Hi!

Hi! My name is Rachel and I am 20 years old. I live in Indiana with my very supportive family. I have been waiting to post an introduction until I had a diagnosis. After yesterday's (Jan. 13, 2009) appointment I decided to go ahead and write an intro and I'll add comments to this if things become clearer.

I have complex I, II, and probably V abnormalities. This currently manifests itself in general fatigue, muscle weakness, fairly poor absorption, extreme temperature intolerance, and most likely I'm forgetting something.

In hindsight I can see a few signs of the disease even when I was little. I've always had trouble with hot and cold weather, and I would feel sick if I didn't get a full night of sleep at a sleepover. When I was 13 I started struggling with feeling really tired even with lots of sleep each night. A couple different doctors told me I was fine, so I figured everyone must feel this way. At the end of my Junior year of high school I started really struggling with the orchestra rehearsals that I had been able to handle for years. I play/ed cello and at the end of rehearsal I would be struggling to keep my arms up and my back was hurting a lot. That summer I started going to many many doctors. At that time I thought that if I took care of the back pain everything else would go away. After seeing the usual medley of doctors I went to a doctor who said that my back pain was caused by insulin resistance and whipped my diet into shape. While the back pain did eventually go away everything else didn't. Already homeschooled, I limped through my Senior year. I decided to go to college as a cello performance major and took 18 credit hours my first semester. It was a struggle to keep going and I did miss some school. During the second semester I got tendonitis while my cello teacher struggled to understand why I did while other players doing the same things didn't. Halfway through second semester I had a bout of not being able to move at all. While I had had this before, this time I didn't bounce back. The nine months since then I've been doctor hopping and relearning how to live.

I have been told that playing cello a lot will not work with my body. My favorite thing about music was teaching private lessons, so I hope to one day become a tutor for something else. Sorry this became wordy!