Until I read the article that follows in a link, and The Conversation is one site I consider highly accurate, as its articles are written by scholars, I was only vaguely aware of the medical practice of “gaslighting.”

It is a very old medical phenomenon in which doctors outright lie to patients.

The lies are, and I’ve heard this from doctors all my life, anything from the egregious “it’s all in your head” to failing to treat serious conditions due to lack of knowledge, indifference, cookie cutter medicine, greed, laziness and more.

My imaging last August showed profound damage to my lungs due to emphysema. Every day it gets worse but I have yet to get any answers from nurse practitioners or the Shock Trauma doctors.

Congestive heart failure, an enlarged liver that’s dropping efficiency, discs smashed up and down my spine, huge bone spurs in my neck, failure of blood circulation in my lower legs, increasing blindness from cataracts, blackening toes that hurt like sin, and the probability that should I survive past the point I think I will that I will lose my lower legs, damage to my left ear from fights and a diving accident, kidneys reduced in efficiency, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis often causing severe pain to the point of my unwillingness to move, all round out this picture. A portrait of a dead man who fights back for no reason.

I saw a real doctor last week. I was ecstatic at first, because he was so positive. He prescribed Celebrex for pain, referred me to pain management, an MRI, and more.

When the pharmacy, which bills me after I have taken my home delivery, refused to fill my meds unless I paid up front, I knew something was wrong.

Celebrex co-pay: $135.00 a month. I can’t do that. Last month I had to pay $250.00 for a 30 day supply of generic meds. That price will go way up soon, and I will have to drop meds off my prescriptions. Not one of which I would not suffer without.

This doctor didn’t downplay my pain or condition (s).

Others constantly lie about diagnoses, and even a neurologist once told me my short-term memory was a lie I told him because I’ve seen too many TV shows. I never went back and I never paid him. Because, fuck him. When you’re walking down the street, and suddenly don’t know where you are…have to check for a wallet to see who you are…you don’t know that kind of terror unless it happens to you.

Nurse practitioners are the worst. They think they know everything and will quickly lose their temper with you.

But since they really don’t know everything, they’ll send you to every kind of specialist they can, and that’s just another co-pay, more follow-up visits and especially imaging. What a scam.

This doctor, the one I saw last week, lied to me. I told him I wasn’t sure what I could afford with the cuts to healthcare programs. He waved dismissively and said, “aww, that’s just to get rid of the waste.”

That statement stuck in the back of my mind because he’d been so positive. But when I really thought about it, I knew that wasn’t the truth at all. The cuts are sweeping but affect doctors first, by cutting the amount doctors receive from Medicare. And when that happens, it increases a patient’s balance, which the doctor bills you for. He or she won’t make less. You pay more.

As I said last year, people are going to die. Lots of them.

Get ready for the gaslighting to be turned up to full power.

“You’re fine,” they’ll say.

“It’s psychological,” they’ll tell you.

And of course, “It’s all in your head,” which does not refer to psychology, but infers that you’re just a nutter.

The obvious elephant in the room? Two aortic and one iliac aneurysms. They cause even more pain, especially the iliac, because it causes things in the bowels and UT to not exactly work properly. Urinating can be painful, bowels shut down then for days there’s diarrhea. Gas, bloating. It’s all there. Aneurysms can rupture and kill you instantly or almost so. It will be quick and you won’t even know what happened.

I’m living in a body that shouldn’t be alive, and won’t be much longer. I just wish it would hurry up and die.

Because no matter the treatment, I’ll die anyway. The last straw was when he listened to my lungs and never said a word. Just ignore it, doc. I have 1/3rd lung capacity and function (the next day, I cleaned my bedroom and went into a hyperventilating, painful episode).

And medical gaslighting is something you would think is ridiculous, absurd.  Nobody does that, right?

But did you ever wonder how many women died of ovarian and uterine cancer, when they were ignored by misogynist doctors?

You know what “hysteria” was?

Women had sex drives in times when men would jump on top in the missionary position, get off and sternly believe no woman should enjoy sex. They’d force their wives to go to doctors. Some stimulated the female genitalia with objects which would include vibrators by the post-war years. Others just used their hands. Imagine being humiliated by that.

Many of the women with high sex drives who were expected to lie still during intercourse were diagnosed with “hysteria.” It was a man’s world. Hysteria derives from the original Greek “hystera,” which means “uterus.”

Once inside a mental asylum, even to the 1950s, anyone would begin to truly become profoundly disturbed mentally. Torturous treatments included, of course, hysterectomy, abuse, ice baths, drugs, restraint, and even worse.

Medical care was a nightmare. It still is. Conditions go untreated and, worse, unacknowledged. This is the essence of gaslighting: lie enough times and the patient will likely believe that lie.

We live in an age of barbarism that you can forget when you’re sitting all warm and snug by the fire, reading a book or binging some crap streaming. You have your belly full, a nice drink, and life is good.

And you ignore all the suffering and the homeless and the addicts. You may think that people bring suffering on themselves or that they’re getting spanked by God.

You may think that the homeless are just too lazy to work.

And maybe you believe that addicts could just stop if they wanted to.

People around the world think like this. And none have any idea how wrong they are until things begin to fall apart for them.

The news, whether print, network or streaming, shape the lies and pump them into the minds of the weak. The sick and wounded and addicted are made to feel guilty, and you are made to believe they are guilty.

And when doctors lie, I consider it not malpractice, but attempted murder.

Because that is exactly what it is.

Here’s the link.