For most of my life, I have had pretty good health. When going to the doctor’s as a kid, my answer to most of the questions was typically no- no family history, no symptoms, no pain. This quickly began to change when I became older. At around age 17, I started experiencing a grab bag of symptoms, the worst being severe lower back pain, with some of the more manageable ones being dizziness, flu-like symptoms, etc. I was trying my best to be strong and go about my life, but being a senior in high school, everything was in hyper speed, and I constantly felt like I was losing control.

As time went on, the back pain continually got worse, and throughout the fall of my senior year, I had gotten a multitude of tests- X-rays, MRI, CT Scan, Bone Scan, the list goes on. By the time December rolled around, I had seen at least 4 doctors, having all of them tell me different things. One told me that I needed surgery, another said that I would “grow out of it”. The third thought I needed to see a psychiatrist, and the last actually had an inkling that something else was going on. My family and I thought that the last doctor was my saving grace, but as it turns out, she just ended up complicating my road to a diagnosis even more.

After finally having a blood test, the culprit was deemed an infectious disease. We went through normal protocol, and I got adequate treatment. For a while, I felt better, and life went on. I graduated from high school, made it through my first year of college, happy and primarily healthy. I went back for the fall semester of my sophomore year ready to take on the world, but unfortunately it didn’t quite go that way.

About a month into the semester, I started to get really sick again, except this time, the symptoms were worse than before. I had trouble eating due to nausea, so I started losing weight. I felt so lightheaded most of the time that I had to hold on to the wall just to walk around, and I started getting low-grade fevers out of nowhere for no apparent reason. The back pain had returned and it was worse than ever, and I spent most of my day laying down. Most days when I woke up, I wondered if I would even make it through the day.

My grades started slipping, and with it just about everything else. I wasn’t happy, and being the person that I am, it takes a lot for me to not be happy. I cried just about everyday because I felt so lost and afraid. I didn’t want to live like this, I couldn’t. I felt like I had lost control completely, I was barely hanging on. Finally, we decided it was time to go back to the specialist. We went into the appointment with high hopes, thinking that it was a flareup and would be an easy fix. Instead, I sat across from the infectious disease specialist as he told me that I had been misdiagnosed two years ago. The real cause of my pain and sickness was actually an autoimmune disease, that was not too difficult to catch with the proper bloodwork.

Two years, several tests, and five doctors later, I finally had my answer. To say that it was a hard road is an understatement. There were so many times when I wanted to give up and just quit fighting, but through this experience I learned that you have to keep going. If I would have just given up and accepted my sickness for what it was, I never would have gone to the doctor who finally gave me the right answer.

For anyone going through a similar experience, I want to encourage you to keep fighting. Keep speaking your mind and pushing until somebody listens. Where would I be today if I had listened to the doctors who called me crazy, or the ones who said I would grow out of it? Sometimes the road to diagnosis is very long, painful, and difficult, but in the end it’s worth it. Looking back now, I know that every roadblock helped bring me to the place I am now, and I’m thankful for my misdiagnosis in a way; because in the end, it helped lead me to the right answer.