Hi asleep-aardvark
Your feelings are completely understandable and my heart goes out to you as you struggle with them, along with a system that doesn't seem to be making positive differences to you. So upsetting in so many ways.
As a 53yo gal who's faced a few questionable diagnoses over the years, I've come to question 'What's normal for me?'. What's normal for a majority of the population may not be normal for us. Now, I'm not poo pooing the medical world here but you seriously gotta question how some doctors reach conclusions at times. While some doctors are truly wonderful (they'll wonder about a whole variety of possible reasons for why we feel the way we do or what exactly it is we're feeling), others may jump to conclusions based on their own experience. If their experience is based on text book cases and only what they've come across in their career, they can miss what is not textbook and what they haven't experienced in a patient. The textbooks can differ too. For example, in Australia low end of normal for B12 is different to Japan's, based on Japan recognising that people with a mild deficiency were being dismissed. While Japan and some other countries have changed their 'normal' range, some countries still stick with the old range.
I agree when it comes to a quick anxiety or depression diagnosis clouding some doctors' judgement at times. While I appeared to be experiencing anxiety attacks in the opinion of one doctor, who wanted to put me on anti anxiety medication, I went looking for a 2nd opinion. The 2nd doctor ordered a brain scan that indicated silent migraines (that were setting off my nervous system). Luckily I was experiencing a migraine in the MRI machine. And while one doctor's diagnosis in relation to the fatigue and depression I was experiencing was put down to side effects for a woman looking after aging parents, a household with kids etc etc, a 2nd opinion revealed a fatiguing and depressing level of sleep apnea, which I was treated for.
Sometimes I think it's worth questioning too what the side effects are when it comes to a combination of factors. While, individually, low end of normal B12, POF and certain auto immune conditions may not present significant issues, what issues are presented when those things are combined? How do they interact or play off each other? Are they a deeply depressing combination, for example? Are they mentally, physically/chemically and soulfully depressing or soul destroying? I've found sometimes it's really important to trust what we're feeling. To be able to say to our doctor 'I can feel/sense there is something seriously off, based on how I'm feeling my body', a good doctor (medical detective) will open their mind and wonder as they look for the culprit/s. I think it's tempting for some doctors to think 'This patient has a history of depression and a side effect of depression is low energy levels. So, their low energy is normal, under the circumstances'. In a lot of cases the question should really be 'What is the underlying cause of the seriously low and depressing energy levels?'.
