Hi Christina and welcome,
I am so sorry you were told you were crazy. If it's any consolation you are not the first to have heard that or had it insinuated. Anyway, I am also really glad to hear what the psychiatrist said!
If I were you, I would take advantage of what he said and ask your GP if something autoimmune might not be going on (without mentioning anything specific) and ask him to run an ANA test and a referral to a rheumatologist. You can ask for recommendations for a good doc here in the find a doc section.
Your ANA may already have been done and if it is negative it is sometimes very difficult to get anyone moving on such things. A good rheumatologist will, however, take more into account than that.
Other things that can be important are things like photographic evidence - if you have any skin rashes or very swollen joints, it's an idea to take a photo as they have a nasty habit of just disappearing the day you see the specialist.
The problem with things like lupus is that many symptoms overlap and symptoms could be casued by so many things. Your symptoms could be linked to something like lupus or another autoimmune disease and certainly merit investigation but these things are very complex and having a good specialist is very important especially when blood work doesn't support your symptoms.
hope that helps a bit,
Katharine
I am so sorry you were told you were crazy. If it's any consolation you are not the first to have heard that or had it insinuated. Anyway, I am also really glad to hear what the psychiatrist said!
If I were you, I would take advantage of what he said and ask your GP if something autoimmune might not be going on (without mentioning anything specific) and ask him to run an ANA test and a referral to a rheumatologist. You can ask for recommendations for a good doc here in the find a doc section.
Your ANA may already have been done and if it is negative it is sometimes very difficult to get anyone moving on such things. A good rheumatologist will, however, take more into account than that.
Other things that can be important are things like photographic evidence - if you have any skin rashes or very swollen joints, it's an idea to take a photo as they have a nasty habit of just disappearing the day you see the specialist.
The problem with things like lupus is that many symptoms overlap and symptoms could be casued by so many things. Your symptoms could be linked to something like lupus or another autoimmune disease and certainly merit investigation but these things are very complex and having a good specialist is very important especially when blood work doesn't support your symptoms.
hope that helps a bit,
Katharine
