My Blood Work Looks Good. So Why Am I Struggling?

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   Ava Meena Moderator & Contributor

   <p><inline-mention username="Jhansen66" user-id="4170887"/><br/> So sorry to hear that you are going through these pains and struggles. I have had similar issues - blood work was fine but I was miserable. My rheumatologists have given me many different opinions over the years: it&#39;s fibro, it&#39;s stress, perhaps you have another disease that&#39;s yet to be noticed, maybe something is seronegative (doesn&#39;t show up in typical blood work), sometimes it&#39;s normal to experience symptoms even if your disease is &quot;controlled&quot;. I wasn&#39;t happy with any of those answers, so I asked if there were more types of tests we could do. I was able to get x-ray imaging, early Sjogrens panel tests (I didn&#39;t know those existed), and I also did something called an AVISE test, which you can check out here: <a href='https://avisetest.com/' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer ugc'>https://avisetest.com/</a> <br/><br/>I did eventually get some answers and relief. It took a lot of persistence though.<br/><br/><br/><br/>In your shoes, I&#39;d probably keep asking if there are other things that can be checked out, less common tests that haven&#39;t been run yet, tests that aren&#39;t blood work (x-rays, biopsies, etc), any add on treatments that might help, or, at the least, what can be given to treat your symptoms. For example, I was &quot;normal&quot; on my blood work and still having a lot of joint pain, so my rheumatologist increased my gabapentin dosage and that helped. Sometimes, for many different reasons, doctors may have to treat the symptoms instead of the root cause of the disease. Hope this helps and please keep us updated. You&#39;re not alone in this struggle - many of us know it all too well unfortunately. -Ava, <a href='https://lupus.net' target='_blank'>lupus.net</a> team<br/></p>

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