Background History: My Personal Struggles

For over 12 years I have struggled to find out what is "wrong" with me.  I've been to many different doctors, had numerous tests done, and explored alternative medicine.  I used the internet to try to educate myself on my symptoms and fought traditional medicine until I was exhausted.  Exhausted.  Yep.  I was exhausted.  All the time.  Fatigue, joint pain, muscle pain, chronic DAILY headaches, frequent migraines, insomnia, IBS with chronic constipation, weight gain, struggling to lose weight, hair loss, splotches on my face, out-of-whack hormones.  I could go on, but I think you get the picture.  It wasn't pretty.

I'm a mom of a lot of kids...I didn't have time for this.  I didn't have time for doctors.  I didn't have time for day long (or night long) tests.  I just wanted answers.  Answers never came.  This is brief run down on tests I've had done in the past 12 years:

MRIs

CT Scans

Lumbar Puncture

Optic Nerve Scan

Ultra Sounds (female organs, as well as thyroid, gall bladder and liver)

Sleep Study

IgE, IgG and full battery of allergy testing

Countless blood work up's including TSH, T4, T3, Vitamin levels, hormones, antibodies, etc.

I'm sure I'm missing something, somewhere.

A couple of times I thought I'd found answers.  During some tests by my immunologist they found I had almost no antibodies.  Was my body producing them?  I was chronically sick, maybe this was why.  Would my body produce them on its own?  I was given a Pneumo-Vax to find out.  They retested 6 weeks later and yes, my body did produce antibodies against those known viruses.  That ruled out several autoimmune diseases.

At another time, they found goiters on my thyroid.  That success was short-lived.  I was treated medicinally for a short while and the MD stopped treatment.  

Another time the neurologist was sure I had psuedo-tumors.  Every test came back normal.

Sleep study, normal, except, "You need more sleep."  Truly.  I could have told them that without a test!

I also found out during an MRI on my shoulder last year that I have arthritis in my shoulder(s).  Add that to the chronic knee problems I've had since youth...MRI on my right knee showed I needed surgery, had no cartilage and degenerative breakdown/arthritis.  The presumption is that both knees have these issues, but you only deal with the most painful and debilitating one at a time.  I had knee surgery in December of 2013, which ended up being much more complicated than they originally thought.  They had to "create" new cartilage for me, I was non-weight-bearing for almost 6 weeks and off work for nearly 12.  

During that time I learned a few things about myself:

My headaches are much less when I'm not working.  (Stress, lights, sleep???)

I don't get sick when I'm not working.  (Chronically exposed to every virus in town!)

I gain weight when I sit around and do nothing but eat because I'm bored for 6 weeks.  (Almost 15 lbs.!!)

I still don't like exercise and it makes me feel like CRAP.  (PT kicked my butt!!!)

I would love to be healthy.  Period.

That leads us into another post.  ;)

I will say I believe I am a walking autoimmune disease.  At this point I don't really care which ones, as I'm sure there are multiple.  I'm positive I have Raynaud's.  I also believe I have adrenal fatigue, if I haven't completely crushed my adrenals altogether!  I know I have Chronic Fatigue/Fibromyalgia symptoms and my doctor refers to it with me, but it's not recorded anywhere.  I have undiagnosed thyroid issues.  I'm sure there are more.  Sarah Ballantyne, PhD. lists 22 chronic symptoms that point to autoimmune issues in her book The Paleo Approach.  Of those 22 symptoms, I have 19 of them.  No question.  NOW what to do about it??