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by 2924010774
594 days ago
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I don't think people get how difficult it can be to interact with doctors when you have a chronic illness. In high school, I started to get debilitating joint pain. I had trouble walking, typing, or writing. I went to many (at least a dozen) doctors. Most of them were unsympathetic and accused me of trying to get access to pain pills. Or told me that "this is just what puberty is like." Eventually, I happened upon _one_ doctor who gave me some blood tests and I tested positive for Celiac disease. Treating that fixed my joint pain. Celiac disease is not a rare disease--it affects 1% of the US population--yet most of the doctors I saw didn't even think to test for it, despite join pain being a typical symptom. Instead, they gaslit me into thinking that it was "all in my head." Clearly they were wrong, and I have the blood test and endoscopy to prove it! I'm a member of a "Young people with chronic illness" meetup, and my story is absolutely the norm. People who have conditions with clear and measurable diagnosis criteria go through many doctors telling them nothing is wrong before they find a doctor who will run tests. I can only imagine how much worse it is for conditions which are diagnosed "by exclusion" or something else that's not cut-and-dried. |
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