During the ongoing fatigue investigation I was also seeing a psychiatrist as I had been diagnosed with depression in 1998 and the fatigue that I was experiencing was thought to be (by the specialists who my work had sent me to see) as a result of my depressed state. If you had lived with being sleep deprived for roughly 35 year’s I think you too might be depressed!
I was also aware of how my fatigue from depression was completely different to the fatigue that I was experiencing and thankfully my GP believed in me and continued to support me throughout this time, if I hadn’t had her support I most certainly would have been forced to resign a lot sooner than when I finally had to weigh up my options and take the opportunity to accept a package and leave that way, rather than be bullied every time I was late or simply could not get up and go to work. I found the psych appointments to be pointless as we rarely achieved anything, that is until much later and I will get to that later in my blog.
The Red Herring’s arrival in August 2013 sent me on a major detour. I had been having random numbness in my right hand, and had put it down to the bursitis injury that I had in my shoulder in 2012. This injury occurred at work; I was “on loan” to a processing team and had been assisting them to catch up on a backlog of claims. As I was working for them remotely, I would sit at my desk and input data all day long which is when I started to have the noticeable memory issues. Instead of taking regular breaks away from the computer I kept inputting data and one day whilst typing I felt this sharp pain in my shoulder. I tried to keep going but the pain was becoming so bad that I had to stop. I advised my supervisor and was told to go straight to the doctor and of course my good one wasn’t available so I had to see whichever one had an appointment that day. After being sent for a scan I was told that I had bursitis in my shoulder and this meant time off of work, thankfully it happened at work and I was able to go on Work Cover. The injury took quite some time to heal, and I eventually made it back after doing a gradual return to work.
On the morning of the red herring’s arrival, I woke up with not only the numbness in my hand but also numbness in my right foot and left toes I knew that I could no longer blame the previous injury for that so I went to the doctor and got lucky as my GP had a cancellation. She gave me a referral to have a CT Scan and when I left the surgery and called Bensons Radiology to make an appointment they had just had a cancellation and could fit me in the very next day. At my follow up appointment with my GP I was told that the scan had detected multiple areas of white matter and that demyelination would be the likely cause and MS would be high on the differential, the report advised that I should be sent to have an MRI. I was given a referral to have an MRI and she also sent a referral through to the neurology clinic at the local hospital, I was about to have a neurologist added to my ever growing list of specialists! The MRI was booked for the 10th of September and my first appointment at the neurology clinic is what I will write about in my next blog update!
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Having a rare disorder means that the potential audience for this is quite small and specific, and that is of no concern to me as I hope to write something within this blog that will resonate with at least one person who until reading my blog, had not considered narcolepsy to be a possible reason for their symptoms.
Thanks for reading, bye for now.
WAKING UP TIRED 