Are you ever in the right place. Welcome to the Land of the Lost. Hop on over to the no starch side side and visit sometime, we have the Wheatless Band of Brothers and the Celtic Circle of the Fruit Sisters ready to try to help anyone who wants to avoid gluing their intestines with Gluten, which helps some of us. When I read the NSD side of Kickas, I knew I had found my people. (WARNING, THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT YELL AT ME FOR BEING UN-PC, IT IS A JOKE, OKAY? I have fair skin and light reddish hair, you know I don't eat starch, a JOKE, okay?)
I did it backwards. I was diagnosed with spinal arthritis of my cervical spine back in the early 1980's. The medical term they used was cervical spondylitis, I think, (I'd have to go look) Anyway, I cruised along with my obscure disease and its assorted obscure problems under the same insurance and doctors for about 15 years, until my husband changed jobs and we moved in the late 1990's. I've done years and years of physical therapy to regain and maintain use of my arms and neck, I've used and crashed off of ant- inflamatories, I am allergic to muscle relaxants, I have had repeated kidney and bladder infections, and my eyes are extremely sensitive to bright light, glare, and haze. Oh, and I don't know what it's like not to have your lower back not hurt, your sciatic nerve down your back of the leg to be on fire, and I've got nerve damage in my arms and legs. You can stick a pin in some areas and I won't feel it. My toes look funny. But since my disease was laid on a fairly active person to begin with, I do the diet and exercise maintenance routine. But a few years ago I had a very bad flare, where I was loosing use of my right leg, so I tried getting my problem treated medically...what a joke.
Since then, I've had the unique experience of having every idiot I've seen try to undiagnose me based solely on my healthy physical appearance. They don't listen, they won't do the diagnostic scans without a fight, and they get very arrogant with me when I correct them. Here's my list:
Fibromyalgia
Multiple Sclerosis
No arthritis at all
Normal for your Age
Just osteo arthritis
Tendonitis
All In Your Head, (bored, just seeking drugs, need to exercise and diet more (yeah, sure...)
Then we changed insurance, back to square one, same story, another year goes by, more doctors. I would tell you what happened at the last doctor's appointment, but I don't know if anyone would believe me, because I finally had that MRI scan report in my fingers proving what I had all along and I was not being "nice" or "patient" anymore, and that doctor looked at me and said, "I just don't see anything here that would be causing you any physical pain...." and then she basically ended the appointment. The report detailed the spinal cord compression at various areas,(blown discs and spinal canal narrowing, bone spurs, that sort of junk in the neck) the technician that took the scan told me I needed to get a new doctor, but I went back one last time because I wanted to make her look at me and tell me something like that, I think when doctors behave that badly that patients have some sort of obligation to try to let them know about it.
Went back to the family doctor, got another round of antibiotics, finally nailed whatever it was, starting coming out of the flare. Thank God I at least start peeing blood once in a while and they like that, I mean, they like to see something like that when you are sick because that's pretty obvious and easy to treat. I don't know if I've converted him yet to the concept of "giving her antibiotics makes her kidneys AND her spine better" but I will gently reintroduce the idea some time.
I've worked my [####] off the past year and a half doing my own routine and I sort of have the leg back, I just can't feel my foot very well. I just don't think it should take two years to get an MRI in the United States if you supposedly have good insurance, and I am so disgusted at the "rumor-tologists" I saw during this time I don't trust myself to make an appointment with another, there are almost no drugs I can take anyway and I can't deal with someone who tells me I don't have pain. I don't think I'm a good candidate for the biologics because of my history, but thanks to this site, at least I don't think I have gone completely off the deep end...I just accidently had a good doctor when I started.
If you are stiff in the mornings but better by afternoons, and you have iritis or problems with glare and hazy vision, and it all started with heel pain many, many moons ago, you've got the right page on your screen.
Edited by cheerful on 06/14/04 07:35 PM (server time).
