Doctors :(

[blueberries]

Hi Blueberries,

First let me say that I understand that money may be tight, and I don’t know what if any insurance you have. I also appreciate what you’re saying about not living near a large city.

But there are quite a few well known, excellent medical centers spread out through the US. For example, Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, M. D. Anderson in Houston, UCLA Medical Center in Southern California, Duke in North Carolina, several in the Northeast from Boston down through Philly, Washington DC, and Johns Hopkins in suburban Baltimore. There’s USF in San Francisco, and typically in the capital or largest city in each state is a good respected Center.

Yes, it would likely be a royal pain to travel to visit the nearest one and getting the appropriate appointment would take time and might cost a lot. But where there’s a will there‘s a way. You might want to think about how to make such an appointment a reality if it’s extremely important to you, which is seems it is.

Oh, I would love to be able to just hop on a plane and do this but without winning the lottery there's no way I could afford the plane ticket, hotel room, eating out, rental car, whatever insurance doesn't cover, etc. And then to have to pay for someone else because I can't do it alone. And then there is the more emotional part of it, and that is to get me on an airplane, there's the fear of flying as well as the terrible motion sickness I get (I get motion sick in a rocking chair). As important as it is to me to get a proper diagnosis, it's not practical. I wish it were. A friend of mine is always suggesting this to me, but unfortunately it wouldn't work out.

 

[mollyfin]

Well if you have chiari malformation that'd explain a lot of things, but have you seen a rheumatologist? Muscle/joint pain and rashes could be autoimmune. (I mean other symptoms as well but those specifically.) Absolutely things can be anxiety or just one of those things, and autoimmune issues can be difficult to diagnose, but it might be worth a shot.