How did this become my life?

I'm now in another round of the waiting game.

This is the period of time in which I like to ignore and pretend like this isn't all really happening.

I saw the rheumatologist last week, who asked me alot of questions, and pushed, pulled and moved my limbs around as if I were a puppet. At the end of the visit he told me that he didn't think I had lupus, and that my ANA was just a borderline positive (I had already been told that by my PCP as well - but to be on the safe side, that is when she referred me to see a rheumy). The rheumy told me that sometimes there can be false positives (I had also read about that online). He did want another ANA to be run, so I headed to the hospital lab and let their vampires take what they needed.

I left there feeling slightly defeated, but decided that I wouldn't think about anything until he got the results back from the second ANA.

I called his office on Monday as instructed, but my results were not in. I was told that he would call me when they were in, but that it could still be a couple days.

Tuesday evening, just before 10pm, as I was nursing a headache from hell, my cell phone rang. My first thought was that it was a work related call, which is typically what a call on my cell phone at that hour means. Instead, much to my surprise, it was my rheumatologist.

He explained that the ANA came back with the same results of the first test, and that while he still believed I don't have anything, he wanted to run a series of other labs to make sure they come back negative.

So back to the vampires I went. I figure I won't have any answers until this time next week.

I'm entirely beside myself. There's that little voice inside me, that I often yell at to just shut up .... but it's telling me that there's something wrong. I'm hoping it's mistaken; praying it's mistaken. But the realistic part of me believes that the ANA is coming back positive for a reason.

From everything I've read online (and as much as I try to avoid doing this because it freaks me out, I am doing quite a bit of it), a positive ANA often does mean something, but that many times there aren't enough symptoms to go along with it to confirm a diagnosis. And this pretty much means WAITING for other symptoms to officially get a diagnosis and proper treatment.

This is what bothers me the most. I could possibly be told "There's nothing wrong with you" and sent on my way, only to end up with an official diagnosis in weeks, months, maybe years.

I'm trying to just keep my head up and cherish and enjoy the good things in my life. But for a moment, I'll stop and think, how did this become my life? I now face a possible chronic illness. And then I think of everything that could eventually mean and it freaks me the hell out.