Welcome everyone again.  It’s now Day 18 of the ’30 Days, 30 Posts Challenge’, and a new prompt to challenge us all Health Bloggers!  Today’s prompt reads:

Open a Book…Choose a book and open it to a random page  and point to a phrase.   Use that phrase to get you writing today.  Free write for 15-20 minutes without stopping.

Have been trying to decide which book I should choose for today’s challenge.  I was going to opt for a book by one of my favourite authors Jodi Picoult.  However, as I blog about my health condition, I thought it may be easier to choose a ‘Health related’ book to stay on topic of my blog.  Therefore, I finally decided on a book entitled ‘Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired: Living with Invisible Chronic Illness’.

The book is said to give hope and effective coping strategies for those suffering with invisible chronic illnesses and making them aware of their attitudes towards their illness and how to communicate effectively with family, friends as well as their doctors in a way that meets the needs of the individual.  How to random choose a page, and to pick a sentence…

So, I randomly fell upon page 29 and choose the following sentence:

Invisible diseases can wipe out one’s self-confidence and peace and in their place leave painful doubts about one’s own sense of what is real.

Now that I have chosen at random that passage, I feel that sentence is one that I can relate to and one that could have been written about me.  After the dizziness started at age 8, I went through years of trying to search for a diagnosis, going through many blood tests to determine the origin of the dreaded dizziness.

When no cause could be determined, is when the doctor used the “it’s all in your head” card, and describing the root cause of the dizziness as being due to an anxiety disorder.  As a result, it made me feel that I was the one at fault, to be blamed for my problems.  As the dizziness slowly progressed and became so bad that I was unable to leave the house unless I was accompanied by another person, I was referred to the local Community Mental Health Team.  And so began endless classes and other sessions of Anxiety Management Techniques, Relaxation and Breathing Exercises to lessen the anxiety I felt when in certain situations and to lessen the dizziness I felt.

I did put all these techniques and other tips that I learnt into practice, and felt I certainly did feel less anxious when going out, although I still needed to be someone.  However, I found that the dizziness that I experienced did not lessen at all.

Therefore, to reiterate the sentence from the book that I had chosen – it really dented my self-confidence and made me doubt myself, “was the dizziness that I felt real, or am I simply imagining it? Am I really experiencing it?”.

After a time, I did begin to even doubt if the doctors were correct in their diagnosis and felt that perhaps the dizziness was caused by something other than anxiety.  However, I did not have the self-confidence to bring up my concerns with the doctors, and felt that perhaps that I was being a hypochondriac.  After all they are the professionals and know a lot more than myself.

It wasn’t until another healthcare professional I talked during a course I was participating in, also voiced her concerns about the dizziness, and talked about possible neurological causes.  Hearing this from a ‘professional’ than gave me that push to go and see a doctor about getting the ball rolling for a referral to a neurologist.  The doctor whom I saw however was unconvinced that I needed to see a neurologist – sometimes if you have been branded as a patient with ‘psychological problem’ then it is hard for you to be taken seriously.  It helped that I also had a parent in my corner acting as an advocate.  And then finally I got the referral I needed to see a neurological consultant…

And as they say, the rest is history!!….

I hoped you enjoy today’s post…Again, please feel free to comment…