Chronic Pain, Autoimmune Diseases & Rare Diseases Check-In

Chronic Pain, Autoimmune Diseases & Rare Diseases Check-In.

☀️Not Many Symptoms Right Now
🌦A Few Symptoms But They’re Manageable
☔️Recovering From A Few Heavy Symptom Days
🔥In A Flare
🚨Symptoms Feel Unmanageable

Autoimmune Diseases
An autoimmune disease is an illness that causes the immune system to produce antibodies that attack normal body tissues. Autoimmune is when your body attacks itself. It sees a part of your body or a process as a disease and tries to combat it. This is different from a Primary Immuniodefeciency Disease (PIDD), which occurs when when you do not have the ability to defend against outside diseases.

Rare Diseases
In the United States, a rare disease is defined as one that affects fewer than 200,000 people. The prevalence of a rare disease usually is an estimate and may change over time.

Individuals can be disabled by chronic autoimmune diseases and rare diseases such as Asthma, Diabetes, Lyme Disease, Cancer, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lupus, Hashimoto/Grave’s Disease, Fibromyalgia, Celiac Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Ehlers-Danlos, Arthritis, Atopic dermatitis, Ankylosing spondylitis, Sjögren's syndrome, Psoriasis

This is a brief list, a full list can be found online.
It can be very challenging for individuals with invisible chronic illnesses to receive support. Many of us experience discrimination, stigma, limited support and toxic positivity from people.

☀️Not Many Symptoms Right Now
🌦A Few Symptoms But They’re Manageable
☔️Recovering From A Few Heavy Symptom Days
🔥In A Flare
🚨Symptoms Feel Unmanageable

@Cocosurviving, it seems to take a long time for a rheumatologist to reach a diagnosis of Lupus. In the meantime, a patient can get a "smorgasbord" of ailments, as you seem to have.

My wife had Epstein-Barr as a teenager. After the baby was born and then diagnosed with autism a few years later, her health started to unravel. Sjogrens, Hashimotos, transverse myelitis (TM), Hughes Syndrome, Connective Tissue disorder, tendonitis, and so on, all would appear and then fade out eventually. Except, it was the TM that damaged her spinal cord and left her overly sensitized to pain.

Lately she gets sudden onset of fatigue and depression after she goes out into bright sunlight. I've heard that folks with Lupus cannot tolerate the sun. At this point it's too exhausting and expensive to get all the blood tests that are required for the diagnosis.