A tourist walks in the zoo and reaches the cage of the giraffe.
He looks and looks, rubs his head and finally says-There is no animal like that.

It's hard enough to deal with this illness without having to deal with this *******. There are giraffes and there are (unfortunately) atypical forms of MG.

My personal opinion about "conversion"/hysteria etc. is very similar to that of the psychiatrist Eliot Slater-

-"In the main the diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ applies to a disorder of the doctor–patient relationship. It is evidence of non-communication, of a mutual misunderstanding ... We are, often, unwilling to tell the full truth or to admit to ignorance ... Evasions, even untruths, on the doctor’s side are among the most powerful and frequently used methods he has for bringing about an efflorescence of ‘hysteria’… Looking back over the long history of ‘hysteria’ we see that the null hypothesis has never been disproved. No evidence has yet been offered that the patients suffering from ‘hysteria’ are in medically significant terms anything more than a random selection. … The only thing that hysterical patients can be shown to have in common is that they are all patients... The diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ is all too often a way of avoiding a confrontation with our own ignorance. This is especially dangerous when there is an underlying organic pathology, not yet recognized. In this penumbra we find patients who know themselves to be ill but, coming up against the blank faces of doctors who refuse to believe in the reality of their illness, proceed by way of emotional lability, overstatement and demands for attention ... Here is an area where catastrophic errors can be made. In fact it is often possible to recognise the presence though not the nature of the unrecognisable, to know that a man must be ill or in pain when all the tests are negative. But it is only possible to those who come to their task in a spirit of humility."

Eliot Slater, ‘Diagnosis of “Hysteria”’, British Medical Journal, 29 May 1965, p. 1399.

Thanks for finding and pointing this out---I'm sure it has been buried in the medical literature.

I'm looking at it this way: If the neurologist doesn't want to see me, then he wouldn't be any help anyway

Than ks again

Exactly, so find one that does want to see you, and genuinely wants to help.


No, this was not buried in the medical literature. In fact it is a land-mark paper, that showed the grim consequences of this diagnosis. And since then many neurologists have been trying to prove that he was wrong, and also blame him for the neglect and lack of care for such patients and the way they are being ping-ponged from neurologists to psychiatrists.

I personally think that the distinction between neurology and psychiatry is completely arbitrary, as both deal with diseases of the brain, and both know very little about it.

I think that as many neurological and psychiatric disorders currently have limited effective treatments, there is much place (in both) for finding the optimal combination of pharmacological management combined with physical and emotional supportive care as required.

You need to find those physicians that understand that those are hard diseases to treat and not hard patients to treat, and unfortunately not all are capable of mentally making this important distinction.

If you think you are too cynical then look at this patient:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RwToJB2bAE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XA0nZ2A_q8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVtm0hGYaFM&feature=channel