Well, possibly for the first time ever, I'm thrilled to have a diagnosis of illness. :)

For the past four weeks, I've had absolutely no idea of what was even wrong with me--I just knew that I felt awful and it wasn't getting any better, no matter how much time passed. Meanwhile, I was being told that the tonsilitis had passed, so I must just have some strange and undiagnosable bug which would "probably clear in time". And since it was undiagnosable, of course I couldn't be treated for it...

It was all very confusing, because the symptoms felt exactly the same to me as all the other times I'd had plain tonsilitis. But my throat looked iffy--might have it, might not--and although a throat swab was taken, it turned out that the swab was mislabeled, so it was never even tested! And then the doctor I'd been seeing decided not to bother to re-test, because she felt I probably didn't have tonsilitis...or, possibly, anything real. :( I kept thinking--this is just how I felt every other time, and every other time, I got antibiotics and I got better within a few weeks...but I was cowed into not arguing because I didn't want to be one of those terrible people who demands drugs when they aren't needed.

Well. I went back to the local clinic this afternoon and, for the first time in this sickness cycle, saw my favorite doctor there, the one who always seems sensible, interested and totally on top of things. (The one who figured out I was getting tonsilitis in the first place, last fall, back when all of the others were just saying, huh, what a lot of throat infections, oh well.) She took one look at my throat, said I had a major infection going on in there, then looked in my ears and said they were full of infection as well--and my middle ear is full of infected catarrh as well, causing all that horrible wooziness. So, I've been diagnosed with a huge round of infections...and I feel so much better, emotionally, than I have in weeks.

It's just amazing how good it feels to know I have something that's not only real but also completely cure-able. It was so disempowering and disheartening when I just stayed sick and sick and sick and sick, with no change, no reason, no treatment and no real signs of ever getting better. Now I've got mega-antibiotics and a full treatment plan, and my whole outlook has changed. Within a few minutes of my appointment, that horrible cloak of depression just fell away, because, for the first time in weeks, I actually knew that I was going to get better.

So. Still sick, but ohhhhhh, so much happier. :)