Life Undiagnosed.

The word "undiagnosed" has become my least favorite word in the world.  I've joined a forum of girls who are undiagnosed, and I've realized that all of us (even if we're experiencing completely different symptoms) have to fight the same mental battle everyday: whether we're sick, insane and not sick, or maybe even a little bit of both (because some doctors like to blame whatever mental state we're in for our symptoms).  Yeah, being sick really doesn't seem like it could be that complicated. I mean, you don't feel good, you have a temperature, you're mouth tastes like batteries (it really does... and if you made it through your childhood without licking a battery... well, that's just sad.), lots of things hurt... you're sick. You rest for a few days, you get better, and you go back to doing whatever you normally do. But... it's a completely different story when you've been sick for 2 and a half years (going from one random symptom to the next), the doctors have absolutely no idea what's going on, and it ends up effecting (or... defecting) your life in way too many ways.  I'm not trying to just complain about my own situation (although in all honesty, life is extremely hard right now), but while I was reading through the stuff that all of the other girls have written, it was as if I was reading my story over and over again. Yeah, we all have different problems, we all have different goals and things that we love to do (and a lot of times aren't able to do), but we're all faced with the horrible feeling of not having a clue of what's going on with our bodies... or our minds.

I think the hardest part is knowing what to take as advice from people and what to kindly thank a person for sharing and then try to completely get it out of my mind.  For example, some people have witnessed everything that's gone on for the past few years and tell me that I've either had a ridiculous series of bad events, or there's one thing going on that's causing everything... then they go on to reassure me that even if I were to get healthy right now, I'd need a break from school just to help my body and mind recover from everything that has happened. Then, I get the people who like to try and diagnose me. Sometimes it's very helpful, and I actually end up researching whatever it is they tell me about and I usually even ask the doctor about it. Sometimes it's not helpful at all. I also get a lot of "Maybe you're just really stressed out." That's when I have to explain that when I wasn't this sick, I LOVED school. I loved everything from being in the library with friends to do hw, to staying at practice for over 3 hours, to getting distracted by all of the wonderful people that I passed on my way to class. Yeah, sometimes school was stressful, but it was the normal "oh man, I've got 3 papers to write tonight" stressed out (which I actually miss). Life became a lot more stressful when I started getting too sick to do anything at school.

Today's my 76th day of having a low grade fever. You'd think that would be enough to reassure me that I really am sick, but a lot of times I call my dad in tears because someone will mention that my thermometer might be wrong. Then he has to remind me that we tested it on him and mom (several times), my coach, a few of my friends, and even the crazy PA lady, and... nobody else had a fever.  He also reminds me that I always tell him that I feel my fever going up, and then I check it and it really is up. It's not that I want to be sick, it's more that after everything I've been through, I want a diagnosis. I actually think that if I were to randomly get better, I'd be very frustrated that I never knew what was going on. I want to know what I'm fighting through and how we can treat it so that I can get better.  It's not like I'm stuck in bed every day, I actually make an effort to get out and go to the Y to work out and hang out with friends sometimes so that I don't go completely insane.  It's just that I like putting everything I have into whatever I'm doing... so I'm really not a fan of  whatever's going on, because everything I have right now is pretty much a terrible attention span, the energy of a 90 year old, and the feeling that I'm a really boring person.  I don't even feel like I can put everything I have into getting better, because it's hard to get better when I don't know what's wrong.  My parents are really good at reminding me that right now our goal is to find out what's wrong... then we work on getting better.  This is when I need to remember that I named my blog "One Lap at a Time" for a reason.  Taking a 10k one lap at a time is so much easier than this, but it still reminds me to persevere and be patient... as hard as that can be.