Posted by bleauberry on February 20, 2014, at 19:30:54
In reply to Diagnosis? How do you know?, posted by Sheilac on February 20, 2014, at 15:54:13
Those are a lot of good questions. To the very last question my personal answer would be highly likely.
The thing is, there are usually other symptoms the person has, totally unrelated to psychiatric, or maybe not serious enough to mention, or the right questions were never asked, or you just forgot. Those other symptoms can form common clusters that give indication of what the actual underlying issue is. By this time in the disease process, whatever it is, it is usually multisystemic, producing a variety of unexplained symptoms ranging from A to Z. Can look like other diseases and be misdiagnosed. For example, my lyme md told me some of his patients presented with only one symptom...depression or anxiety. No rash, no pains, none of the commonly expected stuff So, you never know.
I do believe we live in an age that is doing a great disservice to our future generations of doctors. They are not seeking causes of today's diseases. They focus on giving them names, recognizing patterns that get the names, and attempting to lessen the symptoms, the whole while doing nothing against the disease itself which progresses.
I have had a unique experience, unfortunately, of having both amalgam poisoning and lyme disease, both of which look almost identical, both of which are commonly misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia, any psychiatric thing you can think of, chronic fatigue, arthritis, and in some cases even multiple sclerosis. My primary symptom the whole time was depression with anxiety, treatment resistant, ECT resistant. Sensitivities requiring lower doses. Exaggerated side effects requiring another med for the side effect. Weird unexplained things, such as pain in the foot, random swelling, a pain somewhere else next month, worse in the morning, best in the evening, anxiety one day but none the next.
Dr Horowitz, and Dr Burrascano, have lengthy questionnaires you can fill out that help get a better picture of yourself and your symptoms. I don't have a link but they shouldn't be hard to find.
Purely my opinion, you have do what you and your doc as a team feel best, or a different doc, whatever, but my opinion is the symptoms you suffer can be minimized or eliminated by non-psychiatric means. If you've followed any of my posts in recent years, you know I am talking about inflammation, infection, and metals or other toxins.
Consider this. Lyme often has a common pattern....usually 3 weeks of whatever, then 1 week of extra bad, repeats month after month. Of course the 3 week 1 week thing is not set in stone, but roughly something like that. Other infectious things might cause different patterns, hourly or daily. A particular food might be extra strong against bacteria or yeast, and cause a die-off effect impacting mood and nerves, on and on and on....see where I'm going with this? A particular food or supplement might have been particularly strong at stirring up some stored heavy metals, impacting the brain and nerves. Any of this....could look like what is called bipolar.
> I had a follow up with a foot doc today regarding a broken bone.
>
> I mentioned to him that both Lamictal and Trileptal have caused swelling and pain in my feet.
>
> He, like every other doc (family docs) said, "you don't seem bipolar, could it just be severe anxiety?"
>
> I get this a lot. Am I just a good faker or do I suffer from bipolar?
>
> Certain meds (ADs, coffee, steroids, cold medicines, etc) cause hypomania and mood changes. Does this mean that I am bipolar?
>
> I feel like I try a med for anxiety or depression and have to take another to deal with the side effects of the 1st med, sometimes leading to 2-3 meds.
>
> I'm I bipolar or do the meds throw me into a bipolar like state?
>
> I've never been suicidal or hospitalized and I can't tolerate "therapeutic" doses.
>
> So what gives?
>
> Have I been treating the wrong thing?
poster:bleauberry
thread:1060923
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20140214/msgs/1060928.html