I am finally on the proper medications, 19 years after I first started getting sick. I can breathe properly. I can eat without my throat swelling up, or my blood pressure plummeting. I can exercise and my heart rate stays in a normal range. And yet I cannot say how angry I am.
I cannot say how angry I am to have been told to just wait for things to get better. Or to have been scolded for pointing out frank diagnostic errors. To have been told that sometimes you must just accept that "life just sucks."
I cannot believe how much my precious time was wasted by not being taken seriously. I am still trying to piece it all together, but...fuck, you know? That I was stubborn enough to not let doctors just abandon me to their own lack of curiosity and care.
The way that I have been framed as an angry woman, an angry Black woman, who has to be so polite in medical spaces and not cry or be "hostile." The way that having to tolerate the intolerance of others feels like being told to just tolerate pain and discomfort in my own body.
I take simple medications. I take over-the-counter histamine blockers and I take a prescription mast cell stabilizer and I can breathe, I can eat, I can exercise. I can sleep better. My stomach is settling after 19 years. And my rage is barely containable.
I know that I have to be careful about my health for the rest of my life, and I'm still trying to figure out how to manage day-to-day. I am not "cured" and I still live with disability and chronic illness, but it's...I don't know. I feel hopeful, despite being angry as hell.
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