When Doctors See My Semicolon Tattoo
Semicolon Tattoo
In 2013, Amy Bleuel based the faith-based totally nonprofit Project Semicolon, which chose a semicolon as a symbol as it’s “used when an creator ought to’ve chosen to cease their sentence but chose no longer to. The writer is you and the sentence is your existence.”
I got my semicolon tattoo in May 2019 on the one-yr anniversary of my stroke, and after rescuing my dog Shelby from a kill refuge in Mississippi. I’d been toying with the idea of getting the semicolon tattoo for multiple years because it turned into a movement devoted to offering hope and like to the ones struggling with depression, suicide, addiction, and self-injury — and I’d been through my share of every.
At the time I became working for a conservative employer, coming face-to-face with customers, and I hesitated to get the tattoo on my wrist, wherein many humans were having it positioned. Finally, I determined to have it put on the nape of my neck, where it might be hidden or visible relying at the period of my hair.
Due to my severa scientific problems, I even have, further to my number one care medical doctor, likely about 10 professionals, a number of whom, depending on their area of expertise, have considered my tattoo. Typically, she, or in particular he, doesn’t count on me to have a tattoo at all, so he’ll explicit surprise. When I provide an explanation for what the semicolon tattoo stands for, manifestly I’m taking a risk in revealing my records. I have my psychiatric meds on my listing of medicines with a purpose to make the assumption I go through or have suffered from melancholy, but once I explain the meaning of the semicolon tattoo and use words which include melancholy, suicide, and self-harm, the hazard for judgment will increase exponentially.
One time I was seeing a brand new doctor, a expert in Lyme disorder (which I became out not to have), and he requested if I minded if a couple of clinical students were inside the room. I nearly constantly say I don’t mind because, as a social worker, I needed to study at one factor, too. When this health practitioner commented on my tattoo and I explained what it intended, I seized the moment to teach the clinical college students: “Depression is the maximum painful illness I’ve ever handled. Out of everything I’ve been diagnosed with, depression harm
I didn’t count on them to mention something, however I wanted to cause them to suppose and I believe I did. I most effective noticed that medical doctor once, however if it’s miles a health practitioner I see on a ordinary foundation, relying on how she — and now it also includes a she — reacts to my tattoo and the rationale, I may monitor extra of my history.
Dr. P., the headache professional who treats my migraines, is simply one of the nicest docs and one of the most genuine ladies I’ve met. The injections she gives me involve the returned of my neck and my shoulder so she turned into one of the first doctors to peer my tattoo. She is likewise quite smart: She has each an MD and a Ph.D., and is board licensed in psychiatry and neurology. I felt as though I may want to agree with her and at one point I decided to reveal to her I’d been recognized with borderline personality disease. Her reaction turned into gratifying: “You’re kidding.”
I explained to her I had the coolest fortune of getting each extensive dialectical behavior remedy (DBT) and transference-centered psychotherapy (TFP) with a skilled psychiatrist who have been instrumental in my healing. At one point, I was seeing Dr. P. Every weeks, getting nerve blocks and cause factor injections, but the coverage stopped masking those. Now I get Botox injections for my migraines every 3 months so it’s like a mini-reunion when I see her.
There are different docs who’ve seen my tattoo, to whom I would never take that danger. It’s unlucky that I experience that manner approximately them. Call it a 6th sense and of venture I’m no longer inclined to take with my difficult-received intellectual health.
