Do you support minor self diagnosis?
I started cracking my knuckles in fifth grade. My parents asked me why, and I told them it made the pain go away. My parents told me that I was too young for my joints to hurt, and that I would ruin them if I kept cracking them.
By the time was fourteen or fifteen and entering high school, I hadn’t stopped cracking my knuckles. The hurt more, and the relief was more. I was convinced that I had arthritis.
My parents told me that I was too young to have arthritis.
Fast forward thirty seven years when my joints take a dive and I cannot even get out of bed on some days. I take chemo therapy pills twice a week, and I have two injections of chemotherapy ever four months. I have to take two medications every day just to manage the pain the chemotherapy doesn’t cover.
This at least allows me to get out of bed and on most days it allows me to go to school. It doesn’t make the pain go away, and on bad days I want to cry it gets so bad.
The diagnosis? Early Onset Rheumatoid Arthritis.
It went unchecked for twenty five years, my immune system eating away at my joints like a buffet even though I wanted to go to the doctor from day one.
If I had gone to the doctor and I had been wrong - they found nothing - well, we would have been out a few bucks for the doctor’s visit.If I was right - and I was right - I would have been treated for 20 years.
If I had gone to the doctor on my insistence that I had arthritis at fifteen, I would not be in pain today. This would have been treated twenty years go.
Do I support minor self diagnosis?
Yes. Absolutely.
I would rather a minor self diagnose and be wrong than a minor ignore their body and suffer for 20 years like me. No one is harmed by listening to a minor and taking their concerns seriously. But that minor might be harmed for the rest of their life you ignore them.
My choice is always to listen to the minors about their bodies.
Uhhh not to be that weirdo who adds to posts but self diagnosis and “taking a concern to a doctor in order to seek treatment” are completely different things…
One is self diagnosis, the other is clinical diagnosis! Thats… sort of the point?
I feel like, possibly because of popular culture, self diagnosis is viewed as “this is cool I want that!” And less as “oh god, I’m dealing with x y t and h and I don’t know why. I’m gunna find resources to help me deal with this”
Self diagnosis is the second one. Putting a name to what you are feeling is really helpful in learning how to deal with it, even if the name doesn’t end up being true.
Half of my “clinical diagnosis” came from my doc going “I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you… uhhhhhhhhhhhhh, what do you think?” Then he listened to what I was saying and what I thought and we would explore that route.
If I had not done my own research, I still would not know what was wrong.
^^^ Someone said it.
Self diagnosis is the same process as clinical diagnosis, with the only difference being the lack of clinical testing - which is NOT available for everything.
If people want to talk about whether or not we should seek clinical testing when we can, we can talk about that. But it is a different topic from whether or not self diagnosis is a valid form of diagnosis.
