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Jan. 20th, 2026 07:12 amThe second thing I noticed about the medical clinic was that posters on how to access the patient care quality review board were in every room. It worried me some, but I was so hopeful. This medication has a chance at improving my quality of life some.
My gynecologist (the prescribing specialist) and I agreed that I should make a follow-up visit with my doctor every week while the medication ran its course. Because it's a one-month injection, if it went badly for my mental health there are limited things I can do to pull out of the whole scenario on my own. And PMDD is the closest anything's ever been to killing me, so I treat it very cautiously. I do not want to die.
My doctor agreed too. The meds she'd given me for my gut had helped: less pain, less mess, more functionality. A B vitamin injection had helped with the neuropathy in my legs so I can lie more comfortably in bed. I like my doctor. She read the instructions on the kinda weird shot carefully, made it up (it needed two components mixed together inside the syringe) and administered, told me what side effects to come directly to emerg for and that I should come if I had any doubts, and wrote out a note for the front desk to make the weekly appointments.
The front desk point blank refused -- there were no appointments with anyone, but I could come as a walk-in on one of those days. When I mentioned that I couldn't actually sit and wait in a walk-in clinic, she changed the subject. The nearest appointment she would give me was in March.
Now, this shot lasts a month. I got it Jan 19. The next one will need to be administered Feb 19.
The front desk person was new -- they always are, there is a lot of turn over and I think half the time they are deeply under-staffed? At any rate they rarely answer the phones and there's no message service and of course no email, so one assumes there are supposed to be enough people to actually answer the phones anyhow. This one was not great with customer service for sure, telling me they'd "give her shit" if she did xyz and narrating that she was looking through each doctor's availability as if it was a great trial to her, even though presumably it was her actual job.
I'd already taken the email of the quality review board because when they put me in the room to wait for the doctor, the attendant went in and forwarded the roll of paper on the bed but didn't wipe down the chairs -- I'm not sure if that's supposed to be normal procedure, but I'd always assumed they wiped down the chairs in the rooms between sick people. They definitely did not wipe down the chairs in the waiting room, and I avoided one with a bit of a smear on it, but since it's always occupied I figured they did that periodically.
I was, of course, the only person with a mask.
Luckily the shot didn't do my biggest fear, which was immediate and intense suicidal pressure. In less than 24 hours any assumptions I make about how it's working will be jumping at shadows: I'm observing every single flit of thought, emotion, and behaviour.
These hormones have drastically changed everything about my life experience cyclicly in the past: they make me want to clean or lock me in bed, make me happy and hopeful or pessimistic, tilt my preferences towards interacting with only strangers or people I know well or no one at all, flood me with anger or with love predominantly for days at a time, change the foods my body can tolerate and the ones I want to eat or whether I want to eat at all. I went into that shot not knowing who would come out of it, and I still don't know. I don't know who I'll be tomorrow nor who I'll be when it settles out. Of course I'm curious and concened. Of course I'm watching, like anyone would watch a partner they'd just met yesterday for their arranged marriage.
I'm observing, not measuring yet, because in a month I'll be making the decision: do I do this again or go back? And three or six months after that: do I have surgery to make this permanent? The shots are expensive, and they're a trial to make sure having my ovaries removed is a reasonable choice. I guess I'll need to maintain them on a waiting list too.
And the problem with all this observation is that it's really skewed right now by having no access to reasonable fucking medical care. Gynecologist was very cautious about making sure I had follow up appointments. Doctor told them to make them. And I do not have them. I do not even have the ability to get my next shot on time through the clinic if it turns out great. My options are to go into emergency, which I might be able to tell if it's open or not because some random guy wrote a program to tell whether different emergency rooms were open or closed to due lack of staffing, the actual medical system is "working on" making one themselves.
The point of having the doctor's appointments for follow up was threefold: to catch things before they were emergencies, to allow a better access to the gynecologist since my doctor has a direct channel, and to have something in place so that if I went into the kind of deep depression where it's hard to do anything then going in would be a default and easier than doing nothing until I died (especially calling a switchboard that doesn't answer the phone or have an answering service as if it were the mid-nineties, or go into an emergency room that may or not be open and explain that I'm having a mental health thing that's a known hormonal thing and there are experts on this and what to do about it and be told that it's beyond their scope to prescribe changes in lady's meds).
I feel defeated (side effect of the medication can include "discouragement" which is accurate but maybe not the med's fault) and caught in wanting to just try planning for anything even less, since yet again the system (though not my own doctors) clearly want me dead.
So is it working? I sit like this for a month, then theoretically start peeling off some other meds once I stabilize here. I gather information. I look at every single thing that occurs in my being and try not to over-interpret it. Am I finding it harder to do things like get out of bed and get ready for bed (those go together in my life, I need to rest to be able to brush my teeth and have a shower)? Am I feeling a little more emotionally stable? Is this normal anger for the situation or abnormal anger?
Anyhow, I'm going to try and log what's up this month to help make the decision. I wanted to get this down because I want to contact the patient care quality review board. And I need to call my pharmacist and ask if he's allowed to give this shot since I don't have doctor access.
But of course before I do any of that I need to rest for a couple days.
My gynecologist (the prescribing specialist) and I agreed that I should make a follow-up visit with my doctor every week while the medication ran its course. Because it's a one-month injection, if it went badly for my mental health there are limited things I can do to pull out of the whole scenario on my own. And PMDD is the closest anything's ever been to killing me, so I treat it very cautiously. I do not want to die.
My doctor agreed too. The meds she'd given me for my gut had helped: less pain, less mess, more functionality. A B vitamin injection had helped with the neuropathy in my legs so I can lie more comfortably in bed. I like my doctor. She read the instructions on the kinda weird shot carefully, made it up (it needed two components mixed together inside the syringe) and administered, told me what side effects to come directly to emerg for and that I should come if I had any doubts, and wrote out a note for the front desk to make the weekly appointments.
The front desk point blank refused -- there were no appointments with anyone, but I could come as a walk-in on one of those days. When I mentioned that I couldn't actually sit and wait in a walk-in clinic, she changed the subject. The nearest appointment she would give me was in March.
Now, this shot lasts a month. I got it Jan 19. The next one will need to be administered Feb 19.
The front desk person was new -- they always are, there is a lot of turn over and I think half the time they are deeply under-staffed? At any rate they rarely answer the phones and there's no message service and of course no email, so one assumes there are supposed to be enough people to actually answer the phones anyhow. This one was not great with customer service for sure, telling me they'd "give her shit" if she did xyz and narrating that she was looking through each doctor's availability as if it was a great trial to her, even though presumably it was her actual job.
I'd already taken the email of the quality review board because when they put me in the room to wait for the doctor, the attendant went in and forwarded the roll of paper on the bed but didn't wipe down the chairs -- I'm not sure if that's supposed to be normal procedure, but I'd always assumed they wiped down the chairs in the rooms between sick people. They definitely did not wipe down the chairs in the waiting room, and I avoided one with a bit of a smear on it, but since it's always occupied I figured they did that periodically.
I was, of course, the only person with a mask.
Luckily the shot didn't do my biggest fear, which was immediate and intense suicidal pressure. In less than 24 hours any assumptions I make about how it's working will be jumping at shadows: I'm observing every single flit of thought, emotion, and behaviour.
These hormones have drastically changed everything about my life experience cyclicly in the past: they make me want to clean or lock me in bed, make me happy and hopeful or pessimistic, tilt my preferences towards interacting with only strangers or people I know well or no one at all, flood me with anger or with love predominantly for days at a time, change the foods my body can tolerate and the ones I want to eat or whether I want to eat at all. I went into that shot not knowing who would come out of it, and I still don't know. I don't know who I'll be tomorrow nor who I'll be when it settles out. Of course I'm curious and concened. Of course I'm watching, like anyone would watch a partner they'd just met yesterday for their arranged marriage.
I'm observing, not measuring yet, because in a month I'll be making the decision: do I do this again or go back? And three or six months after that: do I have surgery to make this permanent? The shots are expensive, and they're a trial to make sure having my ovaries removed is a reasonable choice. I guess I'll need to maintain them on a waiting list too.
And the problem with all this observation is that it's really skewed right now by having no access to reasonable fucking medical care. Gynecologist was very cautious about making sure I had follow up appointments. Doctor told them to make them. And I do not have them. I do not even have the ability to get my next shot on time through the clinic if it turns out great. My options are to go into emergency, which I might be able to tell if it's open or not because some random guy wrote a program to tell whether different emergency rooms were open or closed to due lack of staffing, the actual medical system is "working on" making one themselves.
The point of having the doctor's appointments for follow up was threefold: to catch things before they were emergencies, to allow a better access to the gynecologist since my doctor has a direct channel, and to have something in place so that if I went into the kind of deep depression where it's hard to do anything then going in would be a default and easier than doing nothing until I died (especially calling a switchboard that doesn't answer the phone or have an answering service as if it were the mid-nineties, or go into an emergency room that may or not be open and explain that I'm having a mental health thing that's a known hormonal thing and there are experts on this and what to do about it and be told that it's beyond their scope to prescribe changes in lady's meds).
I feel defeated (side effect of the medication can include "discouragement" which is accurate but maybe not the med's fault) and caught in wanting to just try planning for anything even less, since yet again the system (though not my own doctors) clearly want me dead.
So is it working? I sit like this for a month, then theoretically start peeling off some other meds once I stabilize here. I gather information. I look at every single thing that occurs in my being and try not to over-interpret it. Am I finding it harder to do things like get out of bed and get ready for bed (those go together in my life, I need to rest to be able to brush my teeth and have a shower)? Am I feeling a little more emotionally stable? Is this normal anger for the situation or abnormal anger?
Anyhow, I'm going to try and log what's up this month to help make the decision. I wanted to get this down because I want to contact the patient care quality review board. And I need to call my pharmacist and ask if he's allowed to give this shot since I don't have doctor access.
But of course before I do any of that I need to rest for a couple days.
