Happy belated birthday, @lymepoet I hope you enjoyed your day and it was filled with supportive people and love.
I do understand the feelings that you experience with this illness as I once had a connective tissue disease (also invisible) and suffered for 6 years. Definitely not easy having a chronic illness. Not only for the physical problems, but the emotional toll it has. And fatigue.....so hard to deal with.
I went through years of doctors and all kinds of weekly, sometimes daily torture treatments....the last appointment - the doctors wanted to experiment on me by administering chemotherapy - just kill everything off and see what survives.
This is when I had miracle of re-direction take place. Divine intervention to be exact. Someone showed up at my front door with a list of alternative doctors and I didn't question, I just trusted (what did I have to lose at this point).
Functional doctors are where the real healing takes place. Within two weeks my numbers budged after 6 years of steady worsening. I had months of vit C IV's (among other things) and the other people that filled that IV room had anything from cancer, lyme to cancer and structural problems, RA. Everyone I spoke to (given that we had hours together) improved and were in the early stages of remission. Pretty amazing. Change my life.
Functional Medical Doctors are truly life savers. I also went to an acupuncturist. Things get a lot easier once your energy improves and you're not so fatigued.
Thank you for your wishes and sharing your story. I will look more into functional medical doctors, as I am not familiar with their approach. I am glad to hear that you were able to recover and feel better.
Sometimes they go under 'integrative' too but you want a medical doctor. A lot of times you can find really good ones through your local healthfood store (word of mouth - they hear it all from people coming in their stores)....maybe even your citydata forum. When you get some names then followup researching reviews, their website, their credentials/awards.
I can promise you that this is the way to go. I was at death's door. There are things that can be done to knock lyme back and even rid the body of it. One of the other aspects of being so sick is that the environment in doctors offices are additionally depressing and scary and demeaning - NOT with these doctors - you are a human being not a number. Everything is explained to you rather than told to you, your appointments are an hour or more rather than 5 or 10 minutes. And they will offer you several cutting edge therapies that actually work. You will be a partner in this treatment with your doctor and you can also keep your other doctors if that is what you want to do - it's about teamwork. Honestly, I think this is why a lot of conventional doctors end up going into functional medicine - through their experiences with patients.
It's a lot of work but once your energy starts rebounding, it gets MUCH easier - which is pretty fast. HOPE
Please feel free to DM me if you have questions or need help navigating.