All in my mind?

It's been ages since I last posted anything to this blog. I don't know if anyone even checks it anymore. At the moment, I have to get something off of my mind, or I'm going to go insane. I think that's the ultimate purpose of blogging. A kind of release valve.

Anyhow, I have been dealing with a problem since November of 2001. My legs suddenly started getting weaker and weaker.

I went to my family doctor, who sent me to a variety of specialists. None were ever able to come up with a diagnosis. EMGs, blood work, poking and prodding and a biopsy, all for nothing. In the end, my doctor came to the conclusion that I must have what was an unspecified variety of Muscular Dystrophy. She had insisted from the day that I went to her that I needed to get on a disability pension until I could think of something else to do for a living. I certainly couldn't deliver pizzas anymore.

For the first two year, without any real diagnosis, I kept asking myself if maybe it was all in my head. Was I maybe just out of shape and being a wimp about it? Two years, I felt guilty about not holding down a job. Two years, I felt that I wasn't worth anything.

Finally, I started listening to my doctor, and accepting that there was something wrong with me, that we just couldn't put a name to it.

I had to switch family doctors a while back. In that time, I experienced an extreme tired spell. I was having to use a walker, rather than just a cane. She was alarmed when she examined me, and arranged for yet another EMG, some more blood work and an appointment with a neurologist.

I saw that neurologist today. He asked me to describe my problem as best I was able. Then he asked me if I was working. I replied in the negative, and that I was on a disability pension. The doctor then proceeded to examine me, in the conventional manner.

What he said has me back to square one. He asked if I had seen a psychiatric specialist. All of the tests he and his colleagues had done were negative, and his observations were, well contradictory. Essentially, he told me it must all be in my head.

Six years of accepting that something is actually wrong with me is now in question. Am I just a wimp, not working hard enough? Am I subconsciously just making a mountain out of a mole hill?

I have spoken with my wife, and my niece. They think that the doctor is either stupid or just plain insane, that it isn't in my nature to fake something like this, even to myself. My wife even pointed out to me that I had taken a job I had no business doing, because I needed to be doing something. Are they right, or just seeing something in me that isn't really there?

At this point, I'm ready to give up. So what if I don't know what is wrong with me? I will find something I can do to be useful. Time enough to worry about what is making my legs weak when they no longer work at all.

It's just that, now the seed is sown. There is a doubt at the back of my mind, and it's nibbling at the front.