Some woman today actually gave me a lecture about Powerade

I'm not sure if Powerade is sold in America; if not, it's basically like Gatorade.

If you don't mind, I'd rather not go into details, but I had a massive fallout with my mum yesterday, which carried on over to today. She kept on threatening to call a doctor round to the house to get me hospitalised, I kept on telling her fine, go ahead and do it. She didn't do it. In the meantime, I sent an emotional email to the autism folks who've been dealing with me; they passed it onto a local mental health team.

Woman phoned me up; I agreed to go to an appointment at 4pm. As perhaps you can guess by the title, there was a bottle of Powerade involved. Cherry-flavoured, for the record.

The meeting didn't go spectacularly well, in part because I was bone-tired from lack of sleep and in part because I didn't click with the woman. It felt at times like she was talking to me like I was a child. She kept on arguing with me as well; not something I was massively in the mood for. For example, when I said that none of her inane (I didn't use the actual word inane) relaxation suggestions worked for me, she kept on telling me that, yes, they worked. She actually suggested lavender. With a straight face.

As for suggesting a "good movie", do these people live in the real world? I'm 40 years old, I've watched loads of movies. Distraction is not my problem; anger and depression are my problems. I can, and do, distract myself 'til the cows come home, but that doesn't stop the feelings from building up until they explode.

Throughout this, I was sipping my bottle of Powerade. The woman then rounds on me for drinking Powerade! I think we were talking about camomile tea or something like that; she then said something like, "at least it's healthy, unlike that crap you're drinking". I was like, what? She then went on to say loudly that it was full of sugar and preservatives and basically all but went "urrrrrgh!" at it.

I'd love to say I came back with a brilliant riposte, but, truth is, after protesting feebly for a couple of minutes or so, I just got up and walked out of the room with hardly a word. (Now seems as good a time as any to add that my housing officer was also there.) If I hadn't gone to the toilet first, I'd have probably left before they caught up with me. But I did go to the toilet first and they did catch up with me. I agreed to sit down, but I was still upset and lost my temper properly.

Told the woman that I'd been through a living hell with Crohn's for 15 years; that I had tried healthy eating and that it hadn't made the blindest bit of difference to my Crohn's; that it got worse in fact. She apologised for upsetting me and said she hadn't realised diet was such a sensitive subject for me. If only she visited HW...... >.>

Wish I'd thought to throw in the ileostomy there as well, and how oral rehydration solutions are made of "loads of sugar", salt and potassium.

Anyway, just what is it with people who eat "healthily"? I never make personal comments about what anyone is eating or drinking, ever. If you want to drink a glass of kale and spinach juice, all power to you. I promise not to nag you to try Powerade (or a cup of real tea) instead.

CDASinCO - I'm in the UK - good call!

Probably the biggest problem with mental health care in the UK is the short-termism of everything. Even if you do find a good person, you can never stay with them for any length of time. I've lost count of the number of people I've seen 1-3 times and then never seen again.

Occasionally I'll get a few more sessions than that - like with my autism team - but never anything that's permanent. I'll soon be discharged from the autism team; at this rate, they probably can't wait to be shot of me, to be honest. Not that I've ever been short-tempered with any of them face-to-face or even via email; just think I'm too old and too "difficult".

I'm sorry about your ex-wife. It's really not nice to be mentally ill as it is; having bad experiences with mental health professionals just compounds the problem.

We have Powerade in the States. I used to drink Gatorade all the time but stopped because it was too much sugar and it was loosening my already extremely loose poo. But other than that, no problems with it.

I got fed up with my friend last week. Most of them, when I say "I can't eat that/there it'll make me sick." just accept that and try to make suggestions for places we might eat that won't bother me, or roll with the suggestions I make. Since it's not a thing I use often, it works well. Two of them, though, don't. One is just a selfish dick, so whatever. I don't expect anything else from him. The other... I had higher expectations of. He doesn't respect me. He thinks he does, but his every action says he doesn't. When I tell him I can't eat somewhere, he argues with me. The worst part is, he's a medical professional. At Mayo. He treats me like I'm his patient, but if he ever actually treated a patient the way he treats me, he'd be fired. Plus, he's a surgical tech, not a doctor, so even if I were his patient he would still be massively out of his league.

I have half a mind to go get my medical record and tell him if he wants to treat me like a patient he should know what he's dealing with. As it stands, I have decided that I am going to eat wherever the **** I want and if that happens to coincide with where he is eating, that's okay. Anytime he argues I'm going to tell him "The needs of the patient come first."

I'm sorry you ran into stupid, but it's everywhere.

You DO have empathy....just sayin'

Wooowwwwww. I hate, hate, hate doctors that act like that. PLUS when you're dehydrated (so easy with an ostomy), my GI and other doctors here have always recommended Powerade and Gatorade over water any day.

Can I give her a good kick in the shins?

Powerade and Gatorade are pretty much interchangeable. I don't recall how they compare to soda, aside from "way better" but they've still got a significant amount of sugar. But the sugar thing was specific to me at the time. I could probably go back to drinking it now if I wanted. And yeah, my GIs have all recommended it, too. It's got lots of stuff people who aren't digesting properly need. I might try it again, now that I think of it. Dunno, I think the juices I'm drinking now are probably a bit better for me and taste just fine, so not really keen on tinkering with stuff that aint broken. Then again, I just had an infusion on Monday, so now's the best time to tinker.

Maybe you could send the the therapist here? Or the Crohn's subreddit, if you don't want her figuring out who you are. The fact that she apologized seems promising. Maybe if she learned some more about us from the patient end (as opposed to wikipedia and clinical sources) she'd be better able to help you. I know my GI staff are fascinated by online communities such as ours; my CNP has said multiple times that she would be interested in doing a study on the theraputic value of groups like this.

Well, I guess more to the point is that you were in the middle of a mental health crisis and the amount of sugar in your Powerade drink hardly seems like it should have been the focus of her attention. Sheesh!!