UNITED STATES
Faith Forward
By Reba Riley
If there’s one thing I know the power of, it’s a name.
For the better part of a decade I suffered from a chronic mystery illness that was attacking me from the inside out. Countless doctors and specialists couldn’t diagnose me, couldn’t give me a name for what was happening. They told me it was all in my head — that I could pull myself out of it if I just tried harder.
I believed them.
Debilitating fatigue and pain became a way of life. My physical distress was second only to the mental torture that went like this, “I am doing this to myself. I do not have an actual medical condition. These symptoms are not real. There is nothing wrong with me.”
But there was something wrong with me. After eight years of sickness, a doctor handed me a slip of paper. On the paper was the name of the disease I had been fighting; the disease that had been fighting me.
I wept with joy. (Which confused my poor doctor more than a little bit.)
I had a name. The symptoms were real. I did have a medical condition. I was not doing it to myself.
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