Friday, November 14, 2008

Chin up.

I had a really rough evening. But then it got better.
More on that later.

New symptom:
Major pain in the right lower part of my chin where the tissue attaches. I feel like I want to gouge at it with a butter knife.

*Edit: 2 MINUTES LATER: Make that BOTH sides of my chin. ARRRRGH

2 comments:

Beth said...

Lauren, if you don't feel well enough to answer this, I understand. I'm curious about your doctors' take on your condition. If they consider you "cured" then how do they explain away your symptoms?

Did they offer an alternative diagnosis? Not that a diagnosis counts for much, especially if you end up with a "wastebasket" diagnosis...been there, living with that. But what I have that they want to call Fibromyalgia is nothing in comparison to what you have...and to have nothing offered by way of explanation is just...words fail me...

Lauren Burke said...

This doctor didn’t offer any specific explanations for my case. In our first meeting, however, he did mention (and support) one of the commonly held views about Lyme. He called it post-Lyme, but these are the common thoughts among those who say it can be cured:

From what I’ve read, they call it post-Lyme syndrome, or Lyme-like symptoms.
They assume you’ll feel horrible forever because if it was really Lyme and it wasn’t caught right away, it can basically ravage your system and cause irreparable damage (which obviously contradicts their position that Lyme isn’t that serious to begin with). And yes, you’ll always test positive for Lyme, because your body has created the antibodies to Lyme (which is what the main tests actually document) so that wouldn’t even faze them. Don't ask me what they do when someone is able to culture live bacteria after "sufficient" treatment. And there’s always that dead horse of “your tests are all just fine, so it must be in your head.”

Don’t quote me on this, because I’m sure I haven’t phrased it exactly like what they would agree to, but this is a deeper explanation of what he glossed over at our first 15 minute meeting.

As far as alternative diagnoses from this doctor, there has been a little bump. Check out my second post from tonight for that update. *laughing*

Thanks for checking in on me. :o)