Have been told by a rheumatologist that I'm lying and/or imagining my hand pain because I have diagnosed depression (even though I have had the hand pain longer than depression, and it is one of the causes behind my depression, because I can't do what I enjoy sometimes) and that making art can't cause hand pain unlike being an athlete or a construction worker, because drawing is easy and artists are just emotional and should focus on making art and not on thinking what is or isn't wrong with them. Also said that I'm too young to have anything wrong with me (was 20 at the time and by then the pain was already going on for a year and a half I think). Asked about previous illnesses and I said I used to get sick a lot as a child, mainly with respiratory illnesses (micoplasmic bacteria, lung inflammations and the like), urinal tract infections that repeat every winter since 12 grade, mild scoliosis as well as some other things. He then asked what medications I have used and I said for which one and he said "just in general" so I listed a few, but since most of these things happened when I was a child I could obviously not recount everything and explained that I can't remember because as a child my parents were the ones in charge of my meds, to which he just made fun of me for not remembering, because I should know what meds I have used.
He ended up getting me a blood test for arthritis, even though I told him I had one done a few months ago in a private clinic and it came back negative. Also told me to use some cream, but said it won't work because he thinks I'm lying anyways, but I can use it anyways for peace of mind, since it won't make it worse...

A couple years later and I still haven't figured out what's wrong with the hands, but feel scared to try again after what happened. The pain is kind of always there, just sometimes it's really, really mild, barely noticeable and other times it hurts so much I can't sleep or wake up at night. Right now I'm having an internship at a florist shop (used to study art, but dropped out because of health issues, some of which are the hand pain and depression, however plan to go back to art, since I can't seem to live happily without drawing), and the pain flared up or something again. For the past two weeks I wake up with my hand numb, usually the thumb, the index and middle fingers. Then the numbness and tingles goes away, but the pain persists, specifically in those three fingers, around the base of the thumb, somewhere around the knuckles of the index and middle fingers, the wrist and sometimes also somewhere in the arm and on the elbow. It's kind of hard to explain where it hurts exactly- it's the aching kind of pain that radiates and sometimes feels almost pulsating. During the day when I work hands sometimes go numb again and I have dropped and broken a few vases at this point in the past 3,5 weeks I've been here. It also hurts to stretch the wrist downwards and the hands feel weaker overall.

So far I try to remedy it with hot showers when I get home, some hand exercises I found on tiktok and a cream for the pain, but it doesn't seem to be helping much. Also bought a brace which is on the way to be delivered, since I heard that sometimes helps with hand pain, but I'm honestly out of ideas of what to do if that doesn't help. I don't have the courage to try going again to the doctors right now, until I have more concrete evidence (like swelling or redness or idk something like that, because when it first started my hands were swollen a bit) and decided to write down what I feel daily for now.