Oh! Found it!
This is amateur, yours
@Emurelda is wonderful. I think you should create a collection of shorts like that
Not necessarily all on the same subject
It's hard to write short. I'm pants at it. I always want to go 1000000 times bigger so anything of mines that is short is a snippet of a much bigger thing. I'm just incapable of doing small I guess
Anyway I said I'd show you if I found it so here it is. My lecturer hated it. Really hated it. But Zoe loved it so I didn't really care what the lecturer thought, it was for Zoe anyway.
Lost Beneath a Label
I'm sitting in the small tired old waiting room; perched on a threadbare, dusty old chair — the padding long since dissolved under the weight of hundreds of backsides over its lifespan. It’s one of six equally tired perches, arranged at a sharp right angle facing the old-fashioned fish tank in the corner.
To my right sits the flu. She is hacking away into her saturated tissue, sweat beading on her forehead as she flicks through an old copy of ‘Closer’ from the small table — also in the corner. The snotty nose by her side makes me gag every time he snorts the snot back into his throat so he can swallow it.
To my left sits a tummy bug. He’s fanning himself furiously with a fistful of NHS leaflets on contraception and I.B.S. from the rack on the wall. He has a sickly green tinge to his skin, and every time he rifts I expect the sick to follow. Thankfully, it doesn't.
The snotty nose has left his wilting mother's side and is now hammering on the glass of the fish tank in the corner with his chubby, snot-covered finger. Snorting and gulping every few minutes. The poor fish seem quite use to this abuse and continue to swim about oblivious.
My head hurts from the screaming child in the play area in the adjacent waiting room. The sound is burrowing into my head, making my ears ring. I turn my attention back to my feet. I
hate it here.
Suddenly the rattle of the receptionist’s window heralds her call.
‘Zoe - Dr Arbroath’
My blood runs cold. Panic stricken like a rabbit caught in headlights.
And of course now I’m wondering if I really need to see her. Maybe I can chicken out and make a run for it? Go home and hide under my duvet perhaps? Really though, I know that I can't. I know that I need to be seen, and attempt once again —
however hopelessly — to get some answers. I already know what I will be told.
Apparently my agony is all in my head.
Apparently I am just an obese, hypochondriac, panic-attack driven, depressive nuisance. Forever lost under several labels I don’t deserve.
My hands shake as I lift myself from the seat. And with a racing heart and despair already building I make my way to the door at the end of the corridor. It seems to squeeze tighter around me as I approach her door. The last in a line of bland, identical doors standing to attention side by side. My hand is hesitant, but I will it into action and knock on the wooden frame before entering.
There she sits behind her desk. Stern look on her face — sharp, like cut glass. I can see instantly that she has her imaginary script sitting ready on her desk, and her invisible earmuffs clamped tightly over her ears to drown out any pleas for help I might have. She gestures dismissively at me with her thin hand. Her boney fingers indicating I should take a seat. My heart plummets in my chest.
I perch on the flimsy cheap plastic of the patient’s chair. It flexes dangerously under my
‘colossal’ 13st 12lbs,
remember I am apparently ‘dangerously overweight.’ It was probably rejected by some school because it wasn’t sturdy enough for the students.
How on earth is it supposed to hold up my heavy backside? I am lucky I have not hit the deck!
Before I even start to speak, her attention is elsewhere. I go through the usual motions. Explaining my menagerie of problems, hoping she will help me this time.
I tell her that my migraines have gotten drastically worse, ‘They are lasting for days at a time now. It’s like a crushing vice that pulsates in my scull.’
It reverberates around my head at first, before slowly spreading from there to my face, eye sockets, neck and jaw, ‘It makes me feel so sick.’
She is repetitively clicking the top of her pen. It’s always nice to know that the person you are confiding in care’s isn’t it? Well the first sign that Dr Arbroath has stopped listening is the click of her pen. The more fed up she gets the faster the click. It’s really off-putting.
I continue trying not to show that her indifference is making me uncomfortable. I insist that my pain is constant, ‘The level of pain varies but it’s always there.’
This gains the slightest of eye rolls. It’s like a knife in the heart but I continue regardless. ‘The pain I get when it’s bad is unreal. I can’t go to the loo because I can’t use a single muscle in my body. It’s hard to describe. It’s like I’m paralysed from the neck down because of the pain. I can’t move a single inch.’
I can feel her brown eyes boring deep into my soul, leaching out all my self-confidence. ‘Hmmm,’ is her only answer so far, so I keep going.
‘My back has continued to seize up. It’s so painful. I… I find it hard to move.’
The ever present click of her pen has increased in speed, making me stumble over my words.
‘I’m still getting the really bad stomach cramps. But now I also get terrible heartburn and nausea at the same time.’
She is keen to interject here and tell me once again that I have I.B.S. I am not so sure.
‘We have gone over this before Zoe. I.B.S is the most likely cause.’
There it is, I knew it.
I decide to continue without acknowledging her comment.
I will only get myself upset, and I know that she won’t even consider an alternative to her conclusion. ‘I get pain in my chest. It’s sometimes so bad that I feel like I have to stop what I’m doing. All I want to do is lie down. I don’t know why. But even when I’m driving, all I want to do is get out the car and lie on the road. It must sound stupid to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. A lot of the time the pain spreads up into my face, and to either side or both sides of my jaw.’
The clicking stops long enough for her to ask, ‘anything else Zoe?’
When she realises that the answer is yes, the clicking resumes.
I ask about my dizziness and constant low blood pressure. I ask about the palpitations that I get a lot, ‘They are enough to make me cough uncontrollably. I feel them thumping right up into my neck and jaw,’ she insists that it’s panic attacks. And the fatigue. That’s a big one. But it’s hard to determine fatigue, from being unable to sleep with stress and pain.
My gaze shifts nervously from her sharp face to the desk covered in piles of papers as I finish reciting my plethora of symptoms. Each time I visit her I feel like my life is being stripped from me. This time I can see will be no different.
And so, she sets about telling me that I can’t possibly be in that amount of pain and remain functional. The fact that I am sitting in front of her proves I am functional so the pain must be Psychosomatic.
She pauses to smooth her slick golden hair, before continuing. She insists that the pains I feel in my chest, and palpitations I describe are panic attacks linked to the PTSD I had previously been diagnosed with,
I know what panic attacks are like. It’s not the same. My desire to lie down must be depression and not anything to do with dizziness or pain,
consequently she also blames stress, worry and fatigue on depression. Is it any wonder I am depressed and feeling low, when she is basically telling me my pain is all in my head? I’m becoming quite a hypochondriac apparently. She thinks I need some psychiatric help and dismisses me from her office with a referral to the Community Psychiatric Nurse.
I want to cry, and bawl, and howl, and scream at the scrawny, tweed-clad, sour-faced, witch. Then I realise that for the first time in a long time I’m feeling something other than despair.
***
She’s late, the CPN that is. She was supposed to be here at ten and it’s now eleven fifteen. I busy myself by getting my son some cars to play with. As he organises them on the floor a car pulls up outside.
Better late than never.
A small flustered looking woman strides her way up the path and to my door. ‘I’m the community psychiatric nurse. I take it you are Zoe? May I come in?’
I’m taken aback by her direct manner but decide to move and allow her in. ‘Busy day?’ I ask.
‘No. Why?’ She asks defensively.
Em. Because you are now over an hour and a half late. That’s why. ‘No reason,’ I tell her, ‘just wondered.’
‘Hmmph.’
I can’t believe she actually harrumphed at me. I can see where this is going before we even start.
We spend roughly ten minutes talking about my symptoms.
Or rather we spend that long with her talking at me about my symptoms. All the while she is tutting and huffing because my son is playing with his cars, and not just sitting in silence. She then informs me that she won’t be offering me any more meetings. Instead she is referring me to a psychiatrist. She promptly shows herself out and I’m left with my son, his cars and a very uncertain future.
