#we basically didnt mention any mental issues we've been dealing with over the past 10 years

[lunarflare64]

This isn't gonna be a pretty vent under the cut. We basically dump 10 years of medical neglect and describe how our medical issues came to be what they are now in graphic detail, mind the tags, its kinda gross at some points

In a few months it will officially be ten years of chronic illness and pain. The idea of it is suddenly making us really upset. Ten years of doctors ignoring us, no one thinking to do medical testing on the kid who couldnt stay awake for more than five minutes at a time. No one questioning why that kid disappeared for an entire school day after a morning class made them walk long a really long distance in Australian summer heat. No one checking when they heard a person throwing up in one of the bathroom stalls and never leaving, unaware of the possibility of an unconscious teenager being in there. Everyone yelling at us and calling us lazy and punishing us, the conditions we were forced to accept when we dropped out for the sake of our mental health, and the slowly building up exhaustion and mental breakdown that followed because those conditions where the same things we wanted to escape when we dropped out. Throwing up and almost passing out and throwing up again and almost passing out again after every shower for all of our teenage years and then some more after that. Pain and cramps and lightheadedness and being pushed to our limits just standing in one place, moving out and finally being free mentally, but physically being worse. Mess and mould building up because we we're too exhausted to clean. Ditching the stove mid-cooking to run and throw up and try to avoid passing out. Overdoing it with baking and being too exhausted to give the finished products to the people we made them for until two days later. Trying to mass clean the kitchen with a rare burst of energy and not even being half way through before we were too nauseous and in pain and lightheaded to do anything but lay on the ground and cry. Having a shower episode so bad that we could only lay on the floor with our face in our own vomit as we continued to throw up, shaking with completely black vision. Walking getting slower and less balanced and certain, using an umbrella as a cane for months. Our first fall, and our legs refusing to hold our weight for a week straight before we caved and bought our first crutches. Getting heart palpitations so bad we went to the ER once, twice, three times, and then it was happening twice a month. That one time palpitations jumped us right into hyperventilation and we had to call an ambulance. Being in the ER for choking on meds and then just as they were about to release us we had a major palpitation episode and they kept us overnight. Walking through the back of the clinic after an appointment with our councillor and our knee suddenly loosing all feeling and forcing us to catch ourselves fully on our crutches yelling. Xrays showing nothing, MRIs showing nothing, labs showing nothing, echocardiograms showing nothing, but ECGs showing mild signs of something we already knew and yet the cardiologist refused to do the specific tests to that condition. The rheumatologist finding nothing and dismissing us as a lazy pill-seeker with severe deconditioning. We have so many suspicions about what's going on, some stuff we're fully certain about like the POTS, and others things that we suspected for a long time before doctors dismissals and refusals to test made us dismiss them too, and now they're all coming back to haunt us. ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia being the main two.

In a way we're kinda lucky, back when we first thought we had those the research and general awareness about them was garbage, but then covid happened and the population dealing with ME/CFS sky-rocketed and awareness actually exists now.

We read the ME ICC primer today. There's sections on how it appears in teenagers in there.

If someone had thought to look, if someone had thought to care, to tell us what we were going through wasn’t normal, how much of the past ten years wouldn't have happened? Would we be part of the high number of teenagers who fully recover with treatment? Or would our schooling have been managed properly, with people not pushing us to overdo it, not putting pressure on us to stay awake, would we have been able to recover enough to start treating our depression sooner? Would our suicide plan have become unnecessary?

How much more medical neglect will we have to deal with before we're actually diagnosed for the first time with an actual physical medical condition?