Fatigue or Something Else?

I finally decided that I needed to visit my doctor. My constant aches and pains were not going away and my fatigue was starting to get to me. I needed to find out what was wrong and get it fixed. I had a life to live!

So I made an appointment and went into see my doctor around the first week in May. We sat down and I explained my symptoms, everything from sharp headaches lasting 15 seconds or so and causing numbness in my face to the constant fatigue and aches.

My doctor determined that it was most likely my thyroid. A likely scenario as I have had thyroid problems in the past. So we started deciding on blood tests to run. Obviously we wanted to run the thyroid test, I wanted a RA test (Rheumatoid Arthritis) run as I had been tested "slightly" positive for that in the past, and then there were a few others that she suggested. I agreed to them all as I really wanted to know what was wrong.

Well 7 vials of blood later I headed home to await the results of the blood tests. Less than three days later the nurse called me and let me know that the tests had come back and they showed that I was slightly anemic and the doctor wanted to see me again and for me to start taking a multi-vitamin called Bio-35. It was a stress formula. I figured that since this round of tests yielded nothing, she had deemed me over stressed and wanted to see if vitamins could relax me a bit and solve the problem.

Well, the follow-up appointment came and I went prepared to let her know that some of the symptoms were gone, the headaches and tightening of my chest, but the fatigue and aches were still very prominent. I was also prepared to tell her that I had good days and bad days. I was also prepared to give more blood to the cause of diagnosing what is causing the fatigue and pains.
Again I sat down with the doctor and she began reading over the list of tests and explaining the results to me. The anemia being the one that stood out as not making sense, we discussed that for a bit. Then she turned to me and broke the news. There was one test, the Epstein Bar test, one of the ones we threw in just in case, that came back positive. I have Chronic Epstein Bar Disease.

I was in shock. Half listening to what she was telling me, half repeating to myself the one devastating word, Chronic. The irreversible, uncorrectable word. As the doctor was telling me I needed to cut down on my stress and take vitamins regularly and relax as much as possible and do Yoga and everything else she was telling me I could feel the stress rising me. I have never handled being sick well. My philosophy is if I am sick it needs to be fixed, not controlled. I am really struggling knowing that I will be dealing with this for the rest of my life!

But there is hope, I have seen and talked to people that have managed to get theirs to go into remission and stay that way for a good amount of time. So there is hope, through vitamins and life changes, I may be able to change the cycle and get my own to go into remission.