Glimpse into the road to diagnosis

I have been thinking today about how important it is to keep pushing for answers when you know something is wrong in your body, despite being told you’re healthy.

I went from doctor to doctor and had test after test for years, and everything kept coming back normal. Each doctor would eventually shrug their shoulders, tell me nothing life threatening or major was going on, and show me the door. I started to think that I was being overly dramatic, that I must be a hypochondriac and that I just had to push through and get over it. So, feeling like death warmed up, I would battle my way through shifts at work, I would struggle around the grocery store, I would do the house work and cook dinners feeling like I’d collapse any second, and I’d fight to have a social life too.

In hindsight, that is just ridiculous! Before the food intolerances were picked up, I would get pain so bad that I would be bent double in the street and my partner would have to hold me up. I would get to work and faint within an hour and be sent home. I would be so unwell that I would struggle to absorb any food for days at a time. Even since I have had my diet sorted, my energy levels have been non existent, the dizziness continues on a regular basis, my muscles and joints ache and feel stiff, and I only occasionally get a day of feeling good. I can’t believe that doctors can just send you on your way and make you feel like it is all in your head when you are that unwell on such a regular basis! When I finally got a diagnosis, it was like I’d smashed through a wall and I could yell, I’m not crazy, see?!!

Doctors can’t know everything. You have to keep at it and keep at it until you walk into a room with someone who will crack the mystery. It won’t necessarily mean everything will be solved (I definitely have a long way still to go), but you can get there! Things can get better.