#diagnostic problems

This is a physical health post, which obviously has an affect on my mental health but I talk about that all the time, its nothing new.

The last time I remember feeling physically normal was last spring, in 2019. By the summer, I was starting to have issues with fatigue. It started as a heavy feeling in my legs and progressed to full body fatigue by winter. I thought I was just depressed... nothing new, right?

Around the time I married my spouse at the end of February, I had developed a heavy cough with difficulty breathing and wheezing upon exertion. This was also around the initial outbreak of Covid in the states. Uh oh, that's not good. Maybe I caught covid?

Nope.

I scheduled a telemedicine appointment after the negative covid results and the doc thought it was a flare from my childhood asthma that had progressed to acute bronchitis. That makes sense. Prescribed a course of oral corticosteroids and a rescue inhaler for future flares.

A month later I was in my gp's office with exacerbated symptoms again, they came roaring back after the steroids had left my system. Prescribed a daily double dose steroid inhaler and another course of corticosteroids.

Three week follow-up and I was doing ok, able to mild exert without becoming symptomatic but I was pretty sure marathons weren't in my future anyway.

If I can't breathe I can't run, but that's ok at this point.

By now it was July and we were in full swing with our summer plans. A family wedding, camping, and preparing to start the remodeling of the other half of the bathroom.

I felt lethargic pretty much all the time but was mostly able to push through. Come the middle of July, the Family wedding, I got physically ill in the bridal suite. I thought I had indulged in too much wine, but I continued to vomit into the night. A few days after the wedding, I got ill again. This has continued now, about once or twice a week for two months now.

August brought another camping trip, a short one at a state park nearby. I had another massive asthmatic flare during that trip and haven't ever fully recovered.

Now during the last two months, as I've just progressed worse and worse, I have noticed a myriad of other symptoms pop up. Gastrointestinal distress,- almost to the point of being hospitalized for dehydration, repetitive stabbing pain in certain parts of my body, worsening wheezing while laying on one side but not the other, unintentional weight loss to the tune of ~30lbs since May, frequent low-grade fevers, the list goes on.

I know what you're thinking at this point... "Amanda, why don't you go to the doctor??" Been there, done that. I've had abdominal, pelvic, and transvaginal ultrasounds and just days ago, a CT scan. The only findings that are worth noting are a complex thick-walled cyst with thick septations on my left ovary and an unknown cystic structure on my inferior bladder and some unknown deposits in my liver. My bloodwork, however, has come back questionable so I have an appointment with a GI doc this week and and oncologist next week. Cancer is in the ring, folks, but so are a lot of things like crohn's or lupus.

What I do know, since we are still in the beginning stages of finding out what's wrong, is that I am going to have to fight and be my own advocate because the push back I've received from these doctors about exploring other, less common diagnoses is ridiculous. No one listens to me when I tell them these are not normal symptoms for me, that all this is new and progressing. I've have to fight for referrals and certain tests, like bloodwork. God forbid I have an aggressive cancer like ovarian cancer, and because someone made me wait for a second ultrasound in three months, I've gone from stage I to stage IV (I don't know if it's ovarian cancer but it's a possibility). I don't understand wanting to drag your feet with such severe constitutional symptoms.