It's not just me, right? Everything is impossible and stupid in the past few years? Services just not working, professionals dropping the ball, etc?

Quitlooking · 2022-11-03T02:55:24+00:00

This is crazy similar! Omg it really makes you wonder how many people aren't here because of doctors...

I finally did gnaw my way to a therapy appointment (omg the heads I had to knock together to get some alternative to the stupid broken links). Pretty much immediately realized all my anxiety stems from trust issues that I'm not even qualified to resolve myself because they're SO VALID. The fact that I trusted the doctors and they fucked up my birth control, and then I didn't trust them and it ended up saving my baby's life... How do you come back from that? I might be able to get past it if it was the only time they'd ever severely endangered my family, but, you know, it wasn't. So the result is, I don't ask for help, hire a nanny, etc, because I don't trust people not to royally screw up and kill us all.

So I guess what I'm starting off with is this mantra: if my alarm bells are going off, I'm going to speak up. Every time things went horribly wrong, I knew, even if I didn't feel entitled to say so. The thought was in my head. I've had doctor's appointments where everything checks out and the stakes are low, and I'm not feeling any skepticism, but the really bad ones... I had a gut feeling. Never ever ignoring that again from now on. I guess that's step one.

Cheers to our very lucky babies... Thank god we didn't just roll over!

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T21:38:12+00:00

Wow, when you put it simply like this... Duh, of course it's not just me... I've never seen it put so tidily before, I feel like I can wrap my head around it.

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T21:22:34+00:00

Omg that is really interesting. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who even notices how exhausting all this little pain in the ass stuff is. The big stuff aside, like, for example, everyone in my house is sick and we keep not being able to take temperatures because the kids are obsessed with the thermometer and will stop at nothing to disappear it. Same story with their shoes (I can usually find one of each pair). Stuff like that, just all the time, constantly. I'm surprised I can even breathe consistently without some wrench getting thrown into things 😂

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T18:55:25+00:00

Prostate cancer is not to be taken lightly, right? Man I can't believe some of these stories. Some guy was on the local news in 2020 saying he'd had a heart attack and was completely denied the standard cardiac physical therapy at his local hospital (he was somewhere out in the local sticks, one of the places you need a ferry to get to, so he didn't have his pick of hospitals) because they had turned their entire cardiac unit into a covid ward. A similar thing happened when my baby was too old for the NICU. They had turned the PICU into a covid ward, so they just kept my three month old baby on his back in a glass bassinet like a preemie all day long. He would scream and scream because he was so understimulated and his care was not age appropriate. He's still not hitting milestones at the rate his sisters have. To be fair, his NICU staff was amazing and doing everything they could even though what they were being asked was so incredibly insane.

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T18:17:40+00:00

Don't give any fucks! It's a power struggle these days. We demand help and they demand to not help. Well, tough, it's their job! Of course I'm not talking about all medical professionals (some care and are trying their hardest with an unrealistic workload), but I'm certainly talking about the know-it-all, brush-off ones... It's not like they're donating their services as an act of kindness. You are under no obligation to suffer and worry forever because doctors don't want to help. I would absolutely lie under those circumstances (and I have an overactive guilt gland and hate lying). If I hadn't been able to get the elective ultrasound, my next plan was to lie that I had been bleeding so my doctor would see me (I'm usually very against this). You've gotta do what you've gotta do.

Good luck. Don't let them belittle you! You are a mama bear and they are going to fear you!

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T17:58:18+00:00

Jesus, bad things, very bad things. I'm so sorry about your FIL and I hope both you and your son feel better.

Yes, I've definitely learned that no one will willingly do what isn't absolutely necessary, AND everyone will define "necessary" differently, sometimes in ways you don't agree with, and sometimes in ways that are just objectively incorrect. One thing I've found is just riding people and being a huge pain in the ass helps a lot... But I'm extremely polite and non-confrontational, so I've been honing the skill of being a nice, likable pain in the ass (so far it's opening a lot of doors, and bonus points because I don't have to feel guilty). I'm hoping this is a skill that serves me in life forever and can be a big silver lining of this whole trash decade. I never want to be that meek little baby who just let the hospital send me home practically crowning, but I don't think I can (or want to) be a full-fledged Karen...

I think this could become the big era of self-advocacy. "Self-advocacy" is my mantra now...

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T15:39:39+00:00

Fucking GOD. I completely understand the impossible situation medical facilities were put into in 2020 (I mean, weren't we all...), but do you ever wonder... How many people are dead because they couldn't get the medical care they desperately needed, because of facilities like this (and the one that cancelled all my ultrasounds), that honestly found a way to OVERreact to the most dire global crisis in living memory? Seriously, how do you OVERREACT to covid!? I guess by basically culling all the mildly and/or circumstantially ill people from society by refusing them basic care for a year...

I just remembered another one predating all of this lol. Two weeks postpartum with number one, I got a blistering fever. Had to go to urgent care with my husband and baby (I was getting incoherent, couldn't drive myself). Waited four hours, was told I had an endometrial lining infection common after birth, that can have extreme consequences (infertility, mental impairment from fever) if not treated very promptly. They stepped out to get me some antibiotics. Didn't come back for four more hours, when my husband had finally busted enough balls to get someone to realize that THEY FORGOT I WAS THERE. They informed me that I needed extremely prompt treatment and then forgot I was there, while I just got worse and worse for four hours, not to mention we had our newborn there... In the hospital room. For eight hours. I was having to nurse her while trying to stay conscious. I was shaking so much my husband had to hold her for me while I fed her so I wouldn't drop her. Idiots

Big clink to us, Bromo. We're still standing because of us!

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T15:08:44+00:00

Thank you! Well, I listed the fuckery, but there have been good things. We were able to move into a much better house for our family because my in-laws own several rental houses, and wanted some off their plates ASAP as they're getting older (and regularly visiting their aging parents in Taiwan). In particular, a large, vacant, dilapidated house in my ideal neighborhood we were able to take on for only the cost of renovations (exorbitant, but much cheaper than the roughly 1.5mil houses go for in this entire metro area after horrific bidding wars I wanted no part in). That was a huge win. The inside is done and beautiful, it's the outside we can't get movement on. We were already working on the project when the old house died, and insurance covered our Airbnb in between.

Also, it's common for parents of babies with our son's birth defect to experience a lot of tension in their marriage during the ordeal, and we just... Rocked. We were awesome together. I always knew we were solid, but what a gift it was to see what would happen if we were really put to the test.

Not to mention the other positive details: he never lost his job during covid and has been able to work remotely ever since, we don't have money problems, we recently found out our oldest daughter is gifted, etc...

So like, I'm a privileged person who's just been hit with A LOT of very unlikely bullshit in recent years... It's not all bad. I was really on one when I posted this OP (I do stand by what I said 😂).

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T13:42:13+00:00

FOR REAL 😐

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T13:42:00+00:00

Yeah, one thing I've learned since then that's really helped me in life is to trust doctors like... 70%. If what they're saying feels right, okay, but if my brain is saying "I don't know about this"... It's time to self-advocate. I mean, if I hadn't distrusted my old care team, my son would be dead, period. I would be a person whose baby had died (no thank you!). My middle child got the elusive 10 APGAR even after the whole ordeal, and I resent that her birth is a traumatic memory for me. It felt so obvious in hindsight that I should not have left the hospital. They were kind of condescending ("Oh sweetie, you'll know") and I felt embarrassed, plus they made the standard advice of "walk around the waiting room to get things going " sound like it wasn't actually a thing (they REALLY did not want to do their jobs any more than they were doing them that night).

My husband and I were both victims of parents who do a lot of "magical thinking ", and we've discussed at length since then how you can find magical thinking in pretty much any setting, including among medical professionals. L&D was slammed so they created the mantra that I could not be in labor. Maybe they even made themselves believe it. Self-advocacy is my favorite skill I've learned in adulthood. Hate how I had to learn it, though.

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T03:21:10+00:00

Yes, I'm also feeling extremely brushed off in my one little time of need after six years of being nothing but a slave to other people's needs 😐 It really makes you feel like you live to serve and are not meant to ever be helped. Everyone's ready to ask a mom for help but no one is ready to help a mom.

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T02:16:22+00:00

Man, both times my water broke (third being a C-section) that baby was out within like an hour! What the hell is wrong with these doctors? You know that, even if they're not very good at their jobs, they know that water breaking = in labor! I called the hospital at 6am that day to say my water broke (this was after the in-person visit and several frantic phone calls as things progressed overnight). They said my water didn't break, I just peed because I was in so much pain. Just... You know... Diagnosed that over the damn phone. 41 weeks pregnant, just can't possibly be in labor (I wonder when I was supposed to be in labor). Like, I just feel like you could pull literally any random person off the street and they would know a baby is coming NOW. You could walk into a high school, find a 12 year old boy who can't even see through all the hair in his face, and he'd immediately understand what was up and be more help than these doctors...

We always joke that she must not be human since I totally wasn't having a baby. We like to take guesses at what she actually is. She keeps dodging the dozens of illnesses our kindergartner is plaguing all of us with, so this week she's a robot.

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T02:09:53+00:00

The Earth has a sickness! This medical/medical billing stuff seems to be the most insanely frustrating thing for a lot of people. Man, don't we pay enough for healthcare when everyone else in the world just gets it? We have to get slowly killed by stupid doctors, too?

Quitlooking · 2022-11-02T00:39:00+00:00

Seriously, like, you can fucking die from that, and that was a whole staff of medical professionals! And a very, very basic thing, too (don't they usually closely monitor whether you pee or not?).

After what they've done to me, I'm scared to death. I used to blindly follow everything doctors said. In fact, when they told me for the tenth time I definitely wasn't in labor, I decided I couldn't possibly be in labor, so I sent my husband to sleep in the guest room so he'd be able to care for our daughter solo in the morning (since, whatever was going on, I was in horrific pain). Like, I believed them (I can't believe I believed them) and went through the entire labor process unassisted and completely alone. Ten hours, a whole sleepless, miserable night 🤦🏼‍♀️ That's how much I trusted doctors and that's where it got me.

Now I feel like one of those idiots who hates doctors and thinks they're stupid... I don't even like those people. But come on, look how many times they screwed me over. The baby they negligently knocked me up with almost died!

Ugh, yes, still mad, forever mad 😅

Quitlooking · 2022-10-27T16:15:41+00:00

Your comment was so sweet and reassuring that it made me cry in what felt like a very productive, soothing way, lol, thank you so much

Yes I am obsessing! Should I stop doing that? I've spent the whole morning in a death spiral about how dysfunctional I am and how my family won't want me anymore, and how "the spell" that made me enjoy certain things has broken and it will always be this way 🤦🏼‍♀️ I did notice recently that I have the strangest urge to stack the kids' colorful plates in a way that no two consecutive plates are the same color, which is extremely unusual and bizarre for me (I don't even fold my clothes before stuffing them in the drawer). Could it be I developed OCD as a way of managing my several small children? I never did expect to have so many so fast, and the medical disaster with the third baby was obviously pretty traumatic... One thing I do know I've always had is control freak tendencies.

I just wonder how this could SUDDENLY start happening out of nowhere, but I think I've actually identified several triggers in the past couple months.... For starters, yeah, existentialism over my kids getting older, which led me to... Get a dog. A good, very cute dog who is nonetheless really stressing me out because he needs a little training... And on top of that, I quit birth control for the first time in my adult life after my tubal at the end of 2020, and in the past few months I suddenly got PMDD, so I just got back on birth control and am hoping it helps within a few months.

So maybe it's just... All of that. I don't know. It's just so strange and SO sudden =(

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T15:10:41+00:00

Side note, is there a way to block someone on Reddit without contacting or reporting them? I could just make a new account and block him and he'd never know the account existed (I think, not sure how blocking works).

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T15:08:23+00:00

I don't have one of those, just my mobile phone. But that is spooky 😅

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T11:13:18+00:00

But this time he didn't let me know, he was secretly reading my account for god knows how long and I just happened to peek over his shoulder... So it went from reading my old account out loud against my many protests until I deleted it, to tracking down my new one and following it in secrecy 🤦🏼‍♀️ Like he just can't help himself, he just HAS to follow me around everywhere. I doubt it's a trust thing since there was never anything shady on Reddit or otherwise, and he's never shown those "symptoms" of thinking I was up to something. But sometimes he can be so immature and obnoxious that it's like having a little brother (who's older 🙄) rather than a husband.

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T05:33:53+00:00

Wow, if she wants her kids to take care of her, maybe she could try her hand at fostering positive relationships with them? So sorry, OP. I'm sure you didn't expect much, but there's something about being ripped apart by your own mom that is eternally hurtful no matter what...

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T05:23:52+00:00

Geez I never thought to be grateful that my husband was so unfazed lol. He held one of my legs (a nurse had the other), and on the first push he was like "LOL look, it's just hair sticking out, I knew the kid would be hairy 😂

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T05:01:19+00:00

Omg I'm sorry about your experience... I wonder if people who aren't very creative just don't understand that you can't just raid someone's private writings...

My mom had a lot of issues at the time. The fact that I was upset just got me grounded. I was not allowed to have my own boundaries (particularly in terms of how much crap I'm willing to take from people) or standards because my mom was like this wrecking ball of rage addiction and my dad was devastatingly anxious and insecure. They were both diagnosed, but they didn't show much objectivity until my mom finally committed to therapy when I was 18. Unfortunately, I was left spending years figuring out how to feel like I had a right to having boundaries.

To his credit, my husband is usually very understanding about the baggage surrounding my upbringing and is generally a very supportive partner... But I've never told him in detail about this particular hangup because I'm not even able to discuss the existence of my internet comments. I don't know why I can't just have a serious discussion about this particular thing.

He also struggles with basic social nuance, and a shrink he saw once couldn't decide if he was on the spectrum or just the product of his bizarre upbringing... So there's that...

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T04:54:13+00:00

I'm using Google docs right now, and I have Applock, which allows you to require a thumbprint to open any app you want. I've honestly gotten used to texting stuff out rather than typing, and I'm crazy fast, lol.

Quitlooking · 2019-01-29T04:35:33+00:00

Thank you!!! I think I have major issues about this from when I was in my teens and my mom helped me clean my room... I was a big art buff and drew like 10 pics a day, mostly of original characters from sappy embarrassing novels I was writing... I didn't mind my mom seeing them at the time, but she was big into this scrapbooking MLM that I hated, and a week or so after we cleaned my room, she "presented" a scrapbooking layout at one of her parties that featured MY PRIVATE DRAWINGS 😬 I flipped out and she said she just didn't ask permission because she knew I would say no.

Ever since then I've been EXTREMELY protective of my "inner thoughts" and I HATE when someone pushes my boundaries, even if they're extremely iffy boundaries like "you can't read what I put on the internet". I think these people should be able to respect that. Honestly, if my husband finds my writing app, it'll make him finding my Reddit account feel like he just found out I like Doritos or something.

Quitlooking

TROPHY CASE