How I got here: The diagnosis

Good afternoon readers.

In my previous and very first post I addressed in brief my history up until the age of 20 when my body finally said enough is enough!

At this very stage I was studying a graphic design diploma which I had begun earlier in the year and was loving it and working as a waitress at a lovely cafe once or twice a week in my capital city. It was strange because at this time before falling so ill I suddenly felt a sense of vitality in my physical self which I had not felt in years. I had stopped drinking and had made slight changes to my diet after seeing a naturopath, it seemed to be paying off. But unfortunately after a trip away with friends and 2 consecutive weekends of heavy drinking my body had other ideas and I slowly realised how serious my situation was.

After falling very ill with what once again felt like a terrible case of the flu, I took a couple of weeks off school and work, but this thing did not want to budge and the flu manifested into infection. After a few weeks and no changes I visited the doctor and I was told it was a virus. After a few more weeks I visited another doctor at the same clinic, she said the same thing. I felt half dead, there was pain everywhere! I then visited a third doctor at the same clinic by this time it had been nearly 2 months, she prescribed antibiotics, they did not help and I continued to get worse. A couple of weeks later I saw my fourth doctor in my capital city, she had a reputation for a more integatrative approach and prescribed natural remedies over pharmaceuticals. By the time I saw her I felt like my body was going to give up on me, like lead was running through my veins and muscles, I was so weak. After IgG, IgE allergy tests, general pathology she told me I was like a dodgy car that just needed some tweaking, and that I had leaky gut syndrome. She then prescribed me more antibiotics for my sinusis. My condition continued to deterioate and the antibiotics were wreaking havoc on my system, particuarly my gut. After returning to the same doctor feeling even worse, she concluded I needed to try some more antibiotics. They once again did nothing and on returning to this doctor one more time she believed I needed two types of antibiotics at once to combat the bacteria in my sinuses. By this stage I was struggling to walk and words cannot describe the pain and the fatigue. She did a swab of my sinusis after this and found no nasty bacteria whatsoever. This doctor had got me all wrong, so it was onto the next doctor! It had now been a few months of no real answers apart from IgG allergies and leaky gut, but I knew there was something else going on. It was then I consulted with another integrative doctor.  I dragged my body into his office and tried to explain my situation without bawling. He asked ALOT of questions and wanted a thorough history. Within ten minutes he said to me ‘you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome’, and my mother and I said ‘ what the hell is that!’ We both seemed to fight the diagnosis initially, I thought it was a condition where people involuntarily fall asleep ( far from it.) But when he began describing the condition I matched the criteria perfectly. What a pity, I was still hoping I had something I could just take a pill for, and the pain would all be over.

Has anyone had similar experiences with their diagnosis?

Doctors do need to be more informed about diagnosing this condition, I believe in my case if I had been aware of my condition earlier I would not be so ill.

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