Oh, good, Annie. I was hoping you wouldn't find it discouraging. I wrote to the author--I don't know if she gets this sort of email all the time or not--just to tell her that those of us who have had, or are having, trouble getting a diagnosis really appreciate her work to make her experience better known.

This may be stupid, but when I first started getting symptoms, I didn't understand even what the symptoms were, much less what was causing them, and I thought I had either a brain tumor or MS. But even then, my biggest fear was not that I had some horrible disease--it was that the doctors would think it was psychosomatic. So I sort of understand what you're going through.

Abby