Thanks for the responses so far. I appreciate it. I have seen 3 GP’s over the years. The first one was when I was about 15 and started having regular severe chest pain and severe fatigue. She tested me for several things, but didn’t get conclusive answers. She said the chest pain was pluresy and the fatigue was clinical depression (though I was a relatively normal teen) and treated me with anti depressants which didn’t help, caused side effects, and made me feel like it was all in my head… So I just kind of struggled with those things throughout my adolescence.
Then when I was an adult, about 22, the joint pain started and the fatigue and chest pain accompanied it. My legs and feet would swell and I would feel faint often. I got frequent infections which my body had difficulty fighting off. I have had to be admitted to the hospital twice since the age of 22 for infections that turned to sepsis.
At this point I saw the 2nd GP who tested me for diabetes and checked my thyroid. When those tests came out normal, he went over my symptoms and said, “well these are all side effects of your birth control.” And left… He didn’t have me schedule a follow up either. So I quit taking the pill and symptoms continued.
About a year later (August 2013) I started hurting again… Joint and muscle pain. I started getting these awful headaches, which I was told are complex migraines. I began getting very tired easily and having chest pains frequently again.
By October things were worse than ever. I started having days where I thought “I feel like I got hit by a bus”. Then things got weird for a bit. I started having my feet go numb, sometimes my legs as well. I had trouble moving my feet and walking. I sometimes had to drag one foot to walk. My hands would go partially numb. I started losing coordination and had difficulty using my hands. My joints were waking me up in the middle of the night burning with pain. Then I started having speech difficulties. I couldn’t get words out or form sentences. At the same time, I would get very very confused. I was afraid people would think I was on drugs.
This is when I went to the third GP and told her everything and what I had already been tested for. She told me depression could cause all of these things, and that I had a lot of symptoms that don’t really go together, which is common in depression. She said the only other thing that might cause such symptoms are certain lesions on the brain, and sent me for an MRI. The MRI of my brain was normal…
The tech who did my MRI was very kind and told me if it came out normal I really needed to keep pushing for an answer. It was nice to have at least one person acknowledge that it isn’t in my head.
So I followed up with the GP who wanted to refer me to a neurologist. I may see one soon a well but don’t have an appointment yet. By that point most of the scary neurological type of symptoms (like impaired speech) had died down and it was back to mostly the usual pain, exhaustion, swelling, unexplained nausea, etc… I talked to her some more and she decided to refer me to the rheumatologist first for testing.
Random other things that have sense popped up include my hands and toes turning blueish, and I do have redness on my cheeks and bridge of nose, but I don’t know if that’s really a malar rash or not since I have very sensitive skin anyway. I just wanted to put a bit more info about what I’ve been through lately. I feel like it could be a lot of random little things that aren’t related, or it could be all connected in being cause by something like lupus or RA.
So I guess if you only count my symptoms since the joint pain started, it would be about 3 or 4 years. It’s hard to remember when it all started since I used to be one of those people who tried to tough it out and avoid the doctors office at all costs
