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Originally Posted by pennymellor CFS is a form of somatisation disorder, one of the medically unexplained symptoms disorders. Why in a fee-for-service system would any avaricious physician want to neglect any diagnostic tests? |
Oh, they tested me! For months, I felt like a human pin cushion. But, looking back, I think that their attempts were just half hearted. I had Kaiser insuranse, at the time and they just passed me from doctor to doctor. Almost every doctor responded the same way, because they didn't believe in CFS. They would ask my mom to leave the room and then I would get the 20 questions. Are you depressed, Are you having trouble at home or school, is there some reason that you want to be missing school? Etc. I was in the middle of volleyball season and trying to graduate with flying colors. Why would I want to miss school? They tested me for mono, hypoglycemia, epstein bar, hyperglycemia, but no adrenal or thyroid or heavy metals, or any of the things that my doctor is now testing me for.
We ended up paying out of pocket to see a very well known CFS specialist who worked with Dr. Peterson (who in our neck of the woods, anyway was the doctor to go to). He had me fill out a 20-25 pg. questionaire and performed this unknown test, charged us $1500.00 and told me that I had CFS. I was happy to know that there was a name for what I had, but unhappy that there was apparently very little that I could do about it. I wished that I at least knew what was going on in my body that would cause such affects. My mom put me on the candida diet, we tried chinese herbs, we tested foe allergies. I'm not a doctor and I'm not claiming to know more than a doctor. I have found however that my adrenal gland is functioning at half of normal function. And that I have hypothyroidism. I am thinking of visiting a hormone specialist, because the more reading that I do (and I've been researching now for 12 years) the more I see a similar set of symptoms for adrenal and thyroid failure and candida ("The Yeast Connection"). It looks to me as if we've got this circle of things that effect each other (hormones, immune system, yeast, heavy metals, etc.) and if one of those things is severly impaired it affects everything else. And so I am testing these things one at a time to see what exactly is causing my adrenal and thyroid glands to fail. I don't know if CFS is a entity all in itself or not. And, I certainly don't want to come across as one of those people who invalidate CFS patients. I just want to explore other avenues and make sure that my syptoms aren't being caused by something that can be treated. I don't want to have a disease that I can do nothing about. And, while there are other options out there to explore, I won't be satisfied with the CFS explanation. Please understand, I have symptoms like you do and I have a need to find answers.