WE HAVE A DIAGNOSIS!

I actually had a doctor today who pronounced a diagnosis - Post Viral Chronic Fatigue. The good news... it gets better. The bad news... it can takes months or it can take years. 

He is optimistic that I will continue to get better. He has even taken me on as a patient... so I will do a followup in October. He is hoping that by October I can be active by an hour or two more than I am now... so hurray. I keep having good luck with Emory doctors - my cardiologists and this guy (infectious diseases) have been great. He really took a lot of time to talk to me, look over my records, consider diagnosis (Parvo) then rule them our based on other things he saw. He also ran a blood test to check for cortisol levels because he has some other patients with similar cases whose cortisol levels were off.

So... unfortunately there is not a lot that I can do other than what I am already doing:
1) Get plenty of help.
2) Gradually increase my activity level while not pushing to exhaustion
3) Try to work in some exercise so I don't get de-conditioned

He said, "A year from now this will all be a bad memory" with such confidence that I felt the first ray of hope in weeks.

[oh... and for all of my family who is reading this and wondering why I didn't call? The appt. was downtown, I had to walk quite a bit, and now I am DEAD tired. I will call later this weekend.]

3 comments:

Joe Ganci said...

That's great, Katya. The worst thing is "not knowing" and this news isn't all that bad! Did you mean "get plenty of rest" or did you really mean "get plenty of help?" They both make sense to me! :-)

Anonymous said...

Well,
that is an improvement in my mind - at least now you only have to go to one doctor for a year, not to dozen of them in a week.
Olga

Tina in CT said...

Very good news. Guess now you'll just have to rest a lot, have good help at home for the house and the boys and be patient.