Member-only story
I Lived With An Undiagnosed Autoimmune Disease For a Decade
How did I live with an undiagnosed autoimmune disease for over a decade?
The simple answer is that women are often ignored in medical settings and we don’t always advocate for ourselves like we should because many of us become accustomed to living in discomfort. Women are too tough for own good. We birth babies, we have menstrual cycles, and we generally are expected to live with, and endure, pain. We can also be gaslit into believing there’s nothing wrong with us. For example, once when I sought out chiropractic care for my chronic muscoloskeletal pain, I was asked by the chiropractor if I had fibromyalgia. There’s nothing wrong with having fibromyalgia, and it is a real condition; however, I know many people don’t believe it is. In fact, I’ve heard that people with fibromyalgia “suck all the air out of any room.” When I shot back — “I don’t have fibromyalgia — ” with a look that said “I know what you’re implying,” the chiropractor quickly changed the subject. She’d just run X-rays on me, but the problem, as I would later discover, is that inflammatory arthritis does not show up on X-rays.
For the past two years, I’ve been battling extreme fatigue, difficulty concentrating, muscle stiffness, joint pain, headaches, indigestion, nausea, heartburn, poor range of motion…
