Hospital Chronicles: The Gaslighting Grand Finale

By Antonia at Unremarkable Me

Welcome back.

So… after the bombshell about a new “finding” on my scan, I didn’t even react. I just sat there, blinking, stunned—while the phrase “ARE YOU ACTUALLY KIDDING ME?” played on loop in my head like a cursed ringtone I couldn’t switch off.

That night, I lay in bed crying. Not delicately—this wasn’t a cinematic single-tear moment. This was ugly crying. Full-body, snot-and-panic crying. Because once again, no one could—or would—tell me what was actually going on.

I already had two adrenal adenomas under investigation. And now… what? A third? A little tumour hat-trick? Maybe a new condition, just to spice things up? At that point, I would not have been surprised if they told me my appendix had developed sentience and was plotting my downfall.

Apparently, porters came in the night to move me to another ward. But a nurse—who clearly deserves sainthood—told them I’d had “quite the day” and it could wait until morning.

Gabapentin, Instagram, and Senior Gaslighter (Missed Connections)

By the time morning came, I was mad. Not “grumpy-need-a-coffee” mad—ready-to-take-on-the-world mad. I was looking forward to a chat with my old nemesis, Senior Gaslighter. (Yes, him again.)

But instead of righteous confrontation, I was served up a pharmaceutical cocktail that sent me to another galaxy. They gave me:

• 300mg gabapentin (which I’d previously stopped because it turned me into a slow-moving extra in The Walking Dead, 2 months before. Even then I was only on 100mg)

• 75mg pregabalin

• 500mg naproxen

That combination didn’t just knock me out—it deleted me. I lost the entire day to Instagram reels and vague hallucinations of 2008 and spamming all my friends with funny videos. My brain was slush. I didn’t just forget my grievances—I forgot what year it was. By the time I noticed I’d missed my long-awaited chat with Senior Gaslighter, I was already halfway through a video of a raccoon making pancakes.

Which, honestly, might have been for the best.

Double Paracetamol, Double Panic

The next morning, I was back in the land of the semi-living. No gabapentin this time—small victories. Twenty minutes after my morning tablets, I was hooked up to my IV meningitis meds and IV paracetamol.

Except, plot twist: I’d already been given paracetamol orally.

Lucky for me, the nurse switching out my IVs spotted it just in time, yanked the line, and walked off holding the IV bag like it might explode. She looked genuinely shaken—like she’d just defused a bomb made of mediocre symptom management and paperwork errors.

Burnout, Brain Fog, and Breaking Point

By late morning, I was done. Not metaphorically. I mean DONE-done. My body was on fire. My brain was doing its best impression of a foggy Google doc that hadn’t saved properly. My nerves were hanging on by the same thread holding together NHS morale.

I was in pain. I was unraveling. And I’d had enough of being treated like a malfunctioning puzzle no one wanted to solve.

My nurse asked me if i was ok. I explained—again—how exhausting it is to constantly advocate for yourself. To keep re-explaining the same conditions that no one is trained to recognize, let alone treat. And then, when you try to help yourself? You’re seen as “too informed” or “difficult.”

Enter: the sequel no one asked for—Senior Doctor.

I told him, straight up, that someone had told me there was a new finding on my scan. His response?

“Who told you that? That’s not correct.”“I don’t even know why you’re still here.”

I just blinked and said,“Cool. Thanks for the great weekend.”

Because honestly, what else was there to say? I didn’t have the energy to argue anymore. My reserves were tapped. I still didn’t trust a single person in a white coat, and I had run out of emotional spoons and the energy to deal with this guy.

But just when I thought the circus had packed up, he returned.

He came back in, fully loaded with passive-aggression and a flamethrower full ready to gaslight me, out the door. The same doctor who four days earlier had dismissed my Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome like a conspiracy theory now resurrected it… to blame literally everything on it.

“It’s probably just your EDS,” he said, like EDS was a magic wand he could wave to vanish any accountability.

I nodded and said, “Sure. When can I leave?”

His final gem?

“You should’ve gone home days ago.”

Oh, should I? If I’d had the strength, I’d have flipped a metaphorical table and delivered a TED Talk titled “Why It’s Doctors Like You Who Are Driving the NHS Into a Ditch.” Instead, I sat back, nodded politely, and promptly needed a three-hour nap from the stress of sitting upright.

The Sainsbury’s Splat and the Zimmer Frame Revelation

And then, out of nowhere, came a little miracle. A woman from the physio falls team appeared—calm, kind, and the only professional in ten days who actually treated me like a person.

She asked how many times I’d fallen in the past year.I said 13.

Let me break that down:

• 3 dislocated knees

• 1 dislocated hip

• My two front teeth knocked out

• A dramatic wipeout into Sainsbury’s baked goods

• A catastrophic Aldi produce aisle incident

• A face-first collapse into a sourdough display at Tesco

She asked if I still did my own food shopping. I said no. Too many embarrassing encounters with kumquats and carrier bags.

“I order online now,” I told her.“It’s safer. For me. For the public. For the sourdough.”

She didn’t laugh at me. She didn’t dismiss me. She saw me. She arranged home visits, mobility support, and even taught me how to use a zimmer frame without making me feel 400 years old.

When she wished me luck, I actually felt it.

The Great Discharge Debacle

By 2 p.m., my catheter and IV had been removed. I hadn’t received medication. No discharge papers. No idea what was happening. I rang the bell.

“Oh, I thought you’d gone home already.”

Nope. Still here. Still waiting. Still trying not to scream into the ceiling tiles.

Turns out, no one had even started my discharge paperwork.......

We left. No meds. No letters. No aftercare instructions. Just a vague promise that they’d call Sam when my prescription was ready.

We got home around 4. Sam didn’t get that call until 7:30 p.m. By then, we were both half-asleep, emotionally fried, and physically wrecked. He went to collect it the next morning.

When he did? The paperwork was a hot mess. It didn’t include:

• My three seizures

• The multiple lumbar punctures

• The actual meningitis diagnosis

But it did include a brand-new theory:

“Chiari progression likely explains symptoms.”

Oh. Now it’s Chiari again? The same Chiari they waved off before? At this point, I was starting to wonder if they were just picking diagnoses out of a hat labelled “Close Enough.”

Final Thoughts (For Now)

Days Nine and Ten were less “end of treatment” and more “psychological endurance trial.” A full round of Gaslight Bingo, mystery findings that vanished like ghosts, and consultants contradicting each other like it was a sport.

No one spoke to each other. No one communicated with me. And still—somehow—I was expected to be the calm, compliant one.

This wasn’t just about being physically unwell. It was about being medically unseen. Slipping through the cracks while the system congratulates itself for holding a bucket.

I survived.But not because of the system.

I survived despite it.

And that, I think, is the real diagnosis here.