I find it powerful to be one of several people who have struggled with diagnosis!

I was evaluated by them, however it was not in person.

A team of doctors got together and looked over all my medical records. They wanted me to get in touch with a Rheumatologist and get back to them. However, the Rheumatologist just said, what do you want me to do? Wish you better?" and promptly scheduled me for a follow-up appointment. I could not cancel that appointment fast enough. but she also told me to see an endocrinologist. The Endocrinologist suspected a pituitary gland disorder and had me do an MRI. The MRI came up with a mass in my sinus cavity and I went to see an ENT from there. The ENT said that the mass was "highly unusual" and the surgery took about 2 hours longer than he had expected. He then disposed of the mass (which we had agreed beforehand to keep and store for further testing). Turns out, the hospital said that proper proceedure for something unsual is to store it. So I got lucky and they stored it against the doctors wishes. (My health was still bad, so I decided to look for another doctor, and a friend suggested I look into a doctor she had that cures odd/bizarre illnesses.)

From that, I got some culture samples and microscope slides from the mass. I ran it through an in depth microbiome test and found some rare bacteria in there as well as the medications they are resistant to. I was then told by my ENT after one last followup that the mass had been leaking down the back of my throat (which explained my horribly bad breath). And my new doctor surmised that those bacterias were wrecking havoc on my gut. Had to get a stool and gut flora test and it turns out that the cultures leaking into my gut not only thrived, but also served as great food for some of the local bad/good bacteria living in my gut too, causing some to either overgrow or die off entirely. So now my gut flora biome is out of balance and is eating away at the membranes of my intestinal wall, causing toxins to flow freely into my blood stream. This is causing all sorts of autoimmune responses, and is causing me to become deficient on vitamins, electrolytes, and minerals super easy and is causing me to just as easily overdose on them. It's been a percarious balance to say the least. And I have had to guage what amounts of vitamins, electrolytes, minerals, and even water I consume down to the milligram to keep my body in homeostasis. For instance, if I have more than 1000mgs of sodium in a day, I suffer sodium overdose symptoms for about 4 days. Or if I eat half a banana, my muscles, joints, and stomach will start to hurt badly and start to fall apart. I eat roughly the equivalent of 1 meal a day. And I can only drink 1 specific brand of water at about 2 bottles per day, because the alkalis or electrolytes in the water will give me symptoms. But even just adding water to my body chemistry can throw it off too if I'm not careful. Even baths have to be taken with some care.

All I can say is, I wouldn't have gotten this far if I hadn't payed attention in my microbiology 101 class.

But yeah. I was working with the UDN at the University of Utah. They said for me to come back if the data from the rheumatologist came up nil. But I have since found progress with my Functional Medicine doctor.