3 ms·
Genuinely? There's probably some less-than-obvious test that no one thought to run, but that if someone did run would make all the pieces fall into place. I've
by spondylosaurus 2y ago
Genuinely? There's probably some less-than-obvious test that no one thought to run, but that if someone did run would make all the pieces fall into place.
I've shared this story before on here a few times: I have ankylosing spondylitis, and it took me a few years to get diagnosed, but even after I got diagnosed treatment didn't seem to help. Humira, steroid shots, none of it. All I could do was eat NSAIDs like candy, which helped in the short term but kinda fucked me over in the long term.
Then I saw a gastroenterologist to ask about a hemorrhoid, and he took one look at me and my file—walking with a cane at a very young age, HLA B27+, offhand complaints about "IBS" (note: it's not officially IBS unless you've ruled out other problems!)—and recommended me for a colonoscopy. My health insurance is decent, so I agreed, and he saw a bunch of inflammation in there. Turns out I have Crohn's, and the AS is likely downstream of that; when I started taking oral medication that isn't supposed to have any effect outside the GI tract, my arthritis vanished.
But your average provider won't see a patient with joint pain and skin problems and think "well obviously we need to stick a camera up their butt."