One of the bitterest aspects of my illness has been this: not only did I suffer from a disease, but I suffered at the hands of a medical establishment that, for too long, failed to fully credit my testimony. The U.S. medical system not only failed to diagnose me; it stopped my quest in its tracks. Instead of acknowledging what was wrong with me, the medical system asked my body to behave as the obedient container of a distinctive and previously understood disease rather than as the site of a complex illness it didn’t understand. In the throes of illness, cut off from the life you once lived,
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