Diagnosis: Unknown

Some things are easier to diagnose than others. They often tell you that you need to be patient to be a patient, and they say life goes on anyway. But in reality, things are really not that way. Yes it is true you need to be patient but I've read of people who have been sick since they were ten years old and were diagnosed when they were fifty or sixty years old: They had no relief of their pain, often had much damage to their organs and sometimes they were the simplest of diseases to diagnose and treat. And yes, their life did go on without a diagnosis or treatment but some of their stories are extremely sad and most of their lives were conducted in extreme pain. They got married, worked, traveled and some had babies (some didn't due to their disease causing infertility or just not being able to provide for a baby). Some lives didn't go on, not saying they died but mostly they dropped out of college because they were too weak to study, never held a career as they were in too much pain to function, or missed out on their own life because they couldn't get out of the bed in the morning.
In my own case, I was born with arthritis and had shown evidence of the disease since before I was born as ultra sounds had shown fluid in my hips and when I began to walk as I walked with a turned in foot or would drag it. Even with my first flare when I was eight, they excused it as a viral something. I say something because after they said 'viral' they would mumble some word with an excusing flick of the wrist. It wasn't until I was about 12when I started seeing a rhuematologist. He was great and did tell me I had some form of arthritis, but it wasn't until I was about 14 and decided to switch to another rhuematologist in the same hospital. He re-exaimed the evidence and after considering my pain to be rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia nd probably a few other things, he came to the conclusion of psoriatic arthritis because my nail is clearly psoriatic: the former rhuematologist dismissed that several times. It took about fourteen years for that diagnosis. A rather simple one. It's time that doctors start to carefully think about their patients pain: Not everyone is exagerating.