Attention Medical Personnel: A Plea For Compassion Regarding Claustrophobic Patients
Claustrophobia is a condition in which the person who has this specific phobia does not like to be in confined spaces. Wait! It is more than a disliking, it is a great fear. A fear, which raises the person's anxiety level through the roof and the "fight or flight" response, is activated. Mostly I will try to flee the confinement although I am getting closer and closer to jamming my foot down anyone's throat who is preventing said exit.
Just because you cannot see my illness doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Don't expect me to snap out of it simply because you will it to happen. Would you ask a person who needs glasses to remove his/her glasses and walk down a mazelike passageway? Would you tell a paraplegic to get out of the wheel chair and jump up on the cot?
I am simply asking for a small amount of accommodation. If I am in distress, as I was in a recent event when a bee got stuck in my ear and was stinging the hell out of my eardrum, don't act amazed that I am bordering on hysterical. Do not trap my legs between your legs and grab my wrists to hold me down. Guess what? An ambulance is a small metal box (CONFINEMENT) and when I ask you to open the door please do so. And that EMT that blocks the opening so I did not flee, well he needs his teeth shoved down his throat. Essentially having that man block the opening is equivalent to putting a box of boa constrictors there for someone with a snake phobia. Get it?
Don't have three people barrage me with questions at the first moment you pick me up. I immediately told you about the bee in my ear. My name, age, weight, height and any other mundane question can wait. When I got up off the cot and asked to sit on the side bench for a minute so I could calm myself, you finally left me alone and I was able to bring myself down. Just allow me a minute or two. It will make it easier on all of us.
I also have a hospital phobia. So does my younger brother. Our parents died when we were young and hospitals, to us, are NOT healing places. Just entering the door scares me to death. I can take Ativan before I come, but it only helps in the smallest way.
I was recently scheduled for tests at the hospital and I couldn't finish the most important one due to all of the locked doors, post 9.11 precautions. The staff couldn't allow me to enter a door near the imaging department.
Two years ago when I went for a different test. My companion spoke to the x-ray person and he let me in a side door and did the test. Why was he so compassionate? He told me that his wife suffers from the same thing I do. She has been to a horde of therapists (as I have) with no relief. This man knows some of the agony I suffer. He had understanding from his own personal family experience.
That is why I am writing this plea. Please try understanding. I am not acting in any way. I am not trying to get special treatment. This is no princess nonsense. It is very real. I live with it every moment of every day. Hopefully you don't.
Phobias are not logical and perhaps not understandable, but they do exist. They are frighteningly real to the person who suffers from them. Please just open your heart a little bit when you meet up with a phobic.
Thank you.
