Stress!

August 15, 2017 (Chapter 11 Stress and Anxiety in my book)

I called the doctor who is treating my knee. I let them know that I was unable to follow the exercises that are on the paper that I was given a couple weeks ago. I told them a little bit about my memory problems and why this paper didn't work for me. I told her that the words on this page such as leg extension don't mean anything to me. I can't remember how to do any of the exercises. I told her that I would be willing to go back to physical therapy. She will talk to the doctor and get back to me.

Later in the day, they called me back. She asked me if I wanted to go to physical therapy and I said yes. She said that she would fax the paperwork to the physical therapy upstairs from their office. I have been there for physical therapy before. After I hung up the phone, I waited about thirty minutes before I called the physical therapy place to make an appointment. I have my first appointment - an evaluation scheduled for August 25th.

I am hoping that physical therapy is going to help because I have been there before and they know about my memory impairment. I have requested the same physical therapist that I've had before because he knows what he needs to do or say in order for me to understand things. He also has a lot of patience especially if I don't understand something.

The drama and stress that this has caused me is something that I would like to avoid in my life! This is totally unavoidable and this can't continue to happen! It is a shame that I had to go through all this stress and all these phone calls just to have them understand what I needed. I really that this doesn't happen again because I think that this was totally avoidable!

This should NEVER have happened to me and should never happen to anyone else. Moving forward I will continue to educate my doctors on how they need to help me and if they are unwilling, then I will be contacting my neurologist for some advice on this problem! My doctors should not be adding stress to my life because stress just makes my symptoms much worse and this is so unnecessary! I will not tolerate being treated this way! The next time that I see this doctor, he needs to listen to me, take my needs and concerns seriously and not just "brush them off."

I think that the only reason that I mentioned this to my doctor that physical therapy might be best for me was because a friend suggested it to me. This is not something that I was able to figure out on my own. It is so sad for me to know that I needed help in figuring this out. Sometimes problem solving is so difficult for me to do successfully!