Unknown Primary

Living with any sort of illness can be difficult, but when doctors don’t know what’s wrong or how to help life can seem almost impossible. When I was undiagnosed and bedridden for three years, I vowed to myself that if I ever found out how to make such a dark and difficult time better I [...]

My 9-month-old son was admitted to the emergency department last May following what was described as, “seizure or stroke-like activity.” He had hemiparesis on the left side of his body, and his eyes and head were also deviated left — symptoms we had never experienced before with him, despite his developmental delays. At the time [...]

My baby was labeled: failure to thrive. Whether your baby was diagnosed at 2 weeks old or 5 months old, the label can be scary, overwhelming and simply terrible. Perhaps you are nursing and your milk is not doing what it’s supposed to do. Maybe your baby is taking it in but the milk is [...]

Life isn’t always straight forward. It’s not really a newsflash to say that, I know, but as I lay in pain with two legs that had major surgery eight weeks apart, facing a future filled with so many unknown elements, all I could think is that life just isn’t straight forward. I have been told [...]

When a doctor or a surgeon finds a structural abnormality, fixes it and the patient gets better, that sounds like a success story. But is it really a success story when the doctor can’t explain how the structural abnormality could result in the surprising symptoms experienced by the patient? Wouldn’t it be a better success if [...]

As I close the chapters of my undergrad life, I find myself pausing to reflect on the difficult journey that got me here. Just shy of halfway through my senior year of college, I woke up with incredible stomach pain. It was the week before finals and two days after my semester-long internship had finished. [...]

I am going through a strange phase of my illness at the moment. The illness is still there, the flare ups are still there and the heart is still getting worse. The illness in itself is quite stable, in its unstableness. The strange phase is that for the last two and half years, I have basically been a [...]