3 replies
Latest by vi_toka 2 months ago
Latest by vi_toka 2 months ago
Red flags
Looking back, was there a symptom(s) that should have prompted doctors to investigate further before diagnosis FND?
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If I’m honest, the symptom progression alone should have triggered a further investigation. Even if they were somehow 100% sure that my first symptoms were FND, it would never account for all of the new ones that cropped up over the coming few months. But it never mattered! The conclusion from the first appointment was never once reconsidered.
It is really absurd.
I’m currently working through the nursing guide you shared on X:
https://fndaustralia.com.au/resources/FND-Learning-guide-for-nurses.pdf
I should have a post up later tonight or tomorrow.
What strikes me as particularly odd is that the guide leaves very little room for skepticism. At a minimum, you would expect primary care providers to be taught the basics of how an FND diagnosis might be challenged or falsified, given that they are effectively the front-line clinicians providing much of the day-to-day care.
Instead, the guide seems to assume that skepticism itself is irrational.
That guide is utterly cruel and crazy in equal measure. I don’t know why I didn’t specify an actual symptom but for me sudden onset psychosis, assessed by a psychiatrist as not caused by a psychiatric disorder (as it comes and goes throughout the day, entirely atypical of, for example, schizophrenia), was a glaring red flag. I still don’t know the cause of it because I still do not have a diagnosis. It’s utterly terrifying to go through and when you’re already feeling so physically awful and impaired it just adds to how hard it all is. The other, which is something I only realised in the last few months, is my lack of insight into the condition. The thinking is that FND patients think and stress too much about their condition; I have periods of not even remembering I have it, wearing myself out, falling over trying to walk, getting extremely confused as to why I don’t feel well. I have no idea why neither of these things have been flagged as “possibly something else”.