Clinic planning begins!

I had to go to a lot of doctors' appointments today because I've been having a lot of weird abdominal pain.  It started as just a weird "sensation" under my rib cage (my way of describing it is that it feels like something is trying to crawl out of my abdomen, it's so strange!), which I assumed was a gas bubble (it made sense to me...) and just ignored for a couple days.  Then I started having flank pain and upper abdominal pain along with it, so both my internist and my GI doc had me come in.  First, I went to the GI guy (it was actually his PA).  He thought it was definitely something intestinal, so he gave a prescription for some antispasmodics and is waiting for some test results.  Depending on how the antispasmodics work, he wanted me to consider trying an antbiotic that only effects your intestines and not everything else.  He definitely didn't do anything wrong, but I was so upset after the appointment.  It gets more and more discouraging each time I'm told that they don't know what to do.  I was so afraid that I was doing something wrong or that I was making everything up and should just ignore everything.  

We were soooo close to cancelling my next appointment, but we decided to keep it since I haven't seen my internist in awhile anyways.  I was so afraid to go, so I just prayed like crazy that God would help me to get through the appointment and that he would guide my doctors and work everything out.  I was really feeling like I had screwed things up, so I made sure to give everything to Him because I have NO idea what I'm doing.

And...

well, let's just say that it was the first time in a long time that I left that place feeling somewhat happy!  The nurse seemed much more understanding than normal (she's always very nice, but this time she was commenting on how draining it must be to still be getting fevers) and the time with the doctor was SO much better than my last appointment with him!  Last time, he gave me the "don't have any more tests done, don't keep track of your symptoms" speech.  This time, he had more tests that he wanted me to have done.  He doesn't think my new abdominal pain stuff is intestinal even though some of my other stuff is GI related.  He thinks it's muscular, but he doesn't know why I'm having muscle and nerve issues now.  My urine sample had white blood cells in it though, so he sent that to get cultured to check for kidney/bladder infections.  I was able to catch him up on everything while I was there, so it turned out that it was really good that I went!  He wants me to be tested for heavy metals, because even though he normally doesn't have people tested for them, he's decided that whatever I have is weird enough to require a weird test to diagnose it.  I am definitely his "mystery patient,"  and he usually tells me that I'm weird, a puzzle, or that I don't make sense at least 10 times while I'm there. 

He's very supportive of me going back to school though, and he thinks I need to go to a clinic before I go back (so that I don't have a repeat of last year).  Now that we have his agreement, we're looking into when/where we're going to go.  He wants me to go somewhere that does Functional Medicine, which is basically a type of integrative medicine that looks at a bunch of crazy imbalances in the body that I never knew existed (a whole lot of biochemistry stuff).  Cleveland Clinic mentions functional medicine under their integrative medicine section, but I don't know if it's actually a diagnostic group or if they are just there for people who choose to use integrative medicine for whatever treatment they're going through.  It's so confusing, and if anybody is reading this who has had any experiences with clinics, your advice would be greatly appreciated!

We have family from North Carolina coming up to visit this weekend/next week, so I'm really excited about that!  The next few days are going to be very busy!