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Q: A Lot is Going On in My Life
well i dont know where to start its all new to me i have been in a
behaveral center i am on many meds and i have a bad thyroid with a gioder with
it . there is just alot going on in my life and i want to die every morning i
wake up all i do is cry and shake what is a person to do the dr. in sherman tx
said he either wants to kill it or take it out the only problem with killing it
couldnt more problems goin along with it i know i will be on a pill but no
diffrent i have had five operations first my ear had a tumor then
knee then ear again then carpal tunnel then hystorectomy and neck surgery they
have dont that over at least 7 times the depression is really getting to bad for
me to take please tell me there is some one to talk to or somewhere they can run
test to find ouit why the racing thoughts and suicide thought and voices thank
you for listening and careing to get back to me like i said i can go all the way
to denton or half way around the world i will do w!hat ever it takes
Dear Tracy --
All the way to Denton? wow, you must be pretty desperate. (where is
Denton?) Okay, now let's get serious. You have bad symptoms.
First you need to make sure somebody knows how bad your symptoms are, somebody
who can make sure that information is getting passed on to the doctor or the
team that's supposed to be treating these symptoms. If necessary, in most
states, you could make it clear that you're worried about your own safety
because of the intensity of thinking about wanting to be die every morning -- if
it ever gets to the point where you're not just thinking about it, you're
thinking about how you'd go about doing it, and how to get hold of the means to
do it, then it's definitely time to tell somebody about that. (You might
have done that already, in which case you'd have some understanding of how the
health care system reacts).
Then, to address your question about thyroid
surgery: if that's the recommended plan, that might explain, in part, why
your symptoms are so bad right now. That would mean your thyroid is too
active, and they are probably right to be offering you surgery or the iodine
treatment to destroy this gland that is out of control. If that's what's
going on, you're "hyperthyroid", and that can make for a lot of the
racing thoughts and voices and the intensity of all that you're
experiencing. So, going ahead with the treatment for your thyroid would be
good idea, under those circumstances.
Thirdly, I just looked up Denton and Sherman. Now
I get it. You're in Texas. That could be a serious part of the
problem. Just look at what's happened to the White House. Oops, lost
it again, back to serious...
Thirdly, whether it was the thyroid first or the
hysterectomy first or just the stress of all those surgeries, there are multiple
reasons why things would have gotten so bad just recently. You'll have to
keep on holding on for the short run because the odds are very high
that your symptoms can be treated, and that the treatments you'd need just
haven't really gotten underway yet with all the focus on your physical health
problems. With some luck it won't take 7 different tries to get these
emotional symptoms under control -- it usually doesn't. I hope there's a
mental health person you're working with directly to tackle those symptoms while
the thyroid thing is getting handled. If not you could see what you can do
to get such a person involved in your health care team. Good luck to
you.
Dr. Phelps
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