For as long as I can remember, I've been a medical mystery. From random fainting spells to intense tension headaches that caused me to miss days of school, I've been going through a cycle of being a hospital bird every few years.

It started in the seventh grade when I began to faint in my kitchen or bathroom for seemingly no reason. My doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong, so my grandmother assumed I was just trying to get attention. So when I began to have blackout spells and do crazy things (like walk into walls and doors), she was infuriated with me. I had already been ruled out for neurological problems, and the only organs that weren't 100 percent were my kidneys, but that shouldn't have caused my problems. After a year or so of this I stopped having episodes, and my family had me stop seeing doctors. I was living a healthy life for the next couple years, until I was a Sophomore in high school.

Sophomore year was when I realized that doctors don't like to deal with issues they don't understand. I was beginning to have more intense episodes that year, and to top it off, I was anemic, so I was constantly in need of iron supplements. My father was at the height of his sickness as well, so though I was always in pain and fainting almost every day, I was almost completely ignored. When I did go to the hospital, my doctors made me wait for hours just for them to tell me the same things: "We aren't sure what's causing this," and, "It probably stems from anxiety; have you seen someone about that?" even though all of that was all in my file already. Doctor's began refusing to see me in the ER after having bad episodes, and insisted I just make a doctor appointment.

In my Junior year, I was in the ER after a particularly bad tension headache, where I could barely stand and all I did was cry. We got to the ER waiting room, and they completely ignored me curled up in a ball on the floor for about an hour, and only spoke to me to ask me to give them a urine sample. I could barely move, so my mom told them it was impossible, and to please give us a room. They ended up calling us back to get my blood pressure checked, and I fainted in that room. After that, I was in and out with what I remember. I was initially told I would be given pain medication and sent on my way, but I began to become irrational and violent in my altered state. I was given three spinal taps, an MRI, and had five vials of blood drawn. When I woke up the next morning, my mother's face was bruised, I was strapped down, and I had a wooden block tied to my hand that had an IV on top of it. I had attacked my mother because she was trying to help the doctors draw blood, and I had began speaking strangely, so they thought I might have meningitis. All my tests that day came back negative, and since then I've been very wary of hospitals — they bruised my spine, and I had to go back the next day, and I cried because I had to be there.

Up till now I haven't had a bad episode like that until a few days ago. I was rushed to the ER after having thrown up about five times, and I began to become immobile. I couldn't speak, my hands began to curl together and I couldn't move my fingers, and my legs contorted into strange curves. I was in the hospital all day and was pumped full of potassium, because by the end of the day I had thrown up 12 times and had a horrible tension headache. They associated all these symptoms with my body losing all it's potassium. After all the tests they did, at a hospital I had never been to before, everything was found to be negative. There was no reason for me to be this sick, just like there was no reason for all my phantom pains in my neck, or my fainting and blackout spells.

The doctors began to take longer to get back to us, and in the end they wrote on my chart that I had suffered from an "emotional crisis" and "anxiety," so that's why I vomited so much. I feel that doctor's who can't comprehend or find answers to these kinds of issues immediately go to blaming the emotional stability of their patients. I've been diagnosed with "altered mental states" and "irrational fear" in hospitals as a means of explaining my pain and physical deterioration. This in itself makes me very unlikely to go to the doctors unless I am very ill, because I've lost so much trust in our system.

So for the last 21 years, and for possibly many more, I am a medical mystery in three different cities with all negative tests, even when vomiting blood and fainting every day. So to all of you who are sick and your health professionals try to shrug off your "phantom pains," I am right here for you! Let me hear your stories!