Monday, May 05, 2008

The Results?

My results are in, and I don't know precisely what they mean until I talk to my doctor in a week and a half. My blood counts are within normal limits, and my Lyme test is negative. My anti-nuclear antibody test shows a low titer of positivity.

When someone gets a result like this that makes no sense, what do they do? Google! Unfortunatly I don't really care for any of my options. I tried to self-diagnose myself by researching my potential options. I don't know that I would pin-point one of them though.

My options, if I'm reading my test results correctly (keep in mind I am not a doctor, nor the daughter of a doctor, nor anything resembling a medical professional... I simply googled the statement found on my test results...) are:

Lupus, Sjorgen's, mixed-connective tissue disease, Sjorgren's, scleroderma, polymyositis, and rheumetoid arthritis.

I have some symptoms from each of these, but not every symptom of any one of them. I don't think it's scleroderma though. I could easily see it being any of the others. I question rheumetoid arthritis because it doesn't affect my hands and fingers nearly as much as my other body parts, though in the last couple of weeks it's affected my hands more than ever.

I fear it being Lupus because that doesn't sound like a fun disease at all. None of them sound fun, I don't really like my options. There's no sense in getting riled up too early because I don't actually have any clue what my results mean... and any of these things will require further testing for a postive diagnoses. On that 'happy' note, I'm going to go stick my head in the sand for another week and a half until I meet with my rheumatologist again. I'll be sure to keep you updated.

2 comments:

that one guy said...

I hope all the news goes well! As someone who's been through vaguely similar things, you might also want to think about seeing a neurologist. They ended up doing all sorts of tests on me, and didn't find anything until they finally did an MRI. But we hope you get good news about all this soon!

Rebecca.Alburn said...

You have the right attitude when you say there's no sense panicking right now. God will work all things together for the good of those who love Him and you are certainly one of those!!

The waiting is the not-fun part and I hope you will feel a strong sense of peace about the tests.