My Fatal Mistake (Continued)

Other worrying thoughts occurred to me. Is Dr. S. using the threat of withdrawing my meds as a weapon; as revenge for an insult to a colleague (or am I being absurdly paranoid - that wouldn't be a first.) As I have already said doctors can be fanatically loyal to one another. Insult one and you insult them all. Dr. H. (the psychiatrist from hell) once threatened to cut off one particular medication he had originally prescribed. And he didn't mean just taper them off, he'd meant that he intended to simply cut off the supply. This was an action intended, I suspect, to punish me for a)Crying in his office - the ultimate absurdity - a psychiatrist who is uncomfortable with emotions; b) Protesting about the way I was treated in hospital in the mid '90s; c) Objecting to the fact that his 'team' didn't seem to be taking my problems seriously. (Problems that they had exacerbated by locking me up, forcibly medicating me and failing to control over-sexed male patients. Once a male patient exposed himself to me in the Patients' Lounge. I reported it to a nurse, a female nurse, who shrugged and said: 'Well, he is ill' - more evidence of that 'blame the victim' mentality again. One would imagine that empathy would be a pre-requisite for a job in the 'caring professions' but apparently not.

I have female friends who have had similar experiences. A case for the re-introduction of single sex wards, methinks. Dr. H. believes that the harassment of a few women in his care is a price worth paying for gender integration. He refuses to acknowledge that any problems exist. He just sections his patients and then leaves them to their fate. His attitude is all the more appalling when one consider the high proportion of female psychiatric patients who have experienced childhood sexual abuse (including me). His threat to withdraw my medication symbolised a withdrawal of approval, a consequence of my having had the audacity to criticise a system to which he belongs.

And I am afraid Dr. S. may be doing the same thing.

Perhaps I should be all innocent and childlike and unquestioning (like a certain fellow female patient). Perhaps I should stop being 'so bloody awkward' (as a former friend put it). Maybe then they'd be willing to help me. But that means I'd have to stop being me and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to do that.