more that I hate people poking around my body when I'm only in control to the extent that I can choose to show up or not show up. I don't like being touched by strangers.

I wish that medical care was more like consensual BDSM, with negotiation and checking in and aftercare.

Comments

[rekling.livejournal.com]

Yes!!!

My anxiety around medical appointments is *terrible*. It causes me to postpone making appointments for months, and also means that I don't always follow-through (for example, last year after a lot of postponing, I went and got STI tested...10 months later, I still haven't worked up the calmness to go back and get results). And I like my doctor, and my dentist, and for most of my lfie I've had doctors I liked (and the only time I didn't was when I had minimal health insurance and could only see the doctor when I was really sick, and when I'm that sick, I'm often a little better with the anxiety).

I've actually throught about trying to set up some sort of a medical appointment buddy system...people going along to medical appointments to support eachother and help with the calming parts.

Because when I'm really nervous and freaking out, I then disregard the list of questions that I have for my healthcare practitioner because I just want to get out of there, and get convinced that they won't have answers and so on.

While I'm sorry you have medical-appt anxiety, I'm also glad I'm not the only one!!!

-Rek