What’s your diagnosis?

December 5, 2014

We’ve all gotten some form of the question from a non-medical person:

What’s your diagnosis? What have you got? What is it? What’s wrong with you?

But how often do we have an answer?

For a “healthy” person it seems easy. The answer is usually something well-known and straightforward that requires no explanation, like the flu, a broke leg, a torn rotator cuff, allergies. You give that as your answer and move on.

If you have a chronic illness, though, there’s no simple answer.

Maybe you have one straightforward diagnosis. So you answer: lupus, multiple sclerosis, ulcerative colitis, fibromyalgia, Hashimoto’s disease. You’re even kind enough to give the full name instead of saying MS, UC, fibro, or Hashi’s. Even so, the other person has no idea what that is, so they ask what it is. But do you really want to spend 20 minutes explaining it? Probably not. I usually don’t.

Of course, you might have multiple diagnoses. Maybe you have 2. Maybe you have 12. I always have to stop and think before I list mine, and that confuses people. They don’t understand that the list is ever evolving. A new diagnosis is added, another is changed to something different, and yet another is removed. And the list is long, so I usually just give the few “big ones” and I have to choose which those are at the moment. Besides, the list is long enough that it’s hard to remember. That’s why I always keep an updated list on my phone: so that I can give an accurate list to new doctors. But non-medical folks don’t want the full list, and they don’t understand it. See the previous paragraph. They don’t know what most, maybe any, of my diagnoses are, so they want explanations. But I don’t feel like giving them over and over and over and….

Then again, maybe you don’t have any diagnoses. That’s hard for a lot of people to understand. In their minds, if you’ve gone to the doctor, then you should know what’s wrong with you and you should have a name for that problem. Simple. If they only knew. Medicine is a science that doesn’t have all the answers. So maybe you’ve seen 15 doctors and don’t have a diagnosis yet. Or maybe you have one of those “almost” diagnoses. You know the type. Like my first diagnosis was “Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disease” which is just a fancy way of saying “We know you have the indicators for a connective tissue disease but we can’t figure out which one, or maybe it hasn’t been discovered yet, so we’ll just give you this label instead.” Try explaining that to someone who doesn’t even know what connective tissue is! Still, I was glad to have that non-diagnosis because at least I had a label to give people. When I had no diagnosis at all for 11 years, too many people (including doctors) thought I was making up my symptoms or that my problem couldn’t really be serious.

On top of all of that, you could have diagnoses you think are wrong. I have a few of those in my records. For example, I don’t think I really have IBS. Irritable bowel syndrome was diagnosed by multiple doctors, but now I think I had undiagnosed Celiac Disease and leaky gut as well as some food intolerances. Now that I’ve addressed all of those issues, my IBS has magically gone away. If you suspect a diagnosis is wrong, should you even bother to mention it?

Of course, you could have a combination of these. Maybe you have one or more diagnoses, but more that haven’t been diagnosed yet and others you don’t believe. That’s especially hard to explain. Sure, I can tell someone I have Hashimoto’s disease, for example, and maybe even explain what that is. Then they think that’s it. When I say there’s something else that we haven’t figure out yet, they’re confused. I have a diagnosis. That should cover everything. How is it possible there’s something else? Well, it’s possible because the human body is complex and, yes, it’s possible for more than one thing to go wrong at a time. Saying I should only have one diagnosis is like saying you can’t have a flat tire and a dead car battery at the same time. Yes, you can. And yes, I can have Hashimoto’s disease and sleep apnea and whatever-the-hell-else all at the same time.

I just got curious. Writing this, I realized that I was only remembering a few of my diagnoses, so I pulled up the list on my phone. The first in the list was one I’d forgotten about as I was writing this: PCOS. That stands for polycystic ovary syndrome. It was diagnosed ages ago, but I’d forgotten. Hence the list. And a perfect example of why these questions are so hard to answer.

Over the last few years I’ve mentioned several diagnoses in this blog, but I’ve never listed them all in one place. I never thought it was important. But I know some of you have been curious, so here’s a short list in no particular order. Of course, this isn’t the same list I would have given when I started this blog back in 2011. Back then, I hadn’t yet received at least 3 of these diagnoses, and I had others that I’ve removed from the list because I know they’re really part of something else. So, as of now, they are:

Hashimoto’s disease, hypothyroid, PCOS, Scoliosis, Raynaud’s disease, tinnitus, undifferentiated connective tissue disease, seasonal affective disorder, upper airway resistance syndrome (UARS), adrenal insufficiency, MTHFR mutation (homozygous A1298C).

How do you feel when someone asks a version of, “What do you have?” How do you answer?

4 Comments | Educating, Frustration, Isolation, Rants, Symptoms | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
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…and he didn’t run away

October 8, 2014

Usually when I feel especially bad I avoid people, even people who want to help me. Part of it is that I don’t have the energy to deal with being around people. Even talking is too exhausting. Part of it is that I don’t want them to see me in that state. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, and that’s why several people have seen me when I feel especially bad. But I can count that number of people on my fingers. The other night, though, was probably the first time I voluntarily let someone see me that way.

I mentioned last month that I’m seeing someone. And it’s been going well. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten this far into a relationship. We’d known each other before so he knew I had some health issues, but it was a vague knowledge, acquired from being in the room while I spoke to others about it. But on our first date, I brought it up and answered some questions. Since then, I’ve answered more. I canceled our second date because I felt too exhausted. Our second second date was just hanging out at my place and watching a movie because I didn’t feel up to going out. He was very understanding. We haven’t been seeing each other for very long, and until this week, that was the worst I’d felt.

The other day a lot of stress and activity caught up with me and I had a BAD day. You probably know the kind. It started terrible and then got worse. I was barely getting by. We had a date planned for that night. We were just going to hang out at my place, but I wasn’t doing well. I spent the morning reading, but that became too difficult. I spent the afternoon sitting on the couch watching tv, but that became too much. I spent the evening lying on the couch, alternating between watching tv when I could and just thinking when the tv was too much. I had emailed him to let him know that I might not be up for getting together. He told me that I could let him know at the last minute. He was completely understanding. And for once, I didn’t feel any pressure at all. I knew that if I canceled, he’d understand. This was so unlike most social situations and was a huge relief!

So there I was, lying on the couch, needing to go to the bathroom for about 2 hours but not having the energy to stand up. And I knew exactly what I wanted. So at the last minute we spoke on the phone and I told him the truth: I wanted to see him, but I wasn’t sure he should see me this way. He asked, “Is this the last time you’re going to feel like this?” and I fought my natural instinct to be vague and simply said, “No.” He responded, “If this is going to work, I have to be able to see you like this.” I was floored. He was right, of course, but still…. I pointed out that since this would happen again, he could see me like this another time, maybe in a month or two when we knew each other better, but he insisted there was no time like the present to see me going through this. And he came over.

It was a bad night. I rallied for a bit around the time he arrived, but that didn’t last long. For a little while I was able to sit up while we talked. We cuddled. He held my hand, which was all I really wanted. He asked about how I was feeling and what caused it and things like that. I explained the best I could. It was hard to collect my thoughts, and he kept having to wait while I tried to form sentences. The brain fog was thick that night. We talked about other things, too. It was a good distraction. Most of the time I had to lie down. I wasn’t just fatigued, but weak. So weak. Most of the time my eyes were closed. Keeping my eyes open was too hard. Processing visual stimuli was too exhausting. So I lay there with my eyes closed and we talked. He offered to help me with household stuff, but I told him that all I wanted was for him to be there with me and hold my hand. And it was true.

It was hard for him. I could see it in his eyes, in his face, felt it in the tenseness of his muscles. I kept checking in with him, asking him how he was doing. He just kept saying he didn’t like to see me in pain. I couldn’t tell if there was more to it than that or not. But it was hard for him, I knew that much. It was especially hard when, in the middle of a sentence, I stopped talking, had trouble breathing, and grabbed my abdomen. The pain was intense. In an instant it had jumped from a 3 to a 7 on my pain scale. It came on suddenly, or so it seemed. My guess is that there were warning symptoms that I’d ignored because of the fatigue. I wasn’t able to look at him during that, so I couldn’t see his face, but I’m guessing it was surprising for him. I’d mentioned pain, of course, but he hadn’t seen it have any effect on me. Not until that moment.

He stayed with me until that pain passed and I said I wanted to go to sleep. Then he left.

He didn’t handle it all perfectly, but I doubt anyone would their first time out. He told some stories that were probably meant as a way to make light of pain and discomfort, but just sounded like he was trivializing it. He didn’t hold my hand enough. I would have loved for him to stay until I was in bed. He wasn’t perfect, but he was pretty damn close. And he seemed to handle it all ok. Still, I was nervous.

I woke up feeling significantly better. My thyroid was still swollen, my adrenals were still struggling. I was fatigued, but not weak. I ate something for the first time in 22 hours. I emailed him to let him know I was doing better, and he wrote right back. He’s a good man, a strong man, and I was almost certain he’d stick around, but of course there was that little niggling doubt. There were the voices of all of those who’d had negative experiences of this type. So I held my breath and waited, and then there it was: he casually brought up our plans for Friday night. As if it was no big deal. As if it was assumed we’d keep those plans. And I guess it was. But what a relief.

So we’ll be going out on Friday. I’m doing better each day, and I think that by Friday I’ll be able to keep our plans to go out. But I know that if I need to stay in, he’ll be ok with that too. Actually, I think he prefers to stay in. I’m the one who’d rather go out! I’m looking forward to showing him that I’m back to the way I was when he saw me last week, before that terrible night. And I want to talk to him about everything, to answer his questions, to take his temperature on this. We all have baggage. I know that. He certainly has his, too. It’s just that mine is very visible and very hard to ignore, and he had to face it early on.

Still, it’s hard not to notice that we have a date for Friday night. So far, he hasn’t run away.

13 Comments | Educating, Expectations, Fatigue, Frustration, Kindness, Pain, Raves, Relationships: Family & Friends & Dating & Sex, Support, Symptoms, Thoughtfulness, Unpredictable | Tagged: , , | Permalink
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