I don't know if they still have this article available free, but I found this deep dive into a writer's medical diagnosis fascinating. That poor man.
I, on the other hand, had the most straightforward MS diagnosis ever. The gastroenterologist got it in two questions. "What are your symptoms / Do you have MS?" (No, I chirped.) There was a brief delay of a year of ruling things out before I discovered that I had answered that second question wrong.
I am an easy diagnosis in general, even for buried psychological issues. When I had trouble at work after Mom died, the work counselor got the answer in two questions too. “What are you working on when you start to cry at your desk? / What is an annuity?” At least that time I answered the second question correctly. (The answer was an annuity is an investment that pays out at death, with a death benefit, when you die, death, deaddeaddead, oh.)
The marriage counselor got it in one question. He looked at Gary’s grey hair, turned to me, and asked, “How old were you when your father abandoned you?”
So I’m easy, but I know that writer’s diagnosis journey is typical for most people with MS, with its dead ends and switchbacks. I know how lucky I am and how awful it must be to get sicker and sicker, usually because each specialist can’t see the big picture.
How awful would it be to have lived fifty years earlier, with no treatments and no MRI? How lucky are we? How lucky will people be fifty years from now, when the first and only question will be, “Can you spit into this tube and wait for the AI to find the bad chromosomes?” It makes me want to follow the writer above until medical science catches up with him.
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