Sunday, November 22, 2009

My Ever-Growing Collection

So I may have a mystery illness, but that doesn't mean I haven't been collecting diagnoses left and right. 

Some of them date back to early childhood (I'm told my first severe asthma attack requiring hospitalization was when I was 8 months old). Most, of course, were acquired in the past couple years.

But I recently tried to collect all my diagnoses on a list, and as long as I've done that, I figured I might as well share it with y'all. (Hey, I lived in West Virginia for 4.5 years, so even though I'm not a native southerner, I feel like I earned the right to say y'all. :-)
  • Severe depression
  • Intense chronic fatigue
  • Chronic pain in multiple joints
  • Idiopathic hypersomnia
  • Tinnitus and moderate hearing loss
  • Inappropriate sinus tachycardia w/pulmonary ventricular contractions (PVCs), both worsened with activity
  • Dysautonomia (primarily a "mild" form of POTS)
  • MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance)
  • Degenerative disk disease in both low back and neck w/stenosis & nerve compression
  • 1995 shoulder injury that required two surgeries (3/97 & 1/99) involving a/c joint removal, bone spur removal and repair of a labrum tear. WA L&I declared me 15 percent permanently partially disabled. 
  • Undifferentiated connective tissue autoimmune disease (UCTD) 
  • Migraines (first diagnosed in 1978) and chronic daily headaches for at least the past six months (sometimes migraines, sometimes not)
  • Costochondritis, chronic
  • Parvovirus, possibly chronic (but that's a very controversial diagnosis, along the lines of chronic Lyme disease, which not all doctors accept as "real.")
  • Tethered spinal cord
  • Hypothyroidism
  • Asthma & allergies
  • Sinusitis, chronic
  • Vitamin D deficiency
  • Iron deficiency
  • Chronic stomach pain/sensitivity from series of peptic ulcers (2000-04) caused by use of NSAIDs that left massive scar tissue in stomach
  • IgA deficiency

1 comment:

Lisa said...

Hi Aviva! While none of your diagnoses are overly specific to cover everything you experience, take comfort that you may have the world's biggest diagnosis collection! ;) Take good care!