Feeling angry with the medical profession in The View from the Terrace

Just as life was going well and I was starting to really enjoy the summer my doctor has made a decision which is really hard. I've been on tranquilizers since a few months after I got married. At the time I was finding married life difficult. I know now that my husband has ADD and possibly is borderline Aspergers. He can be very difficult at times. As well as being extremely disorganised and often impusive, he is uncomfortable with people showing emotion. I am a rather sensitive person who does show emotion and he perceived me as neurotic. On top of this I was prescribed some drugs for migraine that affected me and made me very stressed.

It ended with a visit to the doctor who put me on tranquilizers. I was uneasy about taking them every day but was told I should do this and that they were not addictive! I found they sometimes helped my migraine so I opted to stay on them. After a few years I found I couldn't sleep without them. Over the years coming off has been broached but I was now addicted and always fought the suggestion and various doctors have backed down until now.

My current doctor is new here and she insists I cut down and has put me on a reduction programme. I'm not too bad at the moment except that for the hour and a half before I am due to take my reduced dose I feel terrible. It wouldn't be a big deal except for my voluntary job. The hours I do include that hour and a half before my next dose and then I have to get home as the medicine has to be kept in a fridge, so I have to take it late.

I'm feeling pretty angry about all of this. I feel the medical profession got me into this and I also wonder how much I can trust their advice. It's not the first time they've messed me up. When I was a teenager, after my father died, I was put on a kind of antidepressant that you had to avoid certain foods with. I was prescribed without the doctor even seeing me. He gave the prescription to my mother and never said about the diet. I later found that eating these foods with that medication could have caused a stroke and I think it may have triggered my migraines to get worse as that happened at that time.

Then there was the time I had glandular fever and was diagnosed with an infection and given anti biotics which reacted with the glandular fever virus and made me very ill ruining our holiday. I remember my GP later laughing and saying, 'Sometimes you get better in spite of us rather than because of us!'

I haven't even gone into the years of failing to diagnose my bi polar mother and my ADHD daughter. So right now I feel angry with doctors. I don't like how they control you. If I go to a solicitor they advise me but the choice is mine. Doctors take things right out of your hands and often get it wrong.