I really like my doctor. She’s pretty rad. I went and saw her again today. We talked about anxiety, sleep, cancer follow up, exercise, and diet recommendations. She is dancing around the hint that she thinks it might improve my general health if I lost some weight but she has not said it directly and I appreciate that. She thinks that heading in a vegan direction has the strong likelihood of improving general inflammation so it might improve pain stuff but she sees no point in it for cancer prevention in my case. She also implied it might make managing my weight easier but she is just hinting.

In this country they don’t like giving Lorazepam for sleep the way I take it, they prefer Diazepam and she stressed that in general any doctor here is going to be very hesitant to give it to me on a long-term basis. Here they dislike any sleep aid for longer than a 2 week period. But given that my problem isn’t staying asleep it is getting my racing thoughts to calm down enough to go to sleep… she sees why I like Lorazepam and she is comfortable bending the rules somewhat in my case. She said “If I had had your life I would have trouble going to sleep too.” (For the Americans, she wants me off Ativan and on to Valium instead.)

She wants to see me again when my medical records arrive so we can discuss my specific drug history and what she might like to try for anti-anxiety going forward. I told her I would be happy to trial drugs that are available here and not in the US once we are able to go over the gene testing report together so we can have a solid idea of what I am likely to have a strong negative reaction to. So far I am really impressed with her. I have gotten far less push back than I do from US doctors. After our next visit she would like me to meet a psychiatrist here but she assumes I won’t be seeing them on a regular basis.

She asked how much I exercise already and said, “That’s really great! It sounds like it might be nice to do some of that in a group so you make friends but you don’t really have to stress about upping the amount.” She has already given me a list of places/organisations for group exercise so I can work on general fitness stuff and community building at the same time. That’s pretty rad. This area has a pretty big focus on trying to increase exercise for general health. She even said she doesn’t think I need to eliminate alcohol. She told me that depriving myself of things is going to super negatively impact my mental health and that will probably be a bigger problem than what damage I will do to my body with alcohol/sugar/meat products. She stressed moderation.

For a 15 minute visit I felt that was about as good as it gets. She gave me a ‘scrip for Diazepam that will probably last me 6 months. She said that if I only need a new ‘scrip every 6-8 months she thinks the NHS will deal with the fact that it is usage that doesn’t follow their general recommendations because I am clearly not abusing it. I just have severe long-term mental health concerns where I do require a level of usage than is different from the “norm”.

I will be calling for an appointment in January because hopefully my records will arrive by them. I see the dermatologist on the 2nd of December. That’s really not a long wait…