To the editor: Lauran Neergaard’s article exploring the medical thriller that’s lupus (and different autoimmune circumstances) successfully highlights many sufferers’ journeys, together with mine (“The push to search out assist for autoimmune illnesses, together with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus,” Nov. 10).
The “dismissiveness” and “gaslighting” talked about are very actual, particularly in relation to girls’s signs. But I’ve been dismissed and misdiagnosed by each female and male medical doctors, all medical professionals with little bedside method and an incapacity to really hear. Equally traumatic is being ceaselessly dismissed by members of the general public, and even shut associates, as a result of invisible nature of autoimmune circumstances. If folks can’t see it, they don’t imagine it.
My saving grace has been discovering medical doctors (and different medical practitioners) with genuine compassion, an open ear and a capability to look deeper. Kudos to affected person Ruth Wilson for not solely standing up for herself to discover a correct prognosis, but additionally volunteering to teach others about lupus and continual sickness generally. It took advocating for myself, satisfactory medical insurance, household assist and braveness to lastly shine a lightweight by myself medical thriller.
Alexis P. Markowitz, Playa Vista
