I Am Tired All The Time And I Know It's Not Depression Related

[Whirlwind]

TimidZiggy,

You mentioned doctors said you don't have several disorders like adrenal/hypo etc. Are you sure?

I ask because I was told I didn't have a disease, I even consulted a expert in the field. He was dead wrong. Docs these days don't seem to have the time, interest or training to look at the whole person. If you don't have an obvious condition in their area of expertise, they just send you onto the next doc. And when they just don't know, it seems the antidepressant offer is the easy way out these days.

It is beyond frustrating.

There are some great websites where folks discuss symptoms, that is where I found a connection between my symptoms and the cause. Not 1 out of 8 docs mentioned this to me.

I know it is hard to summon the energy to sort out your health issues when you are feeling like crap (been there, believe me). You will need to advocate hard for yourself to get to the bottom of your health issues. Do you have a friend who might lend a hand doing some research? Do you have copies of your tests? I would suggest reviewing them, forget "normal range" indicators, go online and look for what is optimal.

We can't necessarily do this all on our own but its worth double checking everything to see if the smoking gun isn't already there.

I wish you well, Whirlwind

 

[TimidZiggy]

I have had my thyroid tested twice and my adrenal gland tested once nothing abnormal with any of those tests. I've had celiacs tested at least four times. Not even a small sign of gluten intolerance. It's not glandular as far as I can tell and my insurance isn't going to pay for me to keep getting checked.

 

[Whirlwind]

Yea, insurance is a maze and its a royal pain to deal with. Dang, just some of your symptoms sound so potentially thyroid related. The sinus drainage, stomach issues, tired(!), carpel tunnel, etc.

Ok, just an example but thyroid TSH is suspicious above 2.5. Free T4/Free T3 can reveal a thyroid problem with a "normal" TSH.

Sounds like you can rule out Celiac/Gluten at least. hmmm.

Ugh, I feel for you. I just went through something similar. I wish I could be of more help.

Best, Whirlwind

 

[sun seeker]

My diet is extremely poor now cause of my teeth but I'm too poor to afford a good solution to this in the moment.

Got it. I sympathize. If/when you are able, or if there are parts of this you could adapt so you can afford them, what I found most helpful both for my teeth and reducing inflammation in general was an adaptation of the paleo diet starting with lots of bone broth with vegetables, and raw milk cheese. I don't follow this anymore but it sorted out my digestion after following it for a few months.

 

[TimidZiggy]

Got it. I sympathize. If/when you are able, or if there are parts of this you could adapt so you ca...

Right now I'm about to go into debt to get dental implants cause that's basically the only thing that is going to help me. As of now I can't eat almost any veggies. I can't tell you how bad I crave salads. Even still it's going to be a month or two until my mouth is healed enough for this and then I have to go through it a second time with the top part of my mouth. I can't tell you what a nightmare it is and how much I hate people who told me yanking all my teeth would be better than getting them fixed. They are liars.

 

[sun seeker]

As of now I can't eat almost any veggies.

I meant cooked, in broth. Does that make any difference?

I can't tell you what a nightmare it is and how much I hate people who told me yanking all my teeth would be better than getting them fixed. They are liars.

Yes. So sorry you are going through this. :(

 

[TimidZiggy]

I meant cooked, in broth. Does that make any difference?


Yes. So sorry you are going through this...

Yes believe it or not depending on what the veggie is it can still be very hard to chew. I have put veggies in a slow cooker for 8 hours that I still couldn't chew after 8 hours. Carrots are still too firm, most peppers are, onions are a definite no. Even tomatoes CAN be a pain of the skin is still on. I know it sounds like I'm being difficult but trust me I WANT to eat these things and if I could have found a way by now I would have. I am also considering lyme disease at this point but I can't for the life of me figure out HOW I could have gotten it I barely go outside and isn't that just from tics?

 

[TimidZiggy]

@Pilgrim I looked up symptoms for lyme disease and I have some weird welts on my chest/stomach that sort of look like the welts that lyme disease causes but I've had this for a LONG time now it's not recent, do the welts/rashes stay or do they vanish? Do you know? I mean they aren't skin cancer they look exactly like what the picture I saw looks like but I've had them for probably like a year or so now and from what I understand it goes away after 30 days cause it's an early symptom? If I could get an appointment to see my doctor MAYBE I'd get answers but as of now I'm battling with the scheduling people who seem bent on NOT returning my calls.

 

[Ocean5]

After you make broth strain the veggies out. That way you get nutritional value from the liquid.

Also, if you have a pressure cooker. You can make an awesome broth very quickly.

 

[Friday]

insist I'm depressed, and tell me to talk to my psychiatrist. Yeah. I've done that. 100 times. The psychiatrist tells me to go see my doctor. WHY WILL NO ONE LISTEN TO ME ABOUT THIS!?

There're 2 magic phrases in medicine:

1) When you see hoof prints, think horses, not zebras. For any symptom set there are an average of 50-200 possible causes... But 99% of the time it will only be one of 5-10 things. Med students come up with the rare tropical diseases. Doctors in practice who have already seen 70 patients this week with the exact same symptoms, come up with "Oh. That cold is going around like crazy. It's a nasty one, alright!"

It's only when the top 5 things have been ruled out that they start looking into the 1%. Of that teeny tiny minority of 1%? Most of the time it will be 1 of 5-10 things. So they test for those. After those have been ruled out, then then go on to the next 5, & the next, & the next, & the next. Hence rounds and rounds and rounds of testing. Unless a patient is at immediate risk to life, they don't order dozens of tests to the tune of 10k that an ER runs when a patient is brought in by ambulance. They run $700 worth of the Top5 labs. And 99% of the time? It's one of those.

Why is your doc sending you to your psychiatrist for fatigue/tiredness? Because Depression is in the Top5 even for people with no psych history for unexplained fatigue / that's exactly where they should* send you!!!

Spoiler: * The exception to the case

* There are instances when docs are so used to local afflictions, that even when you tell them "I'm having malaria recurrence, and it's like they don't even hear you :banghead: No no no, we don't get malaria here! ... Right. But I didn't GET malaria HERE >.< ... And you really have to whack them over the head with med records, because they aren't familiar enough with it to know that it comes back. So they keep wanting to run tests. Or, other times, where you specifically fell them you've been travelling outside the US, and it doesn't "click", so they don't send you to the tropical disease specialist until after 6 months of every other specialist first! Aaaaaargh. It's not good protocol to send people to tropical disease anywhere early on in testing...unless... You've been traveling outside of the country. Then it "should" be your first stop. But even great docs miss things, and most docs are average. Which makes it far more likely that something will get missed.

*** This next step is what you're missing, and you're caught in a feedback-loop ***



2) My psychiatrist has ruled out depression, & so now we need to rule out physiological causes.

Ruled out... Is a magic phrase in medicine. It means you start the next battery of tests. Wait for those results, and if they come back negative? Move on to the next battery. And the next. And the next.

Generally, for fatigue (assuming you've already ruled out the most likely suspects; acute illness, medication side effects, severe malnutrition, hormonal imbalance, anemia, depression, etc.), that means; more blood work & a sleep study... And then consults/referrals to specialists with neurology, nutrition, cardiology, oncology, internal med, pulmonary, rheumatology, infectious disease, tropical disease, etc... In whatever order seems most likely based off of the results of the last battery.

But the reason you keep getting bounced back to psych? Is because you need your psychiatrist to hand you over officially, signing off that depression has been ruled out & now we need to rule out physiological causes, if simply saying so isn't getting traction.

You'll need to sign a waiver at both offices which allows them to communicate officially with each other, or at the very least sign one at your psychiatrists office to fax over, allowing him to communicate your private health information (aka : depression has been ruled out) to your GP.

 

[TimidZiggy]

For some reason and for years "history of bipolar" has been written in my chart. Even though I'm not bipolar, and never have been cause I don't think that's something you could get rid of if you had it anyway. But it's there. My parents, the abusive ones who's main aspect of abuse was gaslighting (and why i have PTSD) insisted to my my entire life that I was bipolar. Even coached me to lie about symptoms I had to doctors so they'd prescribe me more medication that they could jam down my throat. They more or less trained me to act bipolar because they wanted me to be bipolar, lord knows why. Apparently they also wanted me to be dangerous and psychotic because they kept telling me if I didn't take my medications I would hurt myself and/or other people and they used the word "psychotic" a lot to describe me. Why they did this probably isn't important and I'm 100% sure both of them are narcissists according to how they behave, but that's not the point. The point is, because of them and what they told my psychiatrists as a young child then young teen before I became an adult, there is this psych history written for me that absolutely isn't true. It wasn't until I was 25 that I found out I wasn't bipolar and when I was told that I didn't believe the psychiatrist and got three more opinions just to confirm since my parents insisted I was bipolar so hard.

Due to this, I have a history that cannot be erased from a medical chart. It's always going to be in there. They won't change it, I've asked psychiatrists to change it I guess the most they can do is "write a note" but any doctor can disregard that note if they don't want to believe it. My psych history until about the age of 20 is a complete lie because I didn't escape my parents until I was 20 (choosing to be homeless instead of living with them and their abuse any more). It's frustrating to me that I have something physical going on, and because of this psych crap that I didn't even choose, I can't get help. Also when I was a kid - teen my parents were very fond of telling my I was a hypochondriac even when I actually had something wrong with me. For example, I had chronic bronchitis as a kid. Any time I got it, or first started to show symptoms they would insist it was just a cough and I was being "dramatic". I told them no, it's not a cough, I've had bronchitis 3, 4, 5, etc times now I know it's bronchitis. They would tell me to stop whining and pretending like it was the end of the world. Because of this I developed asthma (childhood asthma) cause the bronchitis which I always knew was that, turned into pneumonia every time, as they refused to believe me and take me to a doctor because I was "faking" it. When I was actually sick as a kid, I was faking, according to them, but they had absolutely no problems lying to me and to doctors about psychological symptoms in order to get the fastest diagnosis possible the one they wanted. Bipolar.

This is why I hate the whole medical profession in general. Because my life was filled with misdiagnosis and down right being ignored even when I was actually sick.

 

[TimidZiggy]

After you make broth strain the veggies out. That way you get nutritional value from the liquid.

Also, i...

We don't have a pressure cooker but I have an assessment to get dental implants on Tuesday. Once they do the initial metal implants it takes about a month to heal before they can get the permanent ones in there. I also have a partial upper denture being made until I have to get the rest of my teeth out which scares me to death because at that point I'll be completely toothless and I'm terrified of that. Also I'm the type of person that gets bored of food very easily and I just won't eat if there isn't anything appetizing to me, which has also been a problem for me for months now. Not to mention my OCD because of my contamination phobia. I have massive problems eating already, getting my teeth out and restricting my diet even further was the worst idea in the universe. It also destroyed my confidence, made me paranoid, and gave me tension headaches due to bad dentures. Hopefully this nightmare will be over soon. My biggest complaint other than not sleeping is having no teeth and not being able to chew anything.