To ask if anyone was ever stopped from going to the doctor?

[ffs234]

When I was growing up there was always a huge problem with taking me to the doctor.

On one occassion I'm pretty sure I fractured my foot and never got any treatment for it. I remember this vividly because I was crawling around the house with it raised up and if it touched (lightly) the floor then the pain was so bad I contorted around on the floor.

I had a bad injury as the result of something quite horrible that happened outside of the home and never got any treatment for it. Really it should have been a) treated by a doctor and b) what happened should have been reported. I think that's why I couldn't get treatment, because someone would have to know what happened.

As a teenager I needed an operation. Both of my P's seemed to fight me on going to the doctor. It's hard to explain. Eventually I got to the hospital for my surgery, having been told I'd made a huge fuss and it was all my fault anyway. The surgeon asked why on Earth I'd left it so long and did I realise all of the complications that could result from the delay. There was a concern about me having cancer. I was OK in the end, obviously which was a relief but my DF declared that it was not allowed to be mentioned and my DM made sure I understood that.

I got an infection in a tooth and one side of my face swelled up, and I mean it was huge. It was red hot and hard. My family found this hilarious because I "looked like a hamster". When I got to a dentist they told me that could have been very serious left untreated in that way. My DM's response was to get angry with me.

I hurt my leg playing a sport and my DM just kept banging on about me being fat. Obviously if you can't walk you run the risk of gaining some weight. She seemed to have some weird fixation on "people" (who I have no idea) thinking I was sexually active if I went to the GP.

There's loads of other things.

This has all kind of made me into the sort of person who stays quiet and just gets on with being ill, but I think sometimes I don't know how ill I am.

This will sound crazy, because it is, but when I lived in the same town as my Ps I once turned up at the doctors at the same time as my DF. I walked around the block to avoid him. I had to sneak in and sneak out, peeking from behind a wall. That's how extreme all this is. When you get used to it, you sort of react before you've even thought about it.

I've had therapy and obviously need more but it doesn't really help at all. I feel pretty ill at the moment, like, even I'm thinking - uh oh. I need to go to the doctor but it's so hard overturning decades of conditioning like that.

This site is really useful because you can get some help from people who have been through the same thing.

I need to be able to go to the doctor like a normal person. I used to go. I get that no one enjoys it, especially when something might be serious.

Before I went NC with my Ps I didn't feel this bad. Something about realizing that I'm not just from a not so great background but seemingly an awful one has really knocked me down. It's awful to have a therapist gasp in horror when you talk to them.

Has anyone been through this kind of thing? Where do I even start getting back on my feet?

Because I didn't realise what my situation was it carried on into my adult life. I thought every family had their eccentricities and sadness going on. I didn't realise my life was so weird. People say acknowledging something is the first step, but what's the second one?

I'm sorry you went through all that OP! No it was nit normal, it was neglect.

Yes, my mother would stringly resist taking me as a child, I learnt to get on with it. Thankfully no broken bones. Just infections that I got over months later, that with hindsight would have cleared up a lot sooner if Id gone/been taken. Always being told I was making a fuss and had to soldier on.

Her own health was a different matter.

Yes, and neglect is a type of abuse. Its the absence of care that you should have received.
I worked out by accident that I could take myself to the GP and dentist at 14 so started doing that.

My mum was like this too. She used to justify it that her mum was a hypochondriac but you’d literally have to be on your death bed before she’d even contemplate taking one us to see a doctor. She’d never give us painkillers either cause she doesn’t believe in them so you just had to suffer. Like you, as an adult I very rarely contemplate going to the doctor because I worry I’m wasting their time because that was drummed into me from childhood.

Can you change to a different practice so you can avoid running into your parents ?

They sound like an absolute nightmare.

F

Shockingly bad

This was similar to experiences I had growing up, yes, although my love, yours sound much, much worse. And luckily I was never very poorly. Things like: on coming back home late (around 12?) having fainted from period pain in a shopping centre and cracked my head open I remember my mum sort of holding her hand up in a kind of 'I don't want to hear it!' way, and saying I was 'disgusting' . Or, when I came home weighing 4/5 st less at the end of a university term (anorexia) her only reaction was to tut angrily and say it was disrespectful to those who died in the Holocaust. There was a lot of this stuff tbh. Low level but generally a sense that I was just an awful, ugly embarrassment.

I have tried hard to not be like this with my own girls.
I'm so so sorry you suffered with this OP. Xxxx

I haven't experienced it myself, but what you describe is serious neglect. Were your parents abusive or neglectful in other ways? I'm wondering if they were avoiding taking you to the doctor because they knew the doctor might notice things that gave them away and/or would have been reportable to social services. The fact that they seemed hung up on 'people knowing' things seems as if they knew they had something to hide.

I'm really sorry you had to suffer this. It sounds like you're doing a great job of understanding the impact it's had on you, though, and that you're being very strong and self-aware to even think about all this in detail and move forward.

Yes, my parents were like this- my poor teenage brother had untreated impetigo for a long period, I had various untreated things. We also weren't allowed painkillers and weren't vaccinated. Well done, mum and dad!

Sorry you experienced it too, OP, and yours sounds to have been mixed up with a lot of other things too. I do think every family has eccentricities but what you're describing goes quite a long way beyond that. Therapy is a good start, and working out what you'd like your life to look like. Sounds like NC is the right choice for you too.

I’m so sorry you went through this. It’s good to hear that you are NC with them and having therapy. Their behaviour was much, much more than eccentricity and I also think it’s more than just simply neglect. There’s something very nasty underlying it and I suspect it’s to do with this: “I think that's why I couldn't get treatment, because someone would have to know what happened” and this “She seemed to have some weird fixation on "people" (who I have no idea) thinking I was sexually active if I went to the GP”.

I hope the therapy helps you. 💐

I had a close friend who, as a young adult living with her birth family, was strongly discouraged from seeing a GP about MH problems because her family didn’t want staff or patients at the local surgery to know.

It’s all very strange … I never know what to think when I read threads here posted by people who don’t want to ‘bother the doctor’.

You said you had to sneak in to the doctors so did your parents have no issue going to the doctors themselves? I can't think of a rational explanation for their behaviour and I'm sorry you had to experience that

Namechanged as I've told this story lots.

I had a really bad cut on my leg (that clearly needed stitches). I was given the choice between going to the hospital and getting a kitten.
I have the scar.

Many other such examples.

I am sorry not only that you experienced that but you now have to come to terms with the fact that your parents did not care for you in the way they should have. That's a double whammy.

For me it was simply that I used to suffer really badly with coughs and colds, what would probably be called viral asthma these days. When I was about 15 I had a part time job in a shop and they bought me a cold remedy because I was coughing so much. I honestly had no idea that all that time I could have taken some inexpensive medicine available over the counter and I would feel so much better. I used to cough to the point I was vomiting.

I think one thing to get your head around is that all of it is about them, not about you. There's no thing you could have done or way you could have been that would have changed it- you were just a child. It's very tempting to feel on some level that if you'd been a better child you'd have somehow called forth a better parent from them, but it absolutely isn't the case.

OP , and any other posters treated like this by their parents, I am so, so sorry that this happened to you all.
Its neglect, pure and simple.

I've had a chronic illness since I was 4 (arthritis among other things) and I'd never complain because it was such an inconvenience.

At first the parents would take me to my weekly consultant appts. Then by the time I was 7 they made my sister take me. I was made go myself when I was 11/12.

I would never make a fuss because if I did, they would roll their eyes and get mad that I was "making a fuss".

As a result I rarely go to the doctor, I don't want to make a fuss. I had a minor heart attack once and didn't call any one because I didn't want to inconvenience people. It was only found out several months later when I plucked up the courage to go to my GP.

The damage to my emotional state as a result of their treatment of my health has left me irreparably damaged physically and emotionally.

You are not alone. Its not OK or normal what they did, but sadly you are not alone.

I'm not sure what advice I can give. The Councillor I went to said any time I get sick, act like its one of my kids and dp what I would do if they were ill. Which can work. But counselling is definitely a help.

And well done on going NC. I'm still trying to get there, I know how hard that is so we'll done you.

I'm so sorry you had such a awful childhood with parents who frankly neglected you. Reading your post filled me with anger and sadness that a child went through this, and some out there still are. Personally I have not dealt with this, but as a HCP delay in treatment for a child or vulnerable adult, is a big red flag for safeguarding and is taken very seriously.

I have not read all the other replies but I am sure you are not alone with this. I imagine it's a long journey to healing and coming to terms with what happened is only the start.

Thanks all the responses, sorry for vanishing there.

@HappyGoDucky thank you. Oddly I was very well looked after in some other ways, smothered even.

@CrotchetyQuaver Long, untreated infections are horrible. I sometimes wonder if some of this is an old fashioned thing because you had to pay at some point? Both my P's are really old fashioned for their ages.

@Thelnebriati Good for you! Having reflected on this thread a bit I can appreciate more clearly that the situation that caused the NC caused this situation somehow. It was really awful and is still ongoing now.

Oddly I was very well looked after in some other ways, smothered even.
IMO (I don't have any evidence for this), some parents neglect out of fear they will be criticised by those in authority rather than deliberate abuse, and I think your parents might fall into that category. So your parents were angry with you about the dentists reaction, because they blamed you for getting them into trouble.

The times they looked after you well, or smothered you, all probably had something in common. In my parents case good treatment was for public display, or so they could turn round later and say 'but we did this for you'.

This is a trait of narcissistic control. This site gives a short over view of narcissists and their relationship with their children and illnesses. www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-and-their-children
It is truly cruel and abuse I'm sorry op.

So much this. I didnt even realise painkillers existed before I was about 17 maybe. I had a bloody terrible headache at work and someone said have you actually taken anything for it. I didnt know wtf they meant. Of course this was all pre internet and googling wasnt a thing.
I had a terrible "smokers" cough from the time my mother married til I left home. No one ever commented. I remember being blue in the face trying to breathe around 8 years old and somehow my mother convinced another mother to let me use her sons inhaler. It didnt help at all but still I nodded like a good child when I was asked if I felt better.
I broke my wrist, I never told anyone, I simply carried on but nursed it myself. It was found years later when I broke it again and I was asked about this previous break that wasnt on my notes.
I spent years coughing into my pillow every night, and trying to stop when I heard "ffs stop coughing child" from the next bedroom. Never mind he smoked 40 plus a day, it was my fault I was coughing.

I had to feed myself from age 13 as soon as I got a paper round. I earned about 3 quid a week and had no idea about food, food safety, food hygiene etc.
So happy when I grew up and could starve because of me instead of my parents.

Anyways, still to this day I have to be on my knees before I'll see a dr. I went NC and they died several years later.

@Terfydactyl so so sorry that your childhood was so abusive and neglectful. Cannot get my head around adults treating kids like this.