BPDFamily.com

My girlfriend has been suffering from anaemia for a while now and has been taking iron tablets.  I asked her the other day why her doctor has prescribed any and she replied that they don't do that.

I looked at the NHS website earlier and they do pescribe various types of iron tablets which should be taken three times a day while the off the shelf ones you only take one a day. 

The website also mentions lots of foods that contain iron that you should eat plus other foods that help iron absorption and ones that inhibit it.  She's not mentioned any of these and has not changed her diet significantly and apart from mentioning eating steak.

The website states that the doctor would be looking to find the cause of the anaemia as well as treating it - this is more important than the treatment itself.  This hasn't been mentioned by GF at all.

pwBPD are often hyperchondriacs that are constantly self diagnosing all sorts of transient complaints. They just feel something wrong with themselves, and so want to identify a physical complaint so they can "treat" it. It is a kind of attempt to bring the invisible internal pain out onto the surface and give it a face. Unfortunately it usually completely wrong, though they can play the role very convincingly, even fooling doctors.

I suppose that would partially explain the reluctance to visit the doctors.  Worry that she'll be proved wrong?

My husband had all kinds of aches and pains, he even thought he had cancer, Colon cancer and lung cancer, brain cancer, I heard it all. He didn't have insurance for awhile so we couldn't go to the doctor. Once we did get insurance there was no stopping him. He had every test to figure out what was wrong with him. They came back with him having Fibromyalgia which to me means they can't find anything wrong with you and they have to diagnose you with something. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but he was not happy with that diagnosis. He also had a lot of stomach problems which I honestly feel is from him having so much stress and his PTSD being triggered. They did find an Ulcer and treated it, but the amount of other aches and pains he had were not from an ulcer. Eventually after going to doctor after doctor, he seems fine now.

I'm starting to wonder how much of my uBPDw's conditions are self-inflicted.  She claims to have several kinds of allergies, including nuts and gluten.  Yet I have never seen her have a strong reaction to anything with nuts or wheat.  She may indeed be gluten-sensitive, but she tells everyone she has celiac, which is much more severe than a gluten-sensitivity.  She is always complaining about migraines or abdominal pains, or something or other.

Her biggest issue is her self-diagnosed omnipotence   :)

pretty much the way it is. The anxiety over these imaginary ailments creates an anxiety disorder.

My partner has always suffered with over medicating, which brings on side effects which are then medicated. There are then so many symptoms and consequences that its hard to know what is causing what. Addictions to the meds mean that you end up medicating to avoid the withdrawals of not medicating.

Currently they are slowly reducing and pulling her off a lot of it. This needs to be done in order to get full benefit of any therapy support

My uBPDbf has always claimed that he was allergic to a bunch of different foods. First it was grapefruit, then watermelon, then bananas.  One day I was making something with pineapple, then he was allergic to that.  A couple of years ago, I was feeling really sick, so he convinced me that I had celiac disease.  He started buying all gluten free products.  He then told me to go to my doctor's to get tested.  After the test results came back normal, he started to diagnose me and himself with other illnesses. It seems to be a form of Munchausen's.  As the OP said, the only thing he never diagnosed himself with yet, is BPD. 

This one is so familiar. My dBPDh makes claims about his pain tolerance, but every little bump and bruise he gets it's the worst one anyone has even gotten in their life. He refuses to go to a doctor for anything. He has a broken finger that's permanently crooked because he wouldn't go anywhere for it.

Hmm

Mine had anaemia also, so she said.

And then got bad stomach cramps occassionally - she thought it was from a certain type of bean.

Then thought it was mushrooms made her feel sick.

Every second day would have a terrible headache.

And awful hayfever.

And then a strange pull in a leg muscle.

Then a sore shoulder.

It never ended and it's interesting how many others see all these symptons BPDs often complain about. I never thought about it much before until I saw others post the same thing on these boards.

Everyone suffers from some minor ailments ocassionally, but for BPDs it feels like it is always one thing after another.

Her cat attacked me and bit me three times once, including on the stomach and the bites bled quite badly. The same day it bit her also on the hand and wow that the worst thing ever including that she had to post a photo of the scratch on facebook. She did not even bother to ask how my bites were.

Mine has diagnosed himself having so bad teeth that they all have to be changed for implants, which would be so expensive that it doesn't make any sense to go to dentist at all at the moment. This comes up every time I go to dentist ( which is not ofthen but I, on the other hand, hate tooth ache and want to take care of smallest problems).

He also goes regurlarly to massage and osteopath, which is good (and too expensive right now!) , but he does not do any excersise or sports.

I drink lemon juice every morning to balance my system and get vitamins c. I recommended this inexpensive and nice morning routine to him, he went 'yack' and ' it doesn't do anything'. Instead he started to order very expensive Synergy Worldwide products (I'm not saying they wouldn't be good but thre's time and place for everything... .)

Dont write off these ailments as I believe they may be genuine.

Both myuBPD  exs had ailments that were common to botj. These I have seen so many times reported here.

Heres my list.

Anaemia

stomach problems

migranes

aching joints

insomnia

These are the main ones and there is a possible physical reason to this and BPD. There is evidence that different areas of the brain function differently in pwBPD. The areas affect certain hormones one of which is oxytocin which is the bonding hormone. This hormone counteracts cortisol which is the stress hormone. Higher levels over a long time of cortisol can cause joint pain, anaemia and insomnia. Also the area of the brain where oxytocin is produced is also where vasopressin is produced which is a diulectic so the migranes could be to do with hydration.

The problem with all this crying wolf is that there is a good chance you dont take it serious when something does come up. There will also be a lot of issues arise because of the way they fail to take care of themselves at times.

I do think there is some truth behind her illness but it just seems strange that the doctor isn't actually donign much.  She's also been suffering from dizziness for over a year and the doctors don't seem to have been able to do anything about that either.  Makes me wonder if there's a possibility that the doctor has her down as a hypochondriac and is just doing the minimum to keep her happy.

As to the crying wolf, if I stayed in every time she told me she was ill I'd never go anywhere but it does give her wonderful ammunition to paint me black

The problem I found with my exs is that the illnesses where intermitent and came and went with her mood. Very difficult to diagnose something that comes and goes with BPDs moods.

My wife used to self-diagnose herself with anything and then go completely haywire when me or someone else didn't believe her. She was really looking for signs of disbelief everywhere - facial expressions, body language. Just the fact that you got tired of talking about it was a sign that you didn't believe her.

The thing is her father does this too. He is a firm believer in many controversial things (alternative medicine, electromagnetic hypersensitivity etc) and brings them up all the time. When he finds out that someone doesn't agree with him on those subjects (and most people don't) he becomes pushy and aggressive. This has cost him most of his friends.

My exwife was (is?) on a life mission to be believed and validated, but she is just making it so hard. The hypochondria is one of those things. I used to tell her that I understand that she was in pain, but that her situation probably wasn't so different from that of other people's. She had been to all the evaluations after all.

But that just made her furious. She hated that more than anything, to hear that she was just anybody, no different from others. To be told to get in the line and wait for her turn. To be told that "... .it's only life".

I think that is one of the places she would have to go in her DBT.