So I went to my GP recently and mentioned I was feeling washed out. I have chronic pain and 2 kids under 5, so you'd think that was enough but it's not really improving regardless of whether I'm well rested or not.
Anyway, 2 bloodtests later and it looks like I have some kind of unspecified autoimmune disease. Not Lupus or Rheumatic Arthritis but a fun third option that apparently I need to get some sort of genetic test to narrow down.
Except my GP doesn't reckon it's worth me going to see a specialist over it, largely because in her opinion the treatment for autoimmune diseases isn't worth the side effects, since I don't have one that's actively killing me (as far as we're aware).
What I do have: feet that ache basically all the time but especially when I get up of a morning, fingers and knuckles that feel stiff a fair amount of the time, fatigue, stiffness, and general irritable bowel, although there's a possibility that's related to the fact that as of about this time last year I don't have a gallbladder anymore.
I also have an entirely separate chronic pain condition that this isn't worse than. To put things in perspective I didn't consider childbirth to be as painful as a bad flare up (long story, but suffice to say it's scar tissue from a botched appendisectomy, and I had some nervous sensitisation in the area), and the only reason I noticed that I was having gallbladder issues was because I got nausea with the pain AND it was in a different spot to normal.
So suffice to say my pain tolerance is off the charts, and so I don't necessarily trust myself to make a call on whether a particular amount of pain is worth noting.
That said, the feet thing does make me limp, and I used to get bouts of pins and needles in them before the ongoing pain started.
So having written this all out I'm suspecting this is a stupid question, but if you were me, you'd chase a further diagnosis, yeah?