Except that now I can - I had to go for a blood test on Friday (a blood test that I'd been procrastinating for about six weeks), and it Did Not Go Well, and I have been left with my medical phobia/post-traumatic whatever all stirred up. It wasn't horrendous - I wasn't injured, there's no gory story to relate - it's just that I was as assertive as I could have been under the circumstances, and that wasn't enough. I could have done without adding to my already quite-long list of times when I have clearly stated my needs to a medical professional and they've been ignored :/
And it shows how much I've been quite upset by it that I've been intending to write this post since it actually happened; now it's nearly a week later and I still can't manage details.
To someone without a phobia, the details are not that bad. This isn't the sort of story where anyone reading it would be shocked and horrified. I remember writing about this years ago. I compared having the type of specific medical phobia that I have to arachnophobia, and explaining how fear and bravery are not binary. (The post will be in my "medical phobia" or "triggery stuff" tags - for obvious reasons, I don't want to search for it myself). What happened on Friday was like a moderately small, not-poisonous-to-humans spider on the bedroom ceiling. Not in itself horribly traumatic, not really worth complaining about. But a very unpleasant reminder to a person who has suffered extensive menacing by an entire crate of highly venomous 8-legged nasties.
I wish my old doctor hadn't retired :/ I actually don't trust the new one to mix a better cocktail of psych meds if the current lot aren't working well enough. Godsdamnit.