To the Doctors Who Gave Up on Me: I Can’t Do the Same

There is so much disappointment that can be felt when your health declines. Disappointment that you can no longer participate in life the same way as you did before. Disappointment in friends and family who forget that you struggle daily to do even the simplest of tasks. Disappointment that you are restricted by insurance companies in who or where you can seek treatment from. Disappointment that test after test, you are still left without answers.  Disappointment in your body that it is failing you. But the greatest disappointment with living in limbo, is having doctors give up on you.

I’ve had two neurologists and a whole university shrug their shoulders at me, offering no more testing…no more care. How does that happen? In this state, in this country, where I’m fully insured and showing up time after time, willing to be checked for anything that remotely fits my ailments?

It really is hard to comprehend.

Unfortunately, their lack of care and identifying  a reason for my decline does not magically take away the symptoms I experience every day. I often wonder, where do they file me in their history of patients? Do they ever wonder what has become of me? Do they even care if I finally received a diagnosis?

New flash: I haven’t.

See, as you neatly closed the file on me and freed up another 15 minute time slot for a different patient…I am here, researching, Googling, asking and inquiring wherever and whomever I can, to get to the bottom of this. To get to the bottom of me. I am doing your job.

Because I don’t have the luxury to give up.

I am spent financially, psychically, emotionally and mentally…but I can’t give up.

My very life depends on it.

I’m trying to live in a body that won’t cooperate. Trying to be a mom and wife…trying to show up the best way I can despite the struggles.

I can’t give up.

And I know there is a reason, I know there is a “name,” a diagnosis…a cause for this struggle. And when it is found, I will circle back to you doctor, the one that gave up on me. I will share with you the ailment that has robbed me of the past three years.

Maybe it will make you pause, continue to question…and not give up.

Because we, the undiagnosed patient, can’t give up.