as small as a world and as large as alone

9:51am January 6, 2015

autumnxz:

rampyourvoice:

ms-demeanor:

Comorbidity is the medical term for two (or more) diseases existing at the same time in the same patient either independently or regardless of the casual relationship.

There is a lot of debate as to whether “comorbid” is an appropriate way to describe psychiatric illnesses (like depression and agoraphobia that exist at the same time) or whether labeling them comorbid might miss a different diagnosis (sometimes the presentation of multiple mental illnesses leads to a diagnosis of a more comprehensive mental illness, so PTSD occurring at the same time as anxiety may be symptomatic of OCD if certain other symptoms are also present) and perpetuate misdiagnosis. But I don’t think you’d find either a GP or a psychiatrist who would argue that comorbidity of mental and physical illnesses should be disregarded: some asthma medications cause anxiety, which should be kept in mind when you’re being treated for either asthma OR anxiety; beta-blockers treat migraines but can also cause depression.

I live with celiac disease, osteoarthritis, and allergies, among other problems. Being prescribed pain or allergy medications that use gluten-containing fillers is my version of bouncing while balancing an egg.

YES, I know that “that’s a lot to have wrong with you.” YES, I know I totally won the genetic lottery. YES, my doctors DO love me. YES, I do have actual medical diagnoses from people with MDs. YES, I’ve even considered that I might be a hypochondriac and NO, I am not actually a hypochondriac. I’m just a person living with comorbid illnesses.

So please, don’t be jerks. Be cool, be nice, be polite, but recognize that you probably don’t know what someone’s dealing with unless you’ve walked around inside their head for a while.

Cheers.

This made my social work heart happy to see this on my dash!  Great educational piece on this.  

Oh my god I’ve needed this for so long I have so much comorbidity in both physical and mental illnesses I need to wave this at all the people who say I’m faking or makihg it up nooo

So much everything about this.

This is, literally, the list of conditions that I get when I go to My Health Online and look up current conditions.  Mind you, some of them are all connected to each other and would be better viewed as symptoms of an underlying condition, but a lot of them are separate:

• Active autistic disorder
• Gastroesophageal reflux disease
• Asthma
• Status post cholecystectomy
• PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)
• Migraine
• Convulsions
• Neuropathic Pain Syndrome (non-herpetic)
• Hyperlipidemia
• Abnormal gait
• Trigeminal neuralgia syndrome
• Circadian rhythm sleep disorder
• Neck pain
• Anismus
• Thyroid nodule
• Incomplete bladder emptying
• Tendinitis
• Seronegative spondylarthropathy
• Sleep apnea [central and obstructive]
• Intestinal obstruction
• Chronic neck pain
• Atypical facial pain
• Arthropathy of cervical facet joint
• Cervical spondylosis without myelopathy
• Asteototis cutis
• Keratosis pilaris
• Gastrostomy feeding [actually GJ tube, feeding through jejunostomy port, gastrostomy for draining purposes only]
• Neuromuscular weakness
• Adrenal insufficiency
• Facet arthropathy, cervical
• Temporal mandibular joint disorder
• Myasthenia gravis without exacerbation
• Aseptic meningitis
• Benign hypermobility syndrome
• Catatonic disorder in conditions classified elsewhere
• Muscle weakness (generalized)

Then another list that’s controlled by a different part of the hospital, some overlapping stuff, some not:

• Neuropathy
• Asthma
• Migraines
• Seizures
• Bronchiectasis
• Autism
• Acne
• Complications of anesthesia
• Eczema
• Urticaria
• Dermatitis
• Incomplete bladder emptying
• Seronegative spondylarthropathy
• Environmental allergies
• Neuromuscular disease
• GERD (GastroEsophageal Reflux Disease)
• Thyroid disease [don’t they mean thyroid nodule!?]
• Gastroparesis
• Anxiety
• COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease)
• Autism

And yeah I noticed that some of those are different ways of saying the same thing, but that’s what happens when you have at least ten specialists besides your GP, and not all agreeing with each other.  

(The disagreement of late is whether I should go back down to my normal dose of dexamethasone (a steroid for adrenal insufficiency), or keep the dose the same.  My neurologist wants the dose the same because he wants to test other things on me for myasthenia without wondering whether the steroids are helping or not.  My GP wants me to go back to my normal dose because of food cravings, and weight gain even when I don’t eat by mouth.  My endocrinologist meanwhile, who is the original Aprescribing doctor, wants me to vary my dose according to my symptoms of adrenal insufficiency.)

Anyway, I’ve gotten a lot of shit for the sheer number of things in my current or past medical history.  Even though most of them have been proven through foolproof test results, or as foolproof as you can get.  

Did you know, by the way, that fat people don’t need feeding tubes?  We apparently have magical abilities to live off of our fat reserves for months on end without any food or water or medication intake at all, without also burning muscle or getting malnourished. And then only when we’re underweight (if we hadn’t died yet, which most of us would have) can we need a feeding tube.  I really hope some of the assholes I meet on the Internet never go into medicine or nursing.  That is how fat people die at the hands of medical ignorance at best and medical indifference at worst.

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