A Letter to the Doctors Who Didn’t Give Up
Dear (my favorite) physicians,
There are plenty of literature and memes out there in the chronic illness world about the doctors who didn’t believe us, who called us hypochondriacs, or who gave up when none of the labs showed one of the “usual suspects.” This is not about them. I choose to leave them out of this particular story. This is for the doctors who may not have had the answer right away but kept searching anyways. This is a thank you to the primary care physician who kept referring me from one specialist to another to make sure that we found an answer. This letter is for the primary care who saw the potential of diagnoses of exclusion and kept crossing off the conditions we needed to exclude to get to the bottom of it. This is for the primary care physician who was willing to admit that he wasn’t sure what was wrong with me, but he was always willing to keep looking alongside me. This is a thank you to the doctor who went home at night after work and kept reading and researching for me.
I want to thank the ENT who ran one culture and diagnostic test after another to document my file. I want to thank the Hematologist/Oncologist who ran every possible lab she could think of in one swoop to push my case along FAST. Thank you to the Immunologist who was patient when the first round of labs came back normal and suggested that we retest, because my recent medical history just wasn’t quite right. Thank you for fighting a 2 month long insurance appeal battle alongside me to make sure that my treatment was covered. Thank you to that same specialist who listened carefully when my health wasn’t improving and adjusted my dosing when I expressed these concerns.
Thank you to my three main healthcare providers for coming up with protocols to deal with my illness once we had a definitive diagnosis so that we could rapidly address any issues. Thank you all for not telling me I’m just depressed and sending me to psych when I broke down in tears in your offices, because I was desperate to have my old life back. Thank you for believing me and never making me feel like I was crazy. It was partially thanks to you all that I found the strength to keep coming back to continue searching for an answer. My length of time until diagnosis was less than HALF the average length of time to an antibody deficiency diagnosis, and it is absolutely because all of you fought for me. That is no small thank you, because as I have learned since being diagnosed, delayed diagnosis can lead to permanent organ damage with my condition. You all played a part in preventing that.
It is so much easier to just move on to the next patient and say that nothing is wrong when the usual suspects don’t fit. I know that many physicians are busy and over-scheduled, and it causes burn-out in your profession. If any of you were ever feeling the burn-out, I never noticed, because all of you made me feel like I was more than just an appointment slot. All of you, especially my primary care physician, did what I wish every provider would do: commit to your patients and to ruling out any possible cause of illness until you find the answer. I wish every provider would recognize the desperation in their patients voices when they say that something just isn’t right, and I wish that they all treated their patients with the same dignity and kindness that all of you showed me. Thank you for being my advocates every step of the way and for playing a part in giving me my life back.
Chronically yours,
Jen
