Wednesday 5 October 2016

Undiagnosed | #SpeakUp

Undiagnosed | #SpeakUp what's wrong with me ? Why my medical problem has no name headaches
You guys know that I talk about mental health a lot here on my blog. I mean I am a mental health blogger, what would you expect? Although I might not be mentally very well, I am lucky enough to have no significant physical ailments or illnesses. But whether you do or you don't, one thing I am sure we can all relate to is going to the doctor and having a list of possible things wrong with us but not actually getting a proper diagnosis.

Whether this is short term problem or is ongoing, it's a pain in the bum. Someone who knows all too well of this is Annie. In today's #SpeakUp post, Annie is going to be sharing her experiences with having illnesses and not being able to have them diagnosed. Having something clearly, abnormal about you and not being able to have a formal diagnosis can be highly irritating for many different reasons. Not only does it stop Annie being able to get the support she may need but it makes it incredibly hard for her to explain to other people without having a name for what is wrong with her.

Whether you do or, don't go through this at some point in your life. I think it's paramount to remember and have in the back of your mind at all times because you never know when you might meet someone who is suffering and can't exactly tell you what's wrong with them. Just because they can't give you a formal name for what they are going through, it doesn't mean there is nothing wrong with them. I don't think this is a topic we think about a lot, but I'm so glad Annie chose to talk about it for the #SpeakUp series as it reminds us all to be more open-minded and respectful for everyone. 


Hello! I’m Annie, and I run a blog Annie’s Perception. Yes, I did feel the need to personally introduce myself, as this is the first time (and maybe the last time?) I’m writing for #SpeakUp project. At this point, I’d also like to warn you, that this post will contain a lot of information about me but only for the sake of helping you understand my situation. As the title suggests, I’ll open up about my life with many health and mental problems, that I can’t exactly point out to people as I don’t have the official diagnosis for any of them.

Seriously now, my psychologist “diagnosed” me as ‘odd’ and I don’t think that’s a medical term, not even in a loose sense of it. So it got me thinking what kind of special butter cake am I to be diagnosed like that. (Just to clarify! With odd, I don’t mean Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), but an actual word ‘odd,' meaning unusual, strange, etc.)

But enough about my odd diagnosis for a second and let me briefly summarize what this post will be about. First of all like I mentioned, I’ll tell you about my problems. I’ll also tell you how those problems affected me and people who interact with me, also how they can potentially affect other people with similar problems.

So let’s start from the beginning. And with that, I mean my baby state. I was born prematurely in my sixth month of being cozy in the womb I rushed out eager to face the outside world. 

Was that too graphic? Sorry, I’ll get to the point right away.

My premature birth might be the cause or one of the reasons for my odd health. Basically, I was a really smart kid who was always ahead of people born in the same year as me. I was absolutely thrilled when I learned to READ because it meant I could learn without asking my parents. At an early age, I was fascinated by nature, and I still have books that I read as a child, most of them are books with facts in it. Quite creepy at that point.

Because of my advanced knowledge for a 6year old, I was always an outsider. I was always the quiet one because I couldn’t be bothered to deal with annoying brats who couldn’t even wipe their noses in the first grade of elementary school. What a disaster. But the problem began when as a first grader I had to learn how to WRITE. Now reading was obviously not a problem, but writing, oh god that could not go worse.

Undiagnosed | #SpeakUp causes of headaches no name ODD help what's wrong with me ?
The higher the grade, the worse the problem. My handwriting is hideous, and I’m still an INCREDIBLY SLOW writer. But of course, that’s not the only problem I faced in the elementary. The second one was MATH. I can do the math, as long as there’s a problem, but I can’t calculate. Meaning I can do the problem, write out the formula and figure out how to deal with the whole thing, but I can’t do the mathematical operations without a calculator (seriously 357 – 126 is a problem).

Another problem I got at an early age, was constant headaches. 

But why am I talking about my problems? It’s because in last 17 years of my life I’ve been to countless doctors and specialists, yet I still don’t know the cause of my headaches, but because of attempts at finding out what’s wrong, they did find out that my brain is really ODD.

Basically, I sorta have epilepsy, but not really, I sorta have ADHD, but not really, I also sorta have dyslexia, but not really and other problems. Now I’m not trying to be particular because I know other people have medical problems that can’t be explained or diagnosed/confirmed.

The fact is that because of my problems and mentality, I’m unable to connect with people. I mean I can do a killer first impression, but I can’t actually maintain a relationship. Also, my inability to focus on one thing makes it hard to deal with the problem directly in front of me. 

The biggest problem of my “sorta that, but not really” diagnosis, makes it IMPOSSIBLE to tell people that I actually have a problem, and I’m not saying it because I want attention. I just want them to understand that I’m going through something that they can’t understand, neither I really want them to, so they should just accept that and not try to dig into it.

Honestly darling, telling me to just take a pain killer, when my head hurts, makes me want to rip your head off, just so I can tell you to “just stitch it back on”, or to try and focus on ONE thing, while I’m bouncing around doing 5 things at the same time…. It obviously won’t work.

I know I wrote a quite lengthy post about me, but the point is.

Just because someone can’t tell you what their problem is, or show you their diagnosis, it doesn’t mean that they do not have a problem. Of course, people LOVE to abuse that and pretend that they have a mental illness (in most cases people pretend to have the mental illness because you can’t exactly prove them wrong off the bat), just to get your sympathy. But there are people who legit have an unexplainable problem. In my case, it really annoys me to have my problems, mostly because I feel like I don’t fit anywhere because of them.

Also, people in a way refuse to interact with me, because I don’t know, I guess I am odd like that.

So next time you try to interact with people, no matter who they are… Please try to act like a decent human being and just.. you know, don’t stay stuck in your embryonic state, remaining an anus. We all have our own garbage to drag around. 

I hope you enjoyed reading Annie's post, and it has provided you will some comfort if you are going through a similar situation or has just reminded you to be more open-minded and respectful of everyone and their issues; you really don't know what they are going through right now.

If you would like to take part in the #SpeakUp series and write a post about an issue that affects young people's health and wellbeing, then please do get in contact with me via Twitter or email and I will do my best to reply to you as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading, as always X

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