Hi, I'm Samantha, 28. I'm from Southern California but soon to be Northern California.
After not feeling good for a year I finally gave in April of last year and went to a doctor. She blew me off as being depressed. She ran a test on my thyroid and since that came back normal, that was it.
I was frustrated and waited until Oct to see another doctor. This doctor told me I was nothing but a hypochondriac looking for attention. My first reaction was to scream and give up, but I couldn't do that. I needed to figure out what is wrong with me. So I called the nurse at my daughter's cardiologist office and seen if she could recommend a doctor for me. She did even better. She called and made got me in 3 days later.
This doctor finally listened to me! She did a bunch of blood tests, and several of them came back high, ANA being one of them. So she sent me to a rheumatologist, even made an appointment so I could get in a lot sooner.
He ran his own set of blood tests. Since. One of the tests he ran came back normal, but when the one doctor ran it came back high. So he decided to take some blood (or a lot) and send to UCLA and have them run all kinds of tests on me.
This was in March. Those tests show I have Lupus and Scleroderma.
I've been doing some research of my own, but I have found that I can read and read all I want, but talking to people that have been there and understand is so much better.
This was a little longer than I had planned on.
After not feeling good for a year I finally gave in April of last year and went to a doctor. She blew me off as being depressed. She ran a test on my thyroid and since that came back normal, that was it.
I was frustrated and waited until Oct to see another doctor. This doctor told me I was nothing but a hypochondriac looking for attention. My first reaction was to scream and give up, but I couldn't do that. I needed to figure out what is wrong with me. So I called the nurse at my daughter's cardiologist office and seen if she could recommend a doctor for me. She did even better. She called and made got me in 3 days later.
This doctor finally listened to me! She did a bunch of blood tests, and several of them came back high, ANA being one of them. So she sent me to a rheumatologist, even made an appointment so I could get in a lot sooner.
He ran his own set of blood tests. Since. One of the tests he ran came back normal, but when the one doctor ran it came back high. So he decided to take some blood (or a lot) and send to UCLA and have them run all kinds of tests on me.
This was in March. Those tests show I have Lupus and Scleroderma.
I've been doing some research of my own, but I have found that I can read and read all I want, but talking to people that have been there and understand is so much better.
This was a little longer than I had planned on.