Quote:
Originally Posted by southblues
So if there are no positive tests for antibodies and everything else is normal, how do you make the differential diagnosis?
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I think it's probably quite rare that all the antibody tests are carried out on a patient. I wonder whether we can ever be certain, in the absence of having done
all tests for antibodies, whether an illness is psychosomatic or not...
I have a negative SFEMG and a negative acetycholine. On this basis MG has been ruled out in my case.
Clearly in the last weeks I have developed symptoms that are not consistent with MG. However, since these new symptoms haven't even been assessed I wonder how they can know whether it is related to what-ever-it-is or not.
I may be a nutter. There is no way of me - or anybody else - truly knowing the answer to that question. I have no acute 'emotional' problems that I'm aware of, but then, I might be repressing them. How can anyone ever know?
I was assessed by a psychiatrist right at the beginning of my being ill three years ago. He advised I didn't need any therapy and stated that I was clearly managing remarkably well, noting that he could not identify any psychiatric issue.
A psychiatric diagnosis is a diagnosis of exclusion; I have a negative SFEMG and acetycholine so I don't have MG. But if I have a negative psychiatric assessment, that doesn't seem to count for anything! I'm still a nutter.
Sometimes I think I MUST be mad because they don't find an answer.