The patient in this story didn't wish to be identified so we have posted it anonymously.

You don't really experience how excruciatingly frustrating the medical system is in this country until you have a complicated medical problem. Or several. So that each doctor works on only one piece of you - even though all those pieces are connected. They don't communicate well. The hoops you jump through are exhausting.

My pain specialist wants me to go back to the neurologist for an evaluation, my left side is getting weaker and I have an assortment of odd issues. I can't go back to the neurologist until I get a new referral. I can't get a referral unless I actually make an appointment with my primary care to talk about it. Then he'll send a referral to the neurologist who will then call me for an appointment.

Did you get tired reading that? Because that's just one of literally a dozen issues I'm trying to do something about.

I remember when when I first got sick, I'd been hospitalized 4 times, very sick, getting worse, no answers. So they sent me to mental health, because at that point my husband had left me, I was broke, and sick as all heck. So they figured I was just a girl, just stressed, and needed therapy. That gap, where I stopped going to doctors because they didn't want to hear it, where all the problems building were escalating, where I went weekly to a crazy lady therapist who spent most of my sessions talking about what a jerk her ex husband was - that's when I went downhill fast. Because I listened to the doctors who were dismissive of me, instead of listening to me.

Where's House when you need him? Because everything right now is bullshit and I'm frustrated and I feel awful.