ALL OF THIS
also hey as someone who has been diagnosed with MS, pseudotumor cerebri, spinal stenosis, depression, anxiety, severe fatigue (and fatigue-based executive dysfunction), etc if you have questions about ANYTHING I HAVE TALKED ABOUT that you think you MIGHT have or if we share any diagnoses and you’re curious about my meds because you don’t think what you’re on is working, ask me. I will answer as soon as I have the energy and you can tell your doc that Aunt Nikki has (relevant condition) and noticed you also have (shared symptoms) so she’s been bugging you to ask about it, or that Aunt Nikki is on this other medication for the thing we’re both diagnosed with and for me it doesn’t cause the side effect we both get from that medication you’re currently on and unhappy with, ask your doc if they’ve heard of it/what their thoughts are on it (don’t directly ask to try it, that can get them back in defensive grump mode)
half the meds I’m on are because someone else I knew who ALSO didn’t do well on what I was previously prescribed were doing better on another thing, so I asked. a lot of them were newer treatments my doctors hadn’t thought of or didn’t know about. one of the more chill neuros I see straight up pulled out his phone and asked me to spell the medication I was asking about bc he hadn’t heard of it but he knew that the issue I was having with my current script was a common complaint and IMMEDIATELY wanted to know more about this other medication (I left with a script for it THAT DAY and at a follow up like six months later he remembered and THANKED me for telling him about that new medication because he’d been able to read up on it and offer it to several other patients, a few of them calling his office within 2 weeks of the new medication to let him know what a huge difference it made for them and I almost happy cried, ngl).