Diagnosis, What Diagnosis?
We don’t always get what we want, nor even what we don’t want.
The fact is, not everyone gets a label and as much as you might not want one, to not be able to have one can feel even worse.
It’s when someone says, ‘so, what’s wrong with you’ and you have to reply, ‘We don’t know’.
So, you’ve gone into the appointments with your index cards, and told the good doctor all you can. You’ve done the diagnosis dance then one fine day perhaps, the tests come back and all they say is ‘Huh?’.
Some conditions don’t get a name, which is indescribably frustrating. How can you deal with what you can’t see?
My diagnosis dilemma
I got a diagnosis in the end, but for the time I was in limbo I really started to question myself.
Was I really ill if all the tests said that I wasn’t? Was I just making it all up? Maybe I was exhausted because I was just really out of shape. Maybe I was just over tired. Maybe, maybe, what if, what if?
These thoughts haunted me, kept me awake, it wasn’t always easy believing myself, so if there is someone else who knows that you’re ill, who’s seen it first hand, they can be a God-send.
Try to keep things in perspective. The illness is real, you’ve seen and felt how it affects you.
Even if nobody had ever heard of osteoporosis before, the condition would still be real and I would still have it, it would just be the name that’s elusive.
And that’s what it is, a name.
Start where you are
It’s true that with that name you can do a whole lot more to treat or manage your condition, but without a name you still have power.
Whether it’s because the doctors are out of ideas, because the diagnosis process seems to be stretching off into eternity or because you have a new diagnosis each week that no one can pin down, it doesn’t mean your healing has to be put on hold.
It’s up to you when you reach that point but you can make the decision to stop waiting for a name and start doing what you can to manage and treat the condition itself.
Action Stations, Angels
Speak to your doctor and see if there’s anything you can do right now to make things easier for yourself and manage what’s going on, even if that means just getting some help in coming to terms with having a chronic condition.
Although your condition might not be narrowed down to a single diagnosis, (you could even have several doctors all telling you different things), your condition might have some aspects which you can treat.
It can be that your condition could be one of several diagnoses. In that case, is there anything you could do that would potentially treat them all? It might be switching to a diet that would benefit all or most of the conditions, as long as it’s not harmful to any of them. Or it might mean dealing with the symptoms and doing what you can to make your day-to-day life easier.
No diagnosis doesn’t mean no illness.
The picture is blurry but the effects are clear.
What can you do to deal with the effects now?
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