I Need a 'House'

I would give a chunk of my right leg to have a doctor like Greg House (get it?). Now, I know he’s a colossal tool and he’s not exactly a people person but I would make a great puzzle for him to solve. I’ve been sick my entire life, or at least as long as I can remember and no one has ever been able to explain why or even take the time to try and find an explanation. I don’t need the pity of doctors treating me like a baby with a booboo, I need someone who wants to figure out anything thrown their way. I need someone with a need to solve things, I need someone who is fixated on facts and mysteries, I need House.

It started out as insomnia, I was born at night and I was awake every night since and would wake at the drop of a pin in a silent room. When I was around six years old, the pain started. I felt as though my blood had been replaced with razor blades and I still feel the same now, twenty years later. At first, I put the pain down to sports injuries though it became clear after a while that this wasn’t the reason I was always hurting. After this came the nausea, I struggled to eat so I would fill myself up with water so I didn’t have to eat much so I wouldn’t feel as sick all the time. After the nausea came the fatigue, I guessed it was because I couldn’t sleep but even on the rare days that I did get a good night’s sleep, I was still exhausted.

I knew something was wrong with me from a very young age but I couldn’t explain what to the adults because mostly, they didn’t want to listen. Whatever this illness is, it started to affect every part of every day but I would still push myself as hard as I could because I hated the thought of being perceived as weak and still do. I used to do different sports almost every day of the week and usually went for a run before school too and would push myself until I physically threw up. I would break at least one bone every six months or so, mostly my nose and my collarbones but I would carry on as if I hadn’t one any damage at all because I was used to being in pain.

I would frequently be sent to the school nurse because of my nausea or pain, only to have them tell my parents that I was “the girl who cried wolf” and for my suffering to be made fun of and then forgotten once again. None of the adults could wrap their head around a child actually being in pain or being sick all the time and even the one time my parents took me to the doctors about it I was ignored by the doctor who called me a liar too because I didn’t look sick. So, as always, I carried on trying to pretend it wasn’t as bad as it was and pushing myself harder than I probably should’ve to keep the act up.

Sports day rolled around pretty quickly after this, my favourite day of the year because finally people would actually be nice to me because I won things. Typically, illness got in the way - I had come down with tonsillitis and sinusitis at the same time and I originally wasn’t going to participate until my friend’s mum decided to make fun of me, saying “you don’t run with your tonsils” and mocked me for being sick telling me I wouldn’t be that good anyway. So naturally, I decided I wanted to participate to spite her and beat her daughter in every event just to gloat. Unfortunately, this made the adults tell me and my parents that I wasn’t actually sick if I could still do that so I stopped being treated for my illness and you can probably guess how that went.

Anyway, I was getting really good at Judo in particular as I was getting older and even surpassed my older brother in the gradings. My last grading and big Judo competition was for my blue belt the summer before we left our hometown. Before this competition I had torn the muscle and tissue in my right arm trying to teach myself how to skateboard so I was supposed to wear a wrist support.

I had to take the support off before my fight but my opponent was wearing one (against the rules) and hit my bad wrist with it, weakening me. She then tried to throw me but did it wrong and ended up breaking two of my ribs, now, that one I felt. I was made to see the on site medic to be assessed and they didn’t want me to finish the day but I knew I just had that fight to win and I would get my blue belt and what’s a broken rib or two when you live your life in pain anyway? I got back onto the mat, tensed from head to toe and fueled by spite I threw her over my shoulder and that was that, in about a minute the match was done and I had won.

My victory was hollow however as soon after, I would be informed that we were moving away to a place where my love for sport was irrelevant and everything I had worked for was pointless. When I was twelve, we moved to the South West where there was nothing - it felt like a ghost town in comparison to where we used to live. I took advantage of the emptiness at first, I would still go running in the open space and stay active but as the weeks went on I couldn’t see the point anymore. Everything hurt, I could hardly breathe because of my untreated sinus infection and there was nothing pushing me to try anymore.

I started self medicating (stupidly) and finding anything I could to numb the physical pain and the pain of the emptiness I felt too. This went on for a few years until I fell pregnant and changed everything about the hole I was digging myself into. I desperately tried to get some semblance of health back so I could carry my son safely but whatever was making me sick when I was younger had multiplied tenfold when I fell pregnant. That’s when my heart would race at a million miles a minute for no reason, my blood pressure would jump sky high and then plummet without warning, when I became anemic and when the hypersomnia started.

I was seeing different doctors, nurses and midwives weekly and yet none of them paid any mind to my problems, saying it was normal because I was pregnant. This was until they thought I had preeclampsia, and even that was my body making fun of both me and them. Most people’s crises are my everyday. My body loves to make me look like I’m dying right up until the machines come out and then suddenly my body pretends I’m in perfect health. It’s like the weeping angels from Doctor Who, when you’re looking, it’s normal but as soon as you look away or are off guard, mayhem ensues.

I think the moment that I realised that my body had reached its breaking point was giving birth or moreso, after I gave birth. The birth itself was very traumatic and I was given very little help until ten or so doctors came rushing in because I was knocking on death's door. I’m missing around seven hours or so after giving birth, I can’t remember a thing but I have been told that I was awake and trying to talk but not making much sense but no one even tried to check on why this was happening and it wasn’t even written in my doctors notes even though apparently there were several doctors and midwives with me at the time.

After all of this, my pain became worse than ever - I could hardly move some days. I still was struggling to breath from the untreated sinus infection and I started getting episodes of fainting and dizziness with a pressure inside my head as though someone was blowing up a balloon in my skull. Trying to be a new parent with so much of my body failing me was the hardest thing I ever had to do but I pushed myself like I used to with my sport to pretend I was okay but I surely wasn’t.

Over the years everything has progressively gotten worse and doctors still wont give me the time of day. They just throw painkillers at me and tell me good luck whilst simultaneously calling me a drug seeker whenever I ask for some real help. I had a brain scan in 2016 which revealed a significant infection on my sphenoid sinus and inflammation on the brain. My doctors gave me amoxicillin and then refused to treat me when they discovered I was allergic to penicillin. The pressure turned into my vision going blurry, turned into migraines, turned into migraines with left sided weakness.

I am scared that I will never find a doctor who doesn’t just want to get me out the door as quickly as possible and I’m scared that after fifteen years without treatment for the infection that it may kill me as the symptoms get worse and worse. I’m scared that I’ll never find answers as to why I am always in pain, always tired but never able to sleep, why my bones break so easily and why I don’t feel my bones break anymore. I’m scared I’ll never find out why I don’t bleed when I’ve cut myself against something, why I always feel sick, why I feel like I’m dying but look fine.

I need a doctor like House who would start from scratch and look at everything, not just pick and choose what they wanted to see and treat at the time. I need a doctor who will look at the whole picture, who will fixate until there’s an answer, a treatment, a cure. We need doctors who actually care, even if not for us as patients but about the puzzle. I would happily take all the verbal abuse under the sun if it meant an answer but all I get is sarcastic or sexist comments with no answers.

We need more doctors like House, who despite being a pain to be around, cares that he gets the answer right.