I’m sorry to post such a depressing thread, and I have posted here before about this but I’m just venting really and to find anyone who has had a similar experience and how they have dealt with it. I find MN very good at being quite supportive.
Long story short / backstory...
I have a drug induced involuntary movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia that was caused by an antipsychotic drug given to me after a head injury and post concussion syndrome. I have been living with it for nearly 3 years now. It is crappy and I find it very embarrassing but I get on with life and try my best to be as normal and happy as I can be.
I do feel deep down though that I have lost my true sense of who I was, and the very essence of my soul that existed before the medical error has gone. During my really bleak period of illness when I had post concussion syndrome and a mental breakdown, I was so desperate and scared to be better again, and couldn't behave like I did before this nightmare. I felt very suicidal and was lucky not to be sectioned. I’m grateful that I managed to get community mental health care, as a psychiatric ward may have finished me off.
I was literally scared of dying every single day for months, because of unbelievable nightmarish symptoms. I was convinced I had something neurological wrong with me, but only once did I have a doctor say that I had post concussion syndrome. One GP that I saw asked me if I was scared of having a neurological condition... of course I was, and I knew that I had one in the form of post concussion syndrome. Despite not a single doctor giving me the correct diagnosis of post concussion syndrome, the irony was that I ended up with a drug induced neurological disorder that was in many ways my worst nightmare, and much worse than I could have ever imagined. How could I even act normal? I’m sure that half of the doctors who saw me during that time thought I was neurologically abnormal in the sense that I was unhinged, rather than the actual truth being my head injury.
The prescription of the psychotropic drugs completely ruined me. This absurd error has cost me nearly everything that I considered ‘normal’ and took for granted. My health, my job, my relationship with my husband and family. Three years later, I do have these things back in some sense and to a greater degree, and I am lucky to be able to say that I survived my life changing injuries, but things will never truly be the same again.
I guess in some ways, being iatrogenically injured is a crime. But nobody is going to be held accountable for it. Nobody. They're just going to say I lost my mind like they do with all the other victims.
Sometimes I feel that I'm like a broken record. Repeating myself every day in my mind and I'm a miserable wreck most days. I really try to hide it and act as normally as I can for my family and friends, but i am constantly wondering how I managed to bugger up my health and life so much, and what my job prospects may be like when I return to work and try and get a job when my DS is at nursery.
I feel like I'm an alien accidentally dropped off on the wrong planet where I just try to survive.