[moby_click]

> treat the symptoms as much as possible, and prescribe lifestyle changes (diet, exercise, sleep)

That's pretty much what I have been doing, when I was 19. But I became sick, saw a couple of doctors without a diagnosis and that prescrption would have sounded like: "Have you tried not being sick anymore?"

I had to wait for a NSAID to kick in to get down liquid food, had to sleep often, because I could only sleep for few hours at a time and everyday life was exercise enough. At that point blood tests for lyme were inconclusive, but the rheumatologist thought the symptoms warranted oral doxycycline, which cleared the symptoms within days. Maybe a lumbar puncture would have shown it, but I was asymptomatic before I was scheduled.

Like nosianu experienced, there was a long period where I thought, I just had to get my act together and it takes a while to conclude that something is seriously wrong. At some point, you take a doctor's educated guess, even if the treatment is harmful.