I am convinced that there is a Biblical model for how we view the world, what we spend our time on mentally, etc. When we stray from that (most of the time for most people), we suffer anxiety, etc. And, to be honest, few people really understand the reality of psychosomatic issues. Our heads affect our hearts (emotionally) which in turn affect our bodies. It works equally in the inverse. If we feel poorly, it affects our hearts and eventually our minds.
I'm married to a multiplicity of health problems. The unfortunate thing is that they mask each other sometimes and create confusion, slowing down proper diagnosis and treatment. I hate seeing her in pain. I hate hearing her feel like nobody is on her side or maybe that nobody understands, The former is somewhat true due to human nature, but I and my daughter very rarely get grouped in in the nobody category. The latter is unequivocally true. It just is. But is hard to feel and hard to hear nonetheless.
Caring for her, who has degraded to the point that she can do very little for herself is difficult. Again, I'm not complaining, I'm just being real.
Then I have a very rare illness in an area with precious few specialists that are prepared to deal with it. To make matters worse, it is also incredibly difficult to diagnose as there is only one test that can be run to prove it and it is notoriously inaccurate. Only somewhere between 40 and 70 percent of patients show positive on the test. Then the diagnosis is left to the judgment of "experts." I learned, working in industry, that the title of expert very often is thrown around and sticks to the person that seems to know more than anyone around them, I myself was called an expert internationally on some matters, though I know the truth, I just happened to deal with incredibly rare problems with incredibly rare pieces of equipment that were built incredibly poorly, but when they ran properly worked incredibly well. Oh, I was good at what I did, sure, But that expert title only meant I could do what few others could, not that I had any real experience or indeed any expertise.
What I also know is that when it comes to the things you can't see, accurate judgments are very hard to make and almost completely objective. Much of the mental health and even neurological areas are like that. I can't cut your head open and watch things work, so I have to guess. I had a joke when I was in industry. Because I worked in programming and communications of industrial equipment, I dealt with what was invisible and mysterious to most, therefore it was voodoo and I was the witch doctor.
Anyway, because I'm in a rural area where the "experts" have precious little knowledge in the area of a rare disease that only 1 in 1 million people have, and I got tired of the poking and prodding. And like in the industrial world, when all else fails, it must be the programming. Psychosomatic to the degree that someone becomes ill when there is nothing wrong to the degree that I would have to be is incredibly rare, even rarer than the disease I have. Again, I saw it in my old life in industry when I could hook up a computer and watch the programs run. I almost always saw a real mechanical problem that nobody had diagnosed yet. That's much easier with machine "brains" than human brains. Because of all this, when seeing experts became problematic, I let it go and let the last thing that had made any sense stick. There are precious few treatments for the disease itself and none of them are cures and all come with side effects and costs of their own.
But, my primary care doctor and I could do little more than we already were. So, I bit the bullet and went back to a specialist. He's ordered the bloodwork that I'll go for on Monday and then he'll send me to an "expert" I saw 6 years ago. Now, historically, the bloodwork eventually over time finally shows positive, though 5 years ago it showed negative. And, my symptoms have settled down and become much more consistent than when I first saw the expert. But it still requires an 8 to 10 hour day away from home when other than my daughter, I am the only one that cares for my wife. Yes, we've had volunteers, but we are pretty private people and the help she needs is all very personal and intimate, so it's hard to leave her in the care of others.
We are STILL waiting after 10 months for a "simple" surgical approval for her and she can't get in our vehicle without extensive help and pain.
So, yeah, right now, one thing at a time would be nice. If the bloodwork is inconclusive, I will have to decide how important it is to me to bother continuing the hunt vs. just maintaining the status quo of managing the symptoms vs. the side effects of the medication.