Living with a lasting sickness can take its toll over time. We all experience varying levels of resilience in our lives, and chronic illnesses that have a myriad of symptoms can wear you down, leaving you feeling defeated and miserable. What’s worse is when medical professionals are struggling to pinpoint the root cause of your problems and even fail to identify exactly what your illness is. Without a proper diagnosis, it’s almost impossible to properly treat an illness, and guesswork isn’t a comforting step when dealing with trusted professionals.
Why Can It Be Hard To Get A Diagnosis
As with many other industries and sciences, the field of medicine is constantly evolving, so gaining an understanding of a particular illness isn’t always easy. As talented as our medical doctors are today, there are so many procedures required to diagnose certain illnesses and overlapping symptoms can muddy the water and throw experts off track. You might be suffering with symptoms at the time of medical care, which are completely unrelated to your illness. This can take doctors down a completely different path of investigation. Drugs being taken for other illnesses could also be causing symptoms that don’t align with a diagnosis, or the disease you actually have may be so rare that it doesn’t even get considered.
Finding An Alternative Path For Diagnosis
Frustration and disappointment can lead people to seek help from other alternative sources and this isn’t always a concerning thing. As mentioned earlier, medicine is changing constantly, and new treatments and diseases are discovered all the time. There are many branches to medical research and one in particular that has recently been found to associated with improving quality of life in patients suffering from chronic diseases is Functional Medicine (FM). The aim of FM is to locate the root cause of illnesses and can be a good alternative to finding a legitimate diagnosis when other traditional methods fail.
This functional medicine expert provides a cost and time-effective solution to finding a diagnosis and aims to help you to feel well again as quickly as possible. The aim for this functional medicine approach is to look past your symptoms to find the cause so that you aren’t just bombarded with medicines and treatments that target those symptoms specifically. It’s highly recommended though that you do your own research and find the best path. After all, one type of treatment may work for someone else, but it might not be right for you.
What Happens If You Don’t Get A Clear Diagnosis?
There are countless stories of patients being dismissed as being a hypochondriac and that the symptoms are all in their heads. It is of course possible for hypochondria to be a cause of symptoms, but if there’s a chance that the illness is real, you’ll want to ensure that you aren’t being ushered away by doctors. There is also the chance that a doctor will make up a fake diagnosis so that you can have a label for your illness, although this is rare and very unethical.
Unfortunately, in many cases, symptoms can just develop further and worsen, but this will then make a diagnosis easier, albeit at the detriment to your health. There are cases in which doctors will just give you drugs that are designed to ease the symptoms you have as opposed to tackling the wider issue of your illness. This will ultimately cover up these symptoms and create further difficulties in finding a diagnosis.
Build A Support Network
Trying to cope with the symptoms of an undiagnosed illness is tough, but not knowing what is happening to your body or why you have to struggle can be incredibly frustrating. Not only that but being turned away from doctors or not being able to accurately describe what you’re going through can make you feel very vulnerable and isolated. So many people living with chronic illnesses experience these feelings of loneliness and if you’re feeling cut off from the world, try to strengthen your support network by explaining how you feel to those close to you and even developing new friendships.
When you find yourself stuck at home, unable to go out due to your symptoms, try making some online friends, especially those that are in similar situations. Online friends can be just as good, if not better than those in real life, and you’ll find that speaking to others can help provide you with advice as well as comfort in those troubling moments. There is also a wealth of support groups out there that deal with chronic illnesses, misdiagnoses, and being unable to get a diagnosis in the first place. If possible, it’s a good idea to try to get out and about to meet friends too as a change of scenery can offer new perspectives on life.
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