Celarnor's Journal

I've started paying for internet access out of my savings account now, which required a credit card. Since I didn't have one, I had to find a prepaid credit option and finance that out of my savings, and all of this from school looking over my shoulder to make sure no one's watching me.

I found my old pediatrician a few days ago and described what I was going through to him. I told him that everyone else had just told me the pain and exhaustion were coming from depression, and he responded with "...that doesn't go with depression, not you're describing." After doing some other things, he told me that I probably either have fibromyalgia or some form of rapidly advancing arthritis, and referred me to a rheumatologist. I asked him to tell the same thing to my parents. They sounded concerned and caring over the phone, but in a later conversation today when I asked if he could go into the library and get the books on a list I handed them, the conversation went something like this:

Father- "Why can't you go down to the library here and do it?"

Me-"Because I have school Monday..."

Mother- "Right, you have to go to school Monday."

"I can't spend four hours at a library today and then go to school for six tomorrow..."

Father- *Laughs* (Yes, that's right. He laughed at me.)

...then, of course, I was dreadfully afraid that I wasn't going to be able to finish the remaining 3 pages of this 15 page paper, so of course, I've stayed up until roughly about now to do that. My father came in and banged on my door, yelling at me to go to bed. That conversation, somewhat longer because it was another one of those 'trying to convince them there's something wrong with me' conversations, went like this:

"... I have to get this work done."

Father- "Do it tomorrow." (At this point, I'm almost crying in pain because of the pain I'm in from staying up for so long...my fingers are literally in pain from typing this, but I have to get it out.)

"I don't want to bring myself to this level of pain tomorrow, I want to get my work done so I can rest."

Father- "Fine, go to bed, do it tomorrow."

"I don't want to, I want to rest..."

Father- "You're sitting in front of your computer on the internet, you're obviously doing something you shouldn't?"

"...Gale Research Databases?"

Father- "You've got your door closed, you're doing something you shouldn't be."

"...I don't want the light to seep into my room, it aggravates my migraine and I'm out of sumatriptan, I can't get any more for another two weeks--"

Father- "Oh, that's just another bullshit excuse to get out of school."

"I'm trying to GET to school!"

Father- "That's not what you did this morning."

"I threw up yesterday, three times!"

Father- "Fine, you're not going anyway, then don't do your work."

"I still have to do my work, even if I'm not there."

The conversation went on for a while like that, and he eventually left...I could hear them talking about it because they wouldn't let me close the door, and they were talking about how it was just 'an excuse'.

I can understand where they're coming from, up until now. At this point, I'm guessing they think I'm faking it well enough to get a doctor to believe me. They, of course, believe they know me better, and despite the fact that I've never done anything like this before in my life--I mean, sure I've been sick for one or two weeks at a time before, but never for a month--they just believe I'm trying to get away from school for some reason.

I started to wonder where this idea that I was avoiding something might have come from, so I dragged out my mother's email and found something from my guidance counselor saying that I was probably just 'avoiding school' or 'avoiding graduation', and that she 'sees this all the time' (Don't ask me why I would be avoiding graduation and getting away from this, but there you have it). Surpisingly enough, she suggested I see a therapist and a psychiatrist. This is really sad...I mean, about a week before I was sick, I was in her office discussing how I had been accepted to Embry Riddle (The number one nation-wide university for the aerospace engineering program I'm entering). She has a DSM-IV right in her office! Before jumping to depression, she could have actually bothered to look up 'chronic fatigue', which, surprisingly enough, actually has a CFS reference. Of course, rather than taking that 5 minutes out of her schedule of clicking 'drop class' on her computer for students, she had to go and ruin the next month of my life. Thanks for that...If anything else, that's at least going to get me to go to school Monday to get a few hostile words in with her.

Grr...I've got more to say, but I don't think that my fingers can take any more of this.