Pre-diagnosis, part 1

So I've decided the best way to move forward is to go back. So I'm gonna go back to before I was diagnosed. I'm going to split it up into parts; to make it easier for me to write and organise my thoughts, and to make it easier to read.

PART 1:

Growing up, I had a different childhood. My Dad worked nights as a taxi driver. This meant that my Mum was always stressed about his sleep being disturbed and being children, me and my sissters weren't allowed to have particularly noisy toys, we weren't allowed to shout and scream or go crazy like the other kids, and to be honest, we didn't get out the house much either. To be honest, it didn't bother me too much because as a kid, I was naturally very reserved, quiet and mature for my age.

Despite this, my childhood was great, I have many fond memories. The first sign of glandular trouble was weight gain. Compared to my sisters, I was more "interested" in food- I would always eat all the food on my plate, I never complained or was too fussy about food, and would eat quite fast too. I can always remember being quite a chubby child, but obviously as a child, I never noticed it myself. My Mum would notice the weight gain and tell me I'd need to stop eating too much junk (which I didn't and she knew that) otherwise I wouldn't be able to wear jeans any more. Despite this, I continued to put on weight. I was around 8 or 9 years old when I was "banned" from wearing jeans because my Mum was so fed up of buying me the next size up. From then on it was dresses all the way- woohoo! Since then, I have never worn jeans!

The second sign was severe dandruff- I had a scalp complaint. My mum took me to the doctors and I was prescribed "synalar gel" to put on my scalp everytime it itched. It smelt nice and worked wonders but would leave my hair looking VERY greasy... GO GREASE LIGHTNING! (yes it was that bad!!) The doctor never explained or wondered why I had got the scalp condition, and to be honest, neither did I. At the time when I told my Mum about my scalp, I had just come back from a holiday in Pakistan. My Mum suspected the foreign shampoo had given me this severe dandruff!

But that was just the beginning of it...